It's Always Personal

April 25, 2011
As former Worldwide Creative Director for Nickelodeon, Kreamer was familiar with the conventional wisdom that for women to succeed in the workplace they had to "act like men," which is to say quash emotion, develop "thicker" skin, be more aggressive, and certainly, absolutely, positively never cry (she didn't adhere to this wisdom when her boss, Sumner Redstone, screamed at her one day). But this conventional wisdom is not only antiquated, but, according to modern research, counterproductive; it ignores the strengths of men and women and leads to lower productivity. Emotional intelligence and rationality about emotion (contradictory as it may sound) are key to the modern workplace and actually play to the strengths of men and women. Kreamer's second book (after Going Gray: What I Learned About Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else that Really Matters) is thoughtful, well-researched, and arrives just as women are outnumbering men in the workplace for the first time. Kreamer makes a solid case for her philosophy in the most compelling way possible, by appealing to rationality and the bottom line, resulting in an extremely readable, well-reasoned volume that will leave readers with a heightened emotional intelligence of their own, more confidence and rationality about their emotions, and an ability to take that knowledge to the office.