Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Earning It
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.joannlublin.com/
CITY: Ridgewood
STATE: NJ
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannlublin
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2016138605
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2016138605
HEADING: Lublin, Joann S.
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373 __ |a Wall Street Journal (Firm) |2 naf
374 __ |a Authors |a Editors |2 lcsh
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377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a Lublin, Joann S. Earning it, 2016: |b title page (Joann S. Lublin) jacket flap (Joann S. Lublin is management news editor for the Wall Street Journal and works with reporters in the U.S. and abroad; bechelor’s degree in journalism with honors from Northwestern University; master’s degree in communication from Standford University; lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey.)
PERSONAL
Children: daughter.
EDUCATION:Northwestern University, B.A.; Stanford University, M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Wall Street Journal, reporter in San Francisco, CA, 1971-73, in Chicago, IL, 1973-79, in Washington, DC, 1979-87, news editor, London, England, 1987-88, deputy bureau chief, London, England, 1988-90, special senior writer, New York, NY, 1990-92, deputy management news editor, 1992-2000, career news editor, 2000-02, management news editor, 2002–.
MEMBER:Society of Professional Journalists.
AWARDS:Distinguished contribution award, National Media Awards Program, American Psychological Foundation, 1979; Front Page Award, Newswomen’s Club of New York, 2002, for story “Uneasy Money–What’s Wrong? Deadbeat CEOs Plague Firms as Economy and Markets Roil”; PRO Award, International Association of Corporate and Professional Recruitment, 2002; Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting (shared), 2003. Also received awards from San Francisco Press Club and National Society for Medical Research.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Atlantic, California Living, Columbia Journalism Review, Family Health, Juris Doctor, Ms., and Seventeen.
SIDELIGHTS
Joann S. Lublin serves as management news editor for the Wall Street Journal. She has been part of the Journal’s staff since the early 1970s and has worked her way up to become one of the world-renowned newspaper’s top editors. “She works with reporters in the U.S. and abroad to conceptualize and organize coverage of management and workplace issues,” explained the contributor of a biographical blurb to the Wall Street Journal Online. “She covers issues such as corporate governance, executive compensation, recruiting and succession and writes stories on these topics, mainly for the Journal’s front page and Business and Finance section.” In 2003, shortly after assuming the reins as management news editor, she shared a Pulitzer Prize for a story on deadbeat chief executive officers (CEOs). Her first book, which examines the careers of some of the best female CEOs, is Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World.
Lublin could be considered one of those trailblazing women herself; she was one of the first female summer interns at the Wall Street Journal back in 1969. Over the next four decades Lublin advanced in her own career, as other women did in theirs. The impetus for beginning to write, Lublin told Michel Martin in an interview aired on National Public Radio’s (NPR) All Things Considered, “grew out of a first-person essay that I wrote for a Wall Street Journal [Web log] back in 2008. And the essay was entitled `Remember the Barriers.’ And I wrote this essay in order to essentially educate my then twenty-something daughter who was entering the workforce about what it had been like to be a journalist in the early 1970s and what were some of the experiences I had related to my gender.” The process, the author continued, “got me thinking that … there [must be some] high-ranking executive women who’d gotten much further in their careers than I had.” When Lublin investigated, she found that “a number of these women had very similar leadership traits. And at the same time, they were very persistent about trying to get to a goal especially early in their careers where, for many of these women, doors got slammed in their faces. They had high-level college degrees, college educations, and weren’t able to get high-paying or meaningful jobs.”
Earning It shows how, through a combination of hard work and innovative thinking, successful women have begun to change the male-dominated world of the corporate executive. “Lublin’s book works to depict the challenges women faced in the past as well as currently face in the workforce,” stated Gillian Hixson in the Villanovan. “She preaches the need for an `inclusive culture.’ Her book offers several concrete lessons for budding businesswomen through the presentation of interviews and experiences of high-ranking female corporate executives who overcame obstacles in their climb to the top.” Earning It also deals with the question of “work-life balance,” declared Booklist reviewer Jennifer Adams, “and these current lessons give a fresh perspective on how women continue to change the workforce.” “These women all got to the top using their brains, guts, and creativity,” explained Susan Hurst in Library Journal; Lublin’s book offers readers the chance “to learn from their successes.” “Readers looking for stories from women who have succeeded in spite of sexism,” observed a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “will find a plethora here.” “This is a very engaging work of journalism, rich with anecdotes,” concluded George Anders, writing on Forbes.com. “In its totality, though, the book is something bigger. It’s a work of history, reminding us how far we’ve come in the past forty years, and how much more work is left to be done.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 1, 2016, Jennifer Adams, review of Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World, p. 14.
