Leading from the front : no excuse leadership tactics for women

These three titles represent widely different styles and approaches in offering advice to (primarily) women seeking to develop their professional leadership skills. Friedman and Yorio (The Girl's Guide to Starting Your Own Business ) are the most irreverent, combining suggestions for successful team building, communication, delegation, and navigation of office politics with "Girl Talk" and "Good Witch or Big Bitch?" sidebars that offer tips from and interviews with female managers. Morgan and Lynch (cofounders, Lead Star), two women who spent a combined 18 years in the Marine Corps, offer the stylistic polar opposite: ten leadership tactics in as many no-nonsense chapters, with examples taken from their military careers. Lynch describes her effort to climb a rope as an example of taking responsibility before assigning blame; Morgan describes giving medals to her team members rather than herself to illustrate taking care of your subordinates. They provide chapter summary points, although their narrative suffers from the lack of either authorial cohesion or a conclusion. Both of these titles are firmly positioned for women only and are quick reads. Public or special libraries might consider purchasing only one of them, based on their particular collection or culture.

The title by Bourgeois (founder, president, Ctr. for Workforce Excellence; Her Corner Office: A Guide To Help Women Find a Place and a Voice in Corporate America ) benefits from a more unified presentation, as well as more references to the existing business literature (e.g., Jim Collins, Peter Drucker). It offers tips to help men and women incorporate each others' leadership skills into a new and stronger "hybrid" style. Although allusions to Christian tenets are a bit more frequent than might be desired by many business readers, Bourgeois's style is both engaging and professional, her techniques well explained, and her manual the most cohesively organized of the three. She provides proof of the need for better management skills, outlines methods for developing those skills, and concludes with examples of hybrid leadership and "leadership challenges" in which readers are asked to apply their newfound knowledge. Recommended for larger public, academic, and special libraries.--Sarah Statz Cords, Madison P.L., WI