Reach ─ A New Strategy to Help You Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge, and Build Confidence

Do you feel comfortable delivering bad news? Do you look forward to speaking in public? Do you enjoy networking? Is it easy for you to speak your mind and be assertive with friends and colleagues? If you answered no to any of these questions, this book can help!

What often sets successful people apart is their willingness to do things most of us fear. What’s more, we have the false notion that successful people like to do these things, when the truth is that successful people have simply found their own way to do them.

According to Andy Molinsky, an expert on behavior in the business world, there are five key challenges underlying our avoidance tendencies: authenticity, competence, resentment, likability, and morality. Does the new behavior you’re attempting feel authentic to you? Is it the right thing to do? Answering these questions will help identify the “gap” in our behavioral style that we can then bridge by using the three C’s: Clarity, Conviction, and Customization. Perhaps most interesting, Molinsky has discovered that many people who confront what they were avoiding come to realize that they actually enjoy it, and can even be good at it.

Short, prescriptive, and based not only on the author’s groundbreaking research but on his own quest to get out of his comfort zone, Reach will help you take the thing you are most afraid of doing and make it a proud part of your personal repertoire.

Andy Molinsky is a professor of organizational behavior at Brandeis University’s International Business School, specializing in behavior change and cross-cultural interaction in business settings. He holds a B.A. in international relations, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Brown University; an M.A. in international business from Columbia University; and an M.A. in psychology and a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Harvard University. Molinsky regularly writes for the Harvard Business Review, and his work has been featured in The Economist, Fast Company, Fortune, Financial Times, The Boston Globe, NPR, and the Voice of America. His first book, Global Dexterity (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), received the Axiom Award (Silver Medal) for Best Business Book in International Business & Globalization and has been used widely in organizations around the world, including Boeing, AIG, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and the Clinton Foundation, among others. He speaks regularly to a wide range of professional audiences.