Library Journal, September 1, 2016, Susan Hurst, review of Earning It, p. 118.
Publishers Weekly, June 27, 2016, review of Earning It, p. 70.
Success, October, 2016, review of Earning It, p. 83.
ONLINE
All Things Considered, http://www.npr.org/ (December 18, 2016), Michel Martin, “Female CEOs Describe Tough Road to the Top in `Earning It.’”
Forbes.com, https://www.forbes.com/ (September 15, 2016), George Anders, “She’s in Charge, He’s on Edge; New Book Surveys the Scene.”
HarperCollins, https://www.harpercollins.com/ (March 27, 2017), review of Earning It.
Joann Lublin Home Page, https://www.joannlublin.com (March 27, 2017), author profile.
Villanovan, http://www.villanovan.com/ (February 21, 2017), Gillian Hixson, “Joann S. Lublin Empowers Women in Business.”
Wall Street Journal Online, http://topics.wsj.com/ (March 27, 2017), author profile.
Joann S. Lublin is management news editor for The Wall Street Journal. She works with reporters in the U.S. and abroad to conceptualize and organize coverage of management and workplace issues. She covers issues such as corporate governance, executive compensation, recruiting and succession and writes stories on these topics, mainly for the Journal’s front page and Marketplace section. She assumed her duties in December 2002.
Ms. Lublin is the author of a new book called "Earning it: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World.'' It describes leadership lessons from 52 high-level female corporate executives, based on career obstacles they overcame. Nearly two-thirds of the women interviewed are experienced public company CEOs.
Ms. Lublin long served as contributing editor of the Journal's annual special section on executive pay and still helps coordinate coverage of its yearly CEO pay survey. She previously oversaw the weekly Career Journal pages and was responsible for career coverage.
Joann S. Lublin
Management News Editor, The Wall Street Journal
Joann S. Lublin is management news editor for The Wall Street Journal. She works with reporters in the U.S. and abroad to conceptualize and organize coverage of management and workplace issues. She covers issues such as corporate governance, executive compensation, recruiting and succession and writes stories on these topics, mainly for the Journal’s front page and Business and Finance section. She assumed her duties in December 2002.
Ms. Lublin is the author of a 2016 book entitled "Earning it: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World.'' It describes leadership lessons from 52 high-level female corporate executives, based on career obstacles they overcame. Nearly two-thirds of the women interviewed are experienced public company CEOs.
Ms. Lublin long served as contributing editor of the Journal's annual special section on executive pay and still helps coordinate coverage of its yearly CEO pay survey. She previously was responsible for career coverage and oversaw weekly Career Journal pages.
In July 1971, Ms. Lublin joined the Journal as a reporter in San Francisco and transferred to Chicago in September 1973. She moved to Washington in April 1979, where she covered labor issues, housing and urban affairs and other beats. Named news editor of the Journal's London bureau in January 1987, she became its deputy bureau chief in 1988.
She transferred to New York in August 1990 as a senior special writer covering management. In August 1992, she became deputy management editor. In July 1993, she created the Journal’s “Managing Your Career” column. Between August 1992 and November 1995, she also helped edit enterprise articles and oversaw small-business coverage.
In September 1998, Ms. Lublin helped initiate the Journal's Your Career Matters page, later renamed Career Journal. She resumed writing the “Managing Your Career” column in April 2000 and became career news editor in July 2000. Her current advice column, called “Your Executive Career,” launched in August 2010 and appears every month.
In 2003, Ms. Lublin was a member of a Journal team awarded the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting for a series of stories that exposed corporate scandals, bringing them to life in compelling narratives.
In 2002, she received a Newswomen’s Club of New York Front Page Award in the general business category for her front-page story, “Uneasy Money – What’s Wrong? Deadbeat CEOs Plague Firms As Economy and Markets Roil.” That same year, she received the PRO Award from the International Association of Corporate and Professional Recruitment in recognition of her distinguished journalism career and consistent and significant contribution to the understanding of human-resources issues through her reporting on management issues.
In 1979, she received a distinguished contribution award in the American Psychological Foundation's National Media Awards Program. The San Francisco Press Club and the National Society for Medical Research have also honored her journalistic work.
