Joan Snyder Kuhl - Dig Your Heels in: Navigate Corporate Bs and Build the Company You Deserve

Praise for Dig Your Heels In

Joan Kuhl has proven to be an unabashed champion for girls leadership and advancing women in the workplace. Dig Your Heels In is a solid playbook that arms women with real-world strategies for disrupting the corporate world and getting what we deserve.

Sophia Amoruso, cofounder and CEO, Girlboss

An incredibly important book that will change the way we lead, grow, and transform our organizationsand ourselves. Dig Your Heels In distills the essence of what it takes to become a significant change agent, guiding us to challenge the status quo and moving us from where we are to where we are called to be.

Frances Hesselbein, Chairman, Frances Hesselbein Leadership Forum; Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient; and former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA

Need a dose of inspiration and career strategy before your next mansplaining? Here it is! As much as Lean In charted the course, Dig Your Heels In is about staying the course. A very special message to millennial women that will take them through, not just to, the glass ceiling. The stories in this book are as inspiring as they are instructive. Joan Kuhl was among the first thought leaders to focus intently on young leaders and by doing so has inspired me to a lifetime of developing millennials before they assume top leader roles. A profoundly talented writer and speaker, Joan is a standard bearer for women in business. Dig Your Heels In is not just about standing firm; its about moving ahead.

Tom Kolditz, PhD, retired Brigadier General and Executive Director, The Doerr Institute for New Leaders, Rice University

Our girls need advocates like Joan Kuhl to help them grow up to be strong, respected, and valued leaders. Dig Your Heels In emphasizes the bold moves that individuals can take to ensure women of all ages, levels, and backgrounds have the time, space, and support to be our authentic selves in a world of social pressures and gender stereotypes.

Kate T. Parker, photographer and author of Strong Is the New Pretty

Women face specific challenges to rise in their careers and oftentimes shrink themselves at the prospect of engaging others around their ambitions. Dig Your Heels In gives women permission and courage to go after what they need and deserve while also strengthening their peer network to empower women around them.

Sally Helgesen, coauthor of How Women Rise

Women deserve to know the real deal so they can power through the obstacles that they will encounter in pursuit of the happy, fulfilling, and successful careers they deserve. Dig Your Heels In is a movement based on having the courage to advocate for ourselves and play the long game for our peers and the women to follow.

Annie McKee, author of How to be Happy at Work and Senior Fellow, University of Pennsylvania

Dig Your Heels In delivers relevant and actionable strategies to empower women to lead within their organizations.

Anne Ackerley, Head of BlackRocks US and Canada Defined Contribution Group and Cofounder of BlackRocks Womens Initiative Network

Practical solutions, relevant stories, and even scripts for difficult situations make Dig Your Heels In a must-read for any woman who wants to advance her career and change her organization for the better.

Laura Vanderkam, author of I Know How She Does It

The trust and influence that Joan Kuhl has earned through her research-based consulting projects and passion for transforming culture are infectious. We have worked together for the past several years on efforts to engage early career professionals and advance women in sports, so Im thrilled that her advice and strategies are accessible through her new book, Dig Your Heels In, to more leaders in human resources and talent management.

Holly Lindvall, Senior Vice President, Human Resources & Diversity, New York Mets

For over a decade, I have witnessed Joan Kuhls impact on global organizations and diverse leaders led by her passion for early career development and advancement of women in the workplace. Dig Your Heels In pulls together Joans expertise with inspiring stories of trail-blazers who provide a realistic pathway for achieving success at work and in life.

Marshall Goldsmith, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Triggers, Mojo, and What Got You Here Wont Get You There and #1 Executive Coach and the only two-time #1 Leadership Thinker in the World, Thinkers50

Dig Your Heels In

Copyright 2019 by Joan Kuhl

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Ordering information for print editions

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the Berrett-Koehler address above.

Individual sales. Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores. They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626; www.bkconnection.com

Orders for college textbook/course adoption use. Please contact Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626.

Distributed to the U.S. trade and internationally by Penguin Random House Publisher Services.

Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-9835-4
PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9836-1
IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9837-8
Digital audio ISBN 978-1-5230-9839-2

2019-1

Production manager: Susan Geraghty. Cover design: Susan Malikowski, Design-Leaf Studio, and Florence Lee, Why Millennials Matter. Interior design and composition: Westchester Publishing Services. Copyeditor: Michele D. Jones. Proofreader: Sophia Ho. Indexer: Sylvia Coates. Author photo: Wendy Yalom.

This book is dedicated to my daughters, Addison and Juliette.

Dream with your full imagination, hold your ground, and go after everything you want and deserve.

Thriving, Not Just Surviving

Imagine the effort it must take to wake up every morning with the daunting task of walking into an environment that tests your beliefs about who you can and could be as well as what you truly deserve. Have you ever looked around in disbelief as you observe how much bias shows up in decisions and actions with outcomes that are just not right? Is it that hard to believe that millions of women of all ages feel like this every day? They struggle to move up the ladder or gain fulfillment in their day-to-day work. Some feel underpaid and underappreciated, but its not just a feeling; it is proven fact. In 2018, women still earned 77 cents for every male dollar over their lifetimes; parity between the sexes begins to drop the minute a woman chooses to have kids, and it never recovers. By the time a woman reaches the age of fifty, shes earning 55 cents on the dollar compared to her male counterpart.