Chotas Maggie Ellis - Power through partnership how women lead better together

Praise for Power through Partnership

Having been a part of a founding trio of women for nearly a decade now, I am often amazed when people express surprise that such a partnership existsand has thrived for so many years. Im gratified to see Betsy Polk and Maggie Ellis Chotas focus specifically on partnerships between women and explore their unique attributes and strengths. Shining a light on successful partnerships can only encourage more of such partnerships!

Elisa Camahort Page, cofounder and COO, BlogHer, Inc.

This is the book for every woman eager for a better way to work and lead. Through partnership, women are capitalizing on strengths and leveraging dynamic networks of sisters, friends, and colleagues to achieve success. Power through Partnership shows the way!

Joanna Strober, coauthor of Getting to 50/50 and CEO, Kurbo Health

Need more flexibility in your life? More support? More inspiration? The solution is simple: find a business partner! Polk and Chotas have written a thoughtful and practical guide to forming and sustaining a partnership. As someone with a longtime writing partner (my brother!), I found myself nodding a lot as I read.

Dan Heath, coauthor of the New York Times bestsellers Made to Stick, Switch, and Decisive

Business rhetoric is full of heroic soloistsbut the deeper truth is that no business succeeds alone. The great success stories derive speed, spread, and impact from partnerships and alliances. This book is a critical contribution to the business story of the century: the rise of female entrepreneurship.

Margaret Heffernan, author of Willful Blindness and A Bigger Prize

In the midst of the heated debate between the stay-at-homes and the frantic-jugglers, the resentful who had to stop and the resentful who wish they could, Power through Partnership shines a light on an exciting option for women everywhere. In this thoughtful and thorough examination of the benefits of partnership, Betsy Polk and Maggie Ellis Chotas provide us with a blueprint for leveraging what women do best: working together.

Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, coauthors of The Nanny Diaries and business partners for thirteen years

Power Through Partnership

HOW WOMEN LEAD BETTER TOGETHER

BETSY POLK AND MAGGIE ELLIS CHOTAS

Power Through Partnership

Copyright 2014 by Betsy Polk and Maggie Ellis Chotas
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First Edition
Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-62656-158-8
PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-62656-159-5
IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-62656-160-1

2014-2

Cover Designer: Irene Morris

Book Producer and Designer: Detta Penna

Copyeditor: Sandra Craig

Indexer: Rachel Rice

With love and immense gratitude to our families

Marc, Michael, and Annie Joseph

and

Harrell, Georgia, and Nicholas Chotas.

And to all the partners who so generously shared their stories.

I love this book. Really. And not just because Betsy Polk and Maggie Ellis Chotas say nice things about my article, Why Women Still Cant Have It All. But because they offer real, practical solutions to the dilemmas that face even the most ambitious and committed women among us. Indeed, our ambition and commitment both to what we do and the people we love are precisely what create so many competing demands on our time. In that context, many of us deflect or defer leadership positions at the top of big organizations, worrying that taking on responsibilities and duties to hundreds and thousands of people will tip the balance of our lives irrevocably and irremediably.

That is where partnership comes in. Listen to how Betsy and Maggie describe their own work. Looking around a caf one morning at both stay-at-home moms and career women heading off to their daily commute, they reflected, Our livesfilled with spouses, children and activitywere sane. We were leading the way we wanted to, on our own clocks, in cafes, at client sites, in our home offices, and even on trails, where we took long strategy talk walks together. Thanks to our work together, as two women who each understood where the other was coming from, we were happy.

That is a vision that women (and men) should relate and aspire to. Why shouldnt we lead the way we want to, making time for all the different parts of our lives and ourselves in ways that make us happier, healthier, and more productive? The trick, they say, is to find a partner, not only someone you can share burdens with and create the flexibility you so badly need, but also someone who will motivate you and hold you accountable.

I think the reason this book resonates so powerfully with me is that it taps the secret of much of my own success, certainly as a scholar. Early on, I found that if I took on a project with a co-author, I would not let that person down. I might have let myself down, deciding that obligations to committee work, teaching, or family were more important than scholarship. But I would never let down another person to whom I had made a commitment. So finding a partner was actually a way of making sure I did the things I knew I should really do for myself.

Partnership can be an important path to power for women. Read this book and take the plunge. You will be reinventing the work world and opening up to creating a whole new vista of opportunity for yourself along the way.