Ms. Lublin frequently appears on TV and at conferences to discuss leadership, executive pay and corporate governance.
Her freelance articles have appeared in The Atlantic, Columbia Journalism Review, Ms., Juris Doctor, Family Health, Seventeen and California Living magazines. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
A native of Dayton, Ohio, Ms. Lublin earned a bachelor's degree in journalism with honors, from Northwestern University. She received a master's degree in communications from Stanford University.?
Joann S. Lublin is management news editor for The Wall Street Journal and works with reporters in the U.S. and abroad. She frequently appears at conferences to discuss leadership, executive pay and corporate governance. She created The Journal’s first career advice column in 1993. She shared its Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for stories about corporate scandals. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism with honors from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in communications from Stanford University. She lives in Ridgewood, N.J.
Joann S. Lublin empowers women in business
By Gillian HixsonOn February 21, 2017
On Jan. 15, the Villanova Women’s Professional Network hosted Joann S. Lublin of the Wall Street Journal. Lublin, a Management News Editor for WSJ, presented on her recent book, “Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World.” Lublin’s book works to depict the challenges women faced in the past as well as currently face in the workforce. She preached the need for an “inclusive culture.” Her book offers several concrete lessons for budding businesswomen through the presentation of interviews and experiences of high-ranking female corporate executives who overcame obstacles in their climb to the top. It is through, “overcoming obstacles [that] makes you a better leader,” Lublin said.
Lublin first offered her own story and what brought her to write “Earning It.” The first woman reporter hired for the San Francisco bureau of the Wall Street Journal in 1971, Lublin entered the office on her first day to find pin-up calendars featuring barely clothed, objectified women in several of her male co-worker’s desks. In response, Lublin came in the next day with a pin-up calendar of her own featuring nude men. However, Lublin’s calendar disappeared mysteriously within 24 hours.
She continued to describe how part of her job required her to cover events at business clubs in the area, but since women were not allowed in such clubs—a blatant example of the barriers women faced trying to break into the business world—she had to enter such clubs through the back, the entrance the kitchen staff used.
A career columnist and lifetime employee for the Wall Street Journal, Lublin decided to turn her experiences and connections into a book. In 2008, she wrote a first-person article entitled “Remember the Barriers” for the WSJ blog, “Journal Women.” In this article, which Lublin explained was written to her daughter, poised to enter into the workforce at the time, she describes the workforce as an imperfect world for women, writing, “There’s a heap of hand- wringing these days over signs that women’s progress in the U.S. workplace has stalled or even regressed.” Even today, Lublin’s musings still ring true, and it was this article that led her to begin crafting “Earning It.”
In her presentation, Lublin explained how each chapter in her book has multiple interviews from many different executives, along with about half a dozen leadership lessons. During her presentation, Lublin name-dropped a few of her interviewees, such as Cathie Black, Kathleen Ligocki and Gracia Martore. All three women have impressive resumes and experience, and each, with Lublin’s help, offers a specific lesson.
Cathie urges women to recognize their value and make it visible and teaches the necessity to exert inherent clout when negotiating pay. Kathleen advises women on the importance of resorting to humor rather than anger when defecting stereotypes. Gracia Martore demonstrates how to become a “value-change agent” by leaving one’s comfort zone to develop what Lublin labels “leadership muscles.”
Lublin’s presentation gave real life instances of terms we hear every day: pay disparity, diversity hires, double duty and maternity leave. She also gave faces, and thus credibility, to some shocking statistics: U.S. women will not achieve pay equality until 2058, according to a 2015 study. Women accumulate around $500,000 in losses due to a lifetime of pay disparity and earn $.97 for every $1 men earn. These statistics are real. And if you don’t believe it, maybe you should pick up a copy of Lublin’s book and read about it for yourself.
Earning it: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at
the Top of the Business World
Success.
(Oct. 2016): p83.
COPYRIGHT 2016 R & L Publishing, Ltd. (dba SUCCESS Media)
http://www.successmagazine.com/
Full Text:
EARNING IT
Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World
By Joann S. Lublin
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Only 4.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, and Joann S. Lublin, management news editor for The Wall Street Journal, includes many of
them, as well as other female business leaders, in this book. Most were "firsts," just as Lublin, in 1969, became the first female summer intern at
WSJ's Washington bureau. "They dismantled the old boys club, destroyed myths about the capabilities of female leaders and continue to serve as
role models." Lessons are to be learned, but Lublin, a first-rate writer, makes the stories of this "unique elite" a pleasure to read.
