Seducing the Boys Club: Uncensored Tactics from a Woman at the Top | 
| Author: Nina Disesa
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $14.05
You Save: $10.95 (44%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 13603
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 0345496981
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.409082
EAN: 9780345496980
ASIN: 0345496981
Publication Date: January 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Fact #1: Forty years after the feminist revolution, fewer than 2 percent of Fortune 1000 CEOs are women.
Fact #2: The playing field is not level.
Fact #3: You need to get over this.
From the woman who became chairman of the flagship office of the largest advertising agency network in the world comes a wry reality check on how to get ahead and thrive in the testosterone-driven business arena.
Nina DiSesa is a master communicator, a ceiling crasher, and one of the most successful women in the corporate world. She is also a big-time realist who has figured out that S&M–seduction and manipulation–is the secret to winning over (and surpassing) the big guys. In Seducing the Boys Club, DiSesa shows that you can, in fact, leave your male colleagues in the dust–but not by following the rules you learned in business school.
By playing the roles of den mother, fraternity brother, little sister, and hard-nosed boss, DiSesa navigated the choppy, macho-minded waters of the workplace. All the “bad boys” in her life–and there are many–have provided a wealth of devilishly amusing stories and cautionary tales that DiSesa is only too happy to pass on. Ah, revenge can be sweet, but the truth is that she came to love those boys as much as they love her–which is the whole point.
DiSesa asserts that women need to meld their feminine characteristics (nurturing, compassion, listening) with the traits of their male counterparts (competitiveness, decisiveness, combativeness) to expand their professional horizons. In Seducing the Boys Club, DiSesa shares her practical, outrageous, and even controversial maxims for making it, including:
• Learn to appreciate men. Men like women who like them.
• Remember that women are biologically wired to succeed.
• If you want to make a name for yourself, find a mess and fix it. A secure and comfortable job only holds you back.
• Don’t assume that men never listen. They listen like a dog does.
• Don’t be a quiet achiever.
• Act brave and you will look brave.
• Screw the rules. Make up your own.
Whether dead-on funny or deadly serious, DiSesa is always on her game, always on message, and absolutely on target as she arms women with the can-do confidence and no-compromises attitude they need to climb as high as their ambition can carry them–while keeping their standards impeccable and their integrity intact. Not for women only, this book should be read by men, too . . . though it won’t give them any defense against a woman who can truly seduce a boys club!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 A rare honest look at women and men in the workplace June 17, 2008
I know a lot of people love the title. To be honest, I was a little turned off by it - sounded manipulative. But I couldn't help falling in love with the book.
Nina shares a brazen, honest, politically incorrect look at what it was like for her moving up the ranks in the "boys club." I love that this is NOT about male bashing. There's really only one man in the whole book who she couldn't find a way to work with.
The stories are priceless, and the lessons should be mandatory for every woman in the workplace. I so wish I had read this book 15 years ago! (speaking of priceless - it was great fun to hear the origins of that famous ad campaign.)
The parts about where and when to use emotion are worth the price of the book.
I know Nina is in advertising, which isn't as stuffy as some other corporations, but I wish more women at the top shared such honest feedback about their rise to the top.
 Cracking the Testosterone Mystery April 22, 2008
Having grown up with three brothers, recollections of living with them came back to me as I read Nina DiSesa's book, Seducing the Boys Club: Uncensored Tactics from a Woman at the Top. At the beginning, I thought I was reading humor as she relates her childhood "...my long road to uncertainty started when I was twelve years old and lasted until the end of my thirtieth year, when I metamorphosed almost overnight from a shy and insecure loser to a first-rate conceited jerk." But once I realized that this humor helped her work effectively with the men in her organization, I began to pay closer attention.
Another source of my confusion with DiSesa's premise came from her assertion that breaking the plexiglas ceiling involves women becoming more seductive and manipulative. To me, that sounded unfair. But having proven herself after progressing from writing resort ads for the Catskills to becoming chairman of McCann Erickson New York, DiSesa makes her points with these sometimes humorous, sometimes insane, but effective strategies for working with men. Using many examples, she shows how she spent her creative energies figuring out the men in her office. She writes, "It's like solving a murder mystery. Collect the clues, lay them all out, and you will solve the puzzle."
Throughout the book, DiSesa shows how she struggled to be taken seriously by twenty and thirty-year-old employees. Once she used a high-powered water rifle to quell their inappropriate behavior. She reminded me of the time when my own children were teenagers and my daughter, annoyed by her brother's antics, asked whether sisters could divorce their brothers. But along with the humor, uncensored commentary, and good advice, DiSesa shows how her lessons helped change the climate of her highly-competitive workplace by identifying her masculine side in order to accomplish creative tasks, meet impossible deadlines, and gain the trust of her co-workers. And in the process, she helped her co-workers find their feminine side making the workplace more pleasant for everyone.
Usually, DiSesa relates solving a particular situation, showing what she did and summarizing the lesson learned, but she is so eager to get to the next topic that occasionally she fails to tie up the threads of the narrative. But this is a minor flaw and may have been intended to keep the reader engaged. This book can help women who study DiSesa's techniques overcome the roadblocks to success by providing a proven path to follow.
by Susan M. Andrus
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
Entertaining! April 11, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Nina makes a lot of good points, and in a very easy to read format! She uses her experiences aka learning lessons to explain her theories and I enjoyed her witty humor.
A view inside male culture April 5, 2008
This book does a great job explaining the male culture to women. This culture permeates locker room jokes, jockeying for position, the constant need for hierarchy. This book is one woman's view from the inside and it is great.
 Darn it...I lost my receipt! March 28, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I'm a female copywriter/sweatshop worker at an agency that's a veritable glue factory of old-school, three-legged creatives, still riding the wave of their last great commercial (produced in '82). Admittedly, I was filled with glee when I spotted this title at the bookstore (great title BTW)...and absolutely elated when I saw that it was written by the chair(wo)man of McCann Erickson. I bragged to my family and friends, who are well aware of (and sick of hearing about) my personal struggles with the Boy's Club, "Get this--I found this book yesterday that was literally written for me!"
I really, really, really wanted to like this book. But the reality is I couldn't finish it.
First of all, the majority of the author's struggle takes place when she's already "made it." Not when she's an underling, working under men who incessantly steal her ideas. I wanted to hear how she handled that, not how she honed her management skills. And with all the, "When I was at JWT...hee, hee, hee...oh I used to work with him at Y&R...yuck, yuck, yuck...I hear on a daily basis at work, I could have done without Nina's "shout outs" to Boy's Club cronies every other page. Boys she hated at first, but now loves (well, it was nice of them to write five-star book reviews on Amazon for her.)
Maybe I'm just bitter. I'll spare you the retort. I'm a bitter unsuccessful copywriter who writes long, boring reviews on Amazon. There you have it.
(But I still didn't like this book.)
Indeed, there are two kinds of copywriters. People who learned to write ads. And writers who work/ed in advertising. Nina Disea is the former. Augusten Burroughs is the latter. (Sorry to compare you to a man, but I know you can handle it).
I'm still going to try to get through this book. What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment.
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