Written By: Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster
Publisher: McGraw-Hill

From the Press Release
Book Description:

A woman's guide to the new frontier of professional development-making the best of the worst situations with other women in the workplace.

More than ninety percent of women of different social strata claim that envy and jealousy toward other women colors their lives. Ninety percent of women in diverse jobs also report that competition in the workplace is primarily between other women, rather than between women and men. With women comprising over fifty percent of the workforce, a new dynamic has emerged.  Women find themselves working with each other in large numbers on all levels of the corporate structure for the first time.  While one would think this would create harmony and a supportive workplace atmosphere, it often fosters power struggles. 

Enter Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster. In their previous books, Working for You Isn't Working for Me and Working with You is Killing Me, these bestselling authors came to the rescue, offering solutions for anyone trapped in energy-zapping relationships with coworkers, bosses, or subordinates. With Mean Girls at Work: How to Stay Professional When Things Get Personal, they approach yet another significant challenge head-on: covert competition between women at work.  

Women-to-women relationships are naturally intense. When they are good they're very good, when they're bad, they can be horrible. The challenge for today's professional woman is to develop skills and strategies that enable her to thrive  in the workplace - even among covertly competitive colleagues. Unfortunately, so many women today get caught in the "one has to lose so one can win" game. Crowley and Elster prove that success is about achieving results, rather than winning power struggles.

Crowley and Elster give women the knowledge, strength, and skills to navigate rough waters, discussing solutions to scenarios in which a female colleague might:

• Exclude you from important emails;
• Gossip about anyone and everyone;
• Make you look bad by failing to meet deadlines;
• Need too much personal attention;
• Communicate in an unprofessional manner-or maybe choose not to interact with you at all.

Mean Girls at Work offers 70 distinct scenarios ranging from a colleague excluding you from a meeting to coworkers spreading lies about you.  Each scenario describes a behavior, how the recipient of this conduct might feel, what she'll be tempted to do in reaction (but shouldn't!), and what she needs to do to stay professional and manage the situation. Their three steps (Don't Go There, Go Here, and Going Forward), will empower women to support each other in succeeding at work and help them to troubleshoot any stressful situation involving a female boss, colleague, employee or client.

You don't have to suffer in silence when you're involved in a complicated work battle. Mean Girls at Work will inspire you to gain a greater understanding of how to transform a negative relationship into a positive one.

About the Authors:
Katherine Crowley, a Harvard trained psychotherapist, and Kathi Elster, a management consultant and executive coach, create the yin and yang of their company, K Squared Enterprises. Since 1989, they've combined their complementary expertise to develop a unique method for dealing with difficult people and challenging conditions at work.  Their inside-out approach transforms the way businesses uncover and resolve their greatest interpersonal dilemmas.

Bestselling authors, educators, public speakers, executive coaches, and veteran consultants, Katherine and Kathi are seasoned guides in the area of professional fulfillment through self-awareness and self-management.

Purchase: Mean Girls at Work: How to Stay Professional When Things Get Personal