(October; HarperBusiness; $28)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Earning it: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World." Success, Oct. 2016, p. 83. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA464162024&it=r&asid=ad851e4edb0fab1f63c687593d327156. Accessed 6 Mar.
2017.
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Lublin, Joann S.: Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from
Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World
Susan Hurst
Library Journal.
141.14 (Sept. 1, 2016): p118.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Lublin, Joann S. Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World. Harper Business. Oct. 2016.304p.
notes. bibliog. index. ISBN 9780062407474. $27.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062407481. BUS
Women are still vastly underrepresented in the senior executives' C-suite, but there are more of them now than there used to be. Here, Wall Street
Journal journalist and editor Lublin interviews 52 female executives, including 34 current or former public company CEOs--for example, Mary
Barra (General Motors), Carly Fiorina (Hewlett-Packard), Meg Whitman (Hewlett-Packard), and Irene Rosenfeld (Mondelez International).
Throughout, the author includes her own experiences as well. Organized along tried-and-true themes, including starting out, pay inequity,
parenthood, coordinating spousal careers, mentoring, managerial skills, and boardroom bias, chapters are written in an easy-to-read
conversational style, each primarily focusing on key moments in relevant participants' careers and ending with a brief section summing up lessons
learned. A complete list of the interviewees is included, as well as chapter endnotes with cited references, and a brief bibliography. These women
all got to the top using their brains, guts, and creativity; this is an easy and informative way to learn from their successes (and occasional
mistakes). VERDICT Recommended for public libraries and business and women's studies collections.--Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford,
OH
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hurst, Susan. "Lublin, Joann S.: Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World." Library Journal, 1
Sept. 2016, p. 118+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA462044929&it=r&asid=e545ad35bfa1dbef73d6a329712a74a9. Accessed 6 Mar.
2017.
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Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at
the Top of the Business World
Jennifer Adams
Booklist.
113.1 (Sept. 1, 2016): p14.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World. By Joann S. Lublin. Oct. 2016. 304p. HarperBusiness,
$27.99 (9780062407474). 650.
With a successful career under her belt and struggles along the way, Lublin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and management news editor for
the Wall Street Journal, offers fresh insights into women in the workforce. Inspired by her daughter entering the business world, she created this
guide by interviewing more than 50 of today's female leaders, including Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, and Brenda Barnes, former CEO of
Sara Lee. Her research covers a gamut of industries, ranging from banking and finance to automotive and retail. Realities like promotion, pay, and
working with and managing men are punctuated by real-life experiences from female industry leaders. Along with these, she offers practical
ideas, such as "Bloom where you are planted," meaning take an opportunity and run with it, even if it is over your head. Lublin doesn't shy away
from failure, and she shares several examples where women leaders quit or were fired and how using that experience help propel them into
successful careers at other companies. The book touches on work-life balance, and these current lessons give a fresh perspective on how women
continue to change the workforce and prove their mettle in the business world. --Jennifer Adams
Adams, Jennifer
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Adams, Jennifer. "Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World." Booklist, 1 Sept. 2016, p. 14.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463754973&it=r&asid=02e25b3a61c3442b04b4207a17ae5006. Accessed 6 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463754973
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Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at
the Top of the Business World
Publishers Weekly.
263.26 (June 27, 2016): p70.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the
Business World
Joann S. Lublin. Harper Business, $27.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-240747-4
As the Wall Street Journal's management news editor, Lublin has been in the trenches of a male-dominated business world; here she conducts 52
entertaining, if familiar, interviews with successful women about their own experiences in this biased environment. Lublin was the first female
summer intern for the Journal's Washington, D.C., bureau and was in for a rude awakening when her boss walked her out on her last day--and
kissed her on the lips. Other indignities followed: for instance, when covering events at private business clubs that barred women, she was forced
to use a special door in the back of the building. The women interviewed here, many of whom report similar obstacles, come across as trailblazers
who have showed great courage in the face of great odds. Their stories cover pushing for top roles, being in the right place at the right time,
handling sexual harassment, righting pay disparity, taking risks, managing men, and deputizing male champions. There are few revelations, but
readers looking for stories from women who have succeeded in spite of sexism will find a plethora here. Agent: Karen Gantz, Karen Gantz Zahler
Literary Management. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World." Publishers Weekly, 27 June 2016, p. 70. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA456900932&it=r&asid=b234d1d5f00586b8f179ebb5732012bc. Accessed 6 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A456900932
Female CEOs Describe Tough Road To The Top In 'Earning It'
December 18, 20164:59 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Veteran journalist Joann Lublin discusses her book, Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World. Lublin interviewed 52 female corporate leaders.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We want to dig into one aspect of the American dream - for some climbing to the top rungs of the corporate ladder. And we're talking about women now. For some, Hillary Clinton's failed bid for the presidency was just the latest and most visible setback for a woman seeking a top job, but it could be seen as business as usual for women fighting to get to the top in the corporate world with a path to the executive office has rarely been a smooth upward arc.
