Keeping Your Career on Track

Career derailment, found at all organizational levels in the workplace, is under-documented. Most books examining how careers go off track deal with abstract concepts and focus only on top executives. This book defines 99 potentially career-ending pitfalls, illustrated with real-world examples, and offers specific advice to employees at all levels in business, nonprofit, military, government and other organizations.

Topics include the consequences of power and pleasing, the illusion of immunity, meeting behavior, corrective feedback, ineffective image, nonverbal behavior, self-serving analysis and the perception of management as a science. Perspectives are provided on avoiding the indirect hazards of working with superiors or subordinates who may be on the path to derailment. A reader self-assessment is included.

David Noer is an honorary senior fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership and professor emeritus at Elon University. He has written a wide range of articles, seven books, numerous book chapters and leadership research studies. He is the former editor of the Organization Development Practitioner and member of the Organization Development Board of Directors. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.

by David Noer

Format: softcover (6×9)
Pages: 212
Bibliographic Info: appendices, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2017
pISBN: 978-1-4766-6448-4
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2413-6
Imprint: McFarland

Preface 1
Part I: Self-Sabotage 7
1. Derailment by Zipper 8
2. Derailment by Suicidal Meeting Behavior 16
3. Derailment by Political Quicksand 21
Part II: Insight Deficits 31
4. Derailment by Feedback Immunity 32
5. Derailment by Image Mismanagement 41
6. Derailment by Communication Constipation 48
Part III: Faulty Behavioral Wiring 57
7. Derailment by Big Feet 58
8. Derailment by a Big Heart 68
9. Derailment by a Big Head 75
Part IV: Incompatible Needs 83
10. Derailment by the Need to Be Right 84
11. Derailment by the Need to Be Nasty 92
12. Derailment by the Need to Be Busy 100
Part V: Warped Perceptions 109
13. Derailment by Gunnysack 110
14. Derailment by Fantasy 117
15. Derailment by ­Cross-Cultural Blindness 125
Part VI: Misdirected Loyalties 135
16. Derailment by Functional Fixedness 136
17. Derailment by Diversity Adversity 144
18. Derailment by ­Sub-Unit Arrogance 152
Part VII: Dysfunctional Traits 161
19. Derailment by Charisma 162
20. Derailment by Irrelevance 171
21. Derailment by Avoidance 179
Appendix A: The Derailment Risk Assessment Inventory 187
Appendix B: The 21 Derailment Risk Categories 193
Appendix C: The 99 Derailment Hazards 196
References 199
Index 203

“offers a significant number of ways in which to avoid career derailment at all levels of an organization. In concise, well-organized sections”–ARBA

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