Step Up: Confidence, success and your stellar career in 10 minutes a day

by Phanella Mayall Fine, Alice Olins

Perhaps you aspire to hold the top job? Or is it that you want to start your own business but struggle to make your voice heard in a sector dominated by men? Maybe the problem is that you are trudging slowly up the career ladder and want to learn how to ascend more quickly? And how do you actually do it all, without compromising your female values or abandoning your family? And where do you find the time? Step Up is the ultimate career self-help book for women. It blends kick-up-the-bum advice with 10-minute a day career workouts to help you build career success fast. Perhaps it’s networking? Or, maybe it’s learning how to utilise the influence of others? Read, rehearse and watch your career take off!

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

Published February 28, 2017

Reviews

[MxLakritz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought I could suspend disbelief to get down with the mode of gendering this book is based on, at least for the length of this one book. I was wrong. Is it really necessary to be stereotypically chatty to invoke experiences (some) women share as a group? My main issue with it were the myriad little ways in which the book (despite repeatedly claiming the opposite) seems to advocate a very particular femininity and makes far-reaching assumptions about what women who identify with such a femininity may want to have or be. It feels dated and problematic to appeal to professional women to embrace and capitalise on their highly privileged and heteronormative femininity to define and reach career goals. As a result, it reads as yet another attempt at diverting attention from structural inequalities at the workplace by placing the labour of mitigating against them on individual women and their career choices and coping strategies. Step up. Lean in. And so on.

What I did appreciate about the book are its efforts at staying conversational, the use of easily accessible examples, and that it provides small exercises to get readers into a habit of practising what the book preaches (even if I personally can't get behind what that is).

[Katharine · Rating 1 out of 5]

The endless references to unicorns and your "career unicorn" were simply too much for me in the end and I had to give up. I really wanted to like it but it just didn't work for me. It might not have helped that I have recently read Phoebe Lovatt's Working Women's Handbook and Otega Uwagba's Little Black Book, which were far superior. Even though both of those were targeting millennials, they spoke more to me and helped me more than this, which I assume is aimed more at women in their 30s and up.

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, despite other reviews being rather poor. I am 20 years old and just starting out in my career in law. This book has lots of great tips with things like confidence, networking and general career guidance. I enjoy the 10 minute activities and find myself coming back to refresh what I’ve read very often. Definitely recommend to people working in a similar area as I feel this book is really valuable! Worth the read

[Kimberley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was good, with an empowering tone, but much of what was said in the book has already been said many times before. I wish that there had been more focus on the exercises.

[Anna Cordes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book and read it at a time when I needed a bit of perspective and an uplift.

The fact it was written by two British authors and referenced business, cultural and political figures from the UK made it really relevant. A lot of these sorts of books come out of the US and, while useful, sometimes don’t reflect cultural differences between how the UK is different.

Would definitely recommend it to someone wanting to learn how to get a step up at work from a British perspective (although would encourage them to read it soon as some of the references will probably date!)

[Despoina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed the style of the authors and the tips and exercises. It doesn't introduce any novelties in the self-motivation bookscape, but you don't need to read it all in one sitting. It works well if you prefer to look through into one topic and then, another completely unrelated in a few month time. I also quite enjoyed the snippets from surveys, journal articles, and successful entrepreneurs.