But what is that path even if it twists and turns? That's what veteran business writer Joann Lublin tried to find out. In her book "Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons From Trailblazing Women At The Top Of The Business World," Joann Lublin interviewed 52 female corporate leaders, many at publicly traded companies. And we need to let you know that some of the things we're going to be talking about might surprise you such as fending off sexual assault.
Joann Lublin is a trailblazer herself as one of the first women to break into management at the Wall Street Journal. She spent much of her career writing about workplace issues. She's management news editor now. I started our conversation by asking her why this book and why now?
JOANN LUBLIN: The book grew out of a first-person essay that I wrote for a Wall Street Journal blog back in 2008. And the essay was entitled Remember the Barriers. And I wrote this essay in order to essentially educate my then 20-something daughter who was entering the workforce about what it had been like to be a journalist in the early 1970s and what were some of the experiences I had related to my gender.
I got so much reaction in terms of email to that essay, it just got me thinking that I bet there are high-ranking executive women who'd gotten much further in their careers than I had who had also overcome obstacles of one kind or another in their careers and had become better leaders for it. So that was the genesis for the book.
MARTIN: Were there some common threads that stood out for you?
LUBLIN: For one thing, it seemed that a number of these women had very similar leadership traits. And at the same time, they were very persistent about trying to get to a goal especially early in their careers where, for many of these women, doors got slammed in their faces. They had high-level college degrees, college educations and weren't able to get high-paying or meaningful jobs.
But very rarely did they give up and, obviously, this is a pretty select group of the women who agreed to talk to me. I got turned down by some women, as well. Some cases - current chief executives were too busy - very understandable. In other cases, high-level executive women don't want to be pigeonholed. They want to be treated as an executive full stop. Forget the gender thing.
MARTIN: So they don't want to be in a book that talks about the experiences particularly of women? That's interesting.
LUBLIN: Exactly.
MARTIN: You talk about all kinds of issues in the book and I want to be clear on that. But there are a number of examples where women experience some pretty gross sexual misconduct. In one high-profile example, you describe how Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, had her reputation trashed early in her career by a colleague who...
LUBLIN: Basically tried to get him - her to go to bed with him.
MARTIN: Yeah.
LUBLIN: She refused and when she arrived at the office the next day where he worked, he had spread the rumor - the false rumor - that she had slept with him the night before.
MARTIN: What did she do when this happened?
LUBLIN: Well, she clearly was at a disadvantage. This man who had propositioned her, whom she had rejected was higher up in the food chain than she was. When she got to that office the next day and heard that he had spread the story that they had had sex together the night before, she went to another male colleague in that office who, again, was higher up in the corporate hierarchy than her and basically told him the truth and explained why this was a lie.
But she didn't stop there. OK? She at that time was bidding on a major federal agency contract in which the man who had propositioned her would have ordinarily been part of the team. She just made it her business to exclude him from the project.
MARTIN: But along the lines of issues that are specific to people because of their gender, you talk about the case of the advertising executive Charlotte Beers who talks about being physically assaulted by a client that she had just nabbed for her advertising agency. And in that story, he gets her into a darkened room and literally kind of jumps on her. She's able to fight him off. In addressing this, what she does is she works out a deal to get the assaulter off the project, and she keeps the deal for her company through her tough bargaining.
LUBLIN: By assigning the client to a guy.
MARTIN: By assigning the client to a guy. I talked about this with a number of women in my office and many of them felt is that really the right solution in this day and age? I mean, shouldn't she have pressed charges or why should she have assigned that deal to a guy? I mean, that sort of thing. I guess what the question is does this advice still hold up?
