Ilise Benun - Stop Pushing Me Around: A Workplace Guide for the Timid, Shy, And Less Assertive

This book is a masterpiece! I am going to make it required reading for everyone who works in my agency!

Eric Yaverbaum, best-selling author
Manager Partner of LIME
public relations and promotion

If you're easily tongue-tied or a verbal klutz, Ilise Benun's guide to asserting yourself at work helps with dozens of confidence-building tools. You'll especially appreciate the suggestions for what to say in specific situations.

Marcia Yudkin, author
6 Steps to Free Publicity

Ilise Benun's excellent new book is about shy people, but it's for everyone. If you're shy, Ilise Benun will help you have the maximum opportunity to be successfuland it won't hurt. If you're an employer, there's a good change you have some shy employees. Helping them is not only good business, it's the right thing to do. If you love a shy person, you've just found the next present you're going to give them.

Jim Blasingame, author Three Minutes to Success, and award-winning host of the Small Business Advocate Show

They say the world can be divided into extroverts and introverts. What Benun understands and conveys in both word and tone is that when it comes to effectively managing situations where our own ego is at risk, we could all use some help. Most importantly, in this wonderfully warm yet powerful guide, she provides real-world solutions we all can use effectively. She doesn't just identify the issues, she shows us what we can do about them.

Dave Opton, founder & CEO of ExecuNet, the original executive career management and recruiting network

Ilise Benun shows individuals how to recognize their value and be willing to stand up for itand claim the rewards and satisfaction that comes from being listened to and respected. Generations have grown up being told don't brag and go along with things. Relatively few have been told to respectand fight fortheir right to be heard. Our parents tell us to be compliant and behave, but bosses and clients reward those who can, non-abrasively, speak up and speak out. I can name 20 people who should get this book. More important, if I had this book 10 or 20 years ago, I would be happily retired and living on top of a Montana mountain or along the California coast!

Roger C. Parker, author Streetwise Relationship Marketing on the Internet and the best-selling Looking Good in Print

Copyright 2006 by Ilise Benun

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

STOP PUSHING ME AROUND!
EDITED AND TYPESET BY ASTRID DERIDDER
Cover design by Rob Johnson/Johnson Design
Printed in the U.S.A.

To order this title, please call toll-free 1-800-CAREER-1 (NJ and Canada: 201-848-0310) to order using VISA or MasterCard, or for further information on books from Career Press.

The Career Press, Inc., 220 West Parkway, Unit 12
Pompton Plains, NJ 07444
www.careerpress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Benun, Ilise, 1961

Stop pushing me around! : a workplace guide for the timid, shy, and less assertive / by Ilise Benun.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-56414-882-7

ISBN-10: 1-56414-882-3 (paper)

1. Psychology, Industrial. 2. Assertiveness (Psychology) 3. Interpersonal relations. 4. Business communication. I. Title.

HF5548.8.B378 2006

650.13--dc22

2006043908

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This book is the first physical evidence of a process that started long ago. I have been marinating these ideas for the past 20 years, well before I was even aware of it. None of them are mineI can only take credit for arranging them in this order.

I've tried to write a book about speaking up and reaching out, and in the process I have learned a lot. I have spoken up (sometimes forcing myself) and reached out to people around the world. I can barely keep track (so forgive any omissions) of all the friends, clients, and colleagues I relied on for feedback, and who generously took their time to work with me on these ideas: Alan Seiden, Doug Dolan, Colleen Cannon, Belinda Plutz, David Tornabene, Neil Tortorella, Beth Harrison, Alina Lee, Sheila Campbell, Jose Angel Santana, Lea Ann Hutter, Lauri Baram, Ivan Drucker, Patrick Malloy, Mario Sen and Tiffany, Kathleen Ogle, Donna Olah-Reiken, Mark Gerstmann, Stuart Cowan, and Carol Dilley. Many thanks also to Carol Dilley and John Casey. Many thanks to Jim Blasingame of the Small Business Advocate, who contributed ideas during our early morning radio conversations.

Those who were patient and helpful through the writing process include Marilyn Matos, Kathleen Harrington (and little Sammy, born just as I was finishing the writing), Susan Taylor, Khephra Burns, Linda Rothschild, Edward Hindin, Peleg Top, and Eric Yaverbaum.

I would also like to thank my clients, whose lives I learn from every day: Bob Bly, Debra Hamilton, Karen Zapp and John Withers, Mistina Bates, Carol Nadell, Kurt Krause, Janey Saavedra, Lloyd Dangle, Scott Souchock, Stephanie Aaron, Joan Damico, Peter Levinson, Louis Beauregard, Joanne Sullivan, Don Forschmidt, Celia Siegel, and Maryan Binkley.

I am also grateful to everyone who contributed their ideas on my blog, those who passed along information, and those who found books or pointed to articles. And all the writers whose works I read as part of my research: Dr. Susan Lipkins, Dave Opton, and Lauryn Franzoni at ExecuNet; David Reynolds; Gregg and Linda Krech at the To Do Institute; Steve Krug; and many more.

Thanks especially to Roger C. Parker, who planted the seed of this idea in my mind when he heard the title of my workshop at the AWAI Bootcamp, Interpersonal Skills for Introverts, and said, That needs to be a book.

Thanks also to all the folks at Career Press, for all their efforts to nurture that seed into this book, and especially my agent, Lynn Haller at Studio B, who played the role of shepherd.

And finally, this book wouldn't have been possible without the help of my teachers and colleagues at The Relationships Lab: Dr. Joseph Simo, Melodie Somers, Dennis Drew, John Lenzi, Amy Beer, Jeff Chancas, Loren Sherman, Ellen Coleman, Lisa Miller, Arthur Kilduff, Kim Knowlton, Caryn Browning, as well as my writing teachers, especially Philip Schultz and The Writer's Studio. Thank you all so much.

Like all of us, I am a work in progress. I am not the shy one who got over my fears and wrote to tell about it. Unfortunately, that's just not what happened.

I am neither the wallflower nor the master networker. Although I was pretty quiet as a kid, I'm not a naturally shy person. And yet, as with everyone, I have my shy moments when I don't know what to say, or suddenly feel afraid to make a phone call. I enjoy talking to people but sometimes, when an acquaintance gets on the bus, I bury my head in a newspaper for reasons I can't always explain.