LUBLIN: I think this advice holds up very loud and clear in 2016. In her case, this was a relatively small ad agency. This company represented one of their biggest clients. There is a much more recent example in the book in which one of the female CEOs a couple of years ago is approached by one of her young female staffers who says that basically she's being stalked - you know, not physically, but by email and text and whatnot - by one of their major clients who's demanding that she go out with him. And she doesn't want to go out with him.
But yet, she doesn't want to jeopardize this client because this is a startup. They need every major corporate client that they can get. And what her counsel was to this 20-something staffer was aren't you already involved romantically with someone else? And she said yes. She said just go back to this client and say I'm sorry but I'm already involved with someone else, and if that doesn't work, I will personally get involved. Well, it did work.
MARTIN: OK. But the point here I think for other people would be that, first of all, what if this person who physically assaulted Charlotte Beers goes on to assault someone else? And why is it that this woman's desire not to be involved with this client is contingent upon her being involved with someone else?
There was a very recent case of this, I will say, at Fox News where if the allegations are to be believed then, evidently, there was enough credibility to warrant a very large monetary settlement to one complaint and in particular this was standard operating practice for some of the young professionals there. And a lot of people would say why should their relationships be relevant to whether they are pressed into unwanted relationships or not?
LUBLIN: And I think the larger question from that situation is why did so many women at Fox tolerate this horrible behavior if true for so many years without saying anything, without speaking up, without pressing charges, without filing a lawsuit? It's for the same reason that, you know, many women do not do so. They fear being branded a complainer, a whistleblower, and they worry about the employment consequences. And the larger question is, you know, when does this become the responsibility of men and women alike and the onus isn't entirely on women?
MARTIN: And so what - I think what you're saying is that for now maybe it's not fair, but that's common sense. And this is what you have to do.
LUBLIN: I say that because we're not yet at that ideal world. I think we're going to get there in your and my lifetimes, at least in this country. I'm not sure women in certain other countries and certain other cultures will see that era come when the onus is not entirely on women.
MARTIN: That's Joann Lublin. She's the author of "Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons From Trailblazing Women At The Top Of The Business World." She was kind enough to join us from our bureau in New York. Joann, thanks so much for joining us.
LUBLIN: And thank you for having me, Michel.
Sep 15, 2016 @ 01:48 AM 1,373 views
She's In Charge, He's On Edge; New Book Surveys The Scene
George Anders ,
Contributor
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Sports columnist Tom Boswell once declared that all sportswriters fit into one of four categories. Some writers are liked by athletes; others are despised; still others are feared, and a few are respected. It's the same story on the business beat, especially when it comes to the interplay between journalists and chief executives.
If anyone has earned her way into the zone of universal respect, it's The Wall Street Journal's Joann Lublin. Our paths crossed occasionally at the WSJ in the 1990s, when I worked there. I can't remember ever having a long chat or a social meal with her -- but I do remember her impact on CEOs or executive recruiters, as discovered during later reporting projects of my own.
All the big bosses were awestruck. Powerful executives who expected to steer a conversation to their advantage discovered that when they got on the phone with her, everything was different. She set the agenda. She did it quickly and courteously. But if she wanted a particular fact, it was going to be extracted. Nothing stayed secret.
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Now Joann Lublin has written a book: Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World. It's told largely through the eyes of 52 executives, including Ann Moore, former CEO of Time Inc., Clara Shih, CEO of Hearsay Social, and Dawn Lepore, former CEO of Drugstore.com. Individual chapters focus on prominent topics such as the good and bad of male mentors, the challenges of two-career couples, and the struggles for equal pay at all levels of an organization.
Joann Lublin briefly appears as a character in her own book, and the inclusion is wise. She's secure enough in her own career to tell some funny -- and awkward -- stories about how The Wall Street Journal regarded its own female staffers early in her career. She also writes with great understanding of her subjects' pride in making a positive impact as a leader and their determination to push past obstacles of all kinds.
The chapter on "Managing Men Well" is packed with accounts of how female executives dealt with male colleagues who cursed them in public; broke down in tears or mistook a female executive for support staff. Yet Lublin's advice at the end is surprisingly conciliatory: "Help the men that you supervise to succeed, and they will root for your success in return."
Taken one chapter at a time, this is a very engaging work of journalism, rich with anecdotes that will enjoy many repeat appearances on the lecture circuit. In its totality, though, the book is something bigger. It's a work of history, reminding us how far we've come in the past 40 years, and how much more work is left to be done.