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Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage

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Description

Laura Huang, an award-winning Harvard Business School professor, shows that success is about gaining an edge: that elusive quality that gives you an upper hand and attracts attention and support. Some people seem to naturally have it. Now, Huang teaches the rest of us how to create our own from the challenges and biases we think hold us back, and turning them to work in our favor. How do you find a competitive edge when the obstacles feel insurmountable? How do you get people to take you seriously when they're predisposed not to, and perhaps have already written you off? In Edge, Huang draws from her groundbreaking research on entrepreneurial intuition, persuasion, and implicit decision-making, to impart her profound findings and share stories of previously-overlooked Olympians, assistants-turned- executives, and flailing companies that made momentous turnarounds. She argues that success is rarely just about the quality of our ideas, credentials, and skills, or our effort. Instead, achieving success hinges on how well we shape others' perceptions—of our strengths, certainly, but also our flaws. It's about creating our own edge by confronting the factors that seem like shortcomings and turning them into assets that make others take notice. Edge shows that success is about knowing who you are and using that knowledge unapologetically and strategically. This book will teach you how to find your unique edge and keep it sharp. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Portfolio


Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 28, 2020


Edition ‏ : ‎ Illustrated


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Print length ‏ : ‎ 272 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0525540814


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 16


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.72 x 0.96 x 8.51 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #347,564 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #760 in Motivational Management & Leadership #926 in Business Motivation & Self-Improvement (Books) #2,032 in Success Self-Help


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Top Amazon Reviews


  • How to turn harmful preconceptions into your edge
Many people are writing about implicit bias in the world and in the workplace these days. Unfortunately, most of the stuff that I’ve read is either shrill or impractical or both. Laura Huang’s book, Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage, is both reasoned and practical. Dr. Huang draws on her personal experience and professional research to tell you how to deal with implicit bias. She recognizes that other people will form their own preconceptions about you. Often, they’ll form preconceptions based on race or religion. They can also be based on what you were wearing the first time the other person saw you or the college you attended or the region of the country or the world you hail from. Sometimes, those preconceptions are based on a splinter of their experience with someone they think was like you. When that happens to you, and it will, Dr. Huang offers you a strategy to gain an edge. Here’s what she says about the book in the introduction: “Having an edge is about gaining an advantage, but it goes beyond just advantage. It’s about recognizing that others will have their own perceptions about us, right or wrong. When you recognize the power in those perceptions and learn to use them in your favor, you create an edge.” Her approach revolves around two concepts. “Enrich” is your ability to provide value to other people. This is the foundation of everything. No linguistic tricks or carefully-cultivated strategy will help you if you can’t deliver value – enrich. She calls the other concept “Delight.” This isn’t about being charming or entertaining. Instead, it’s about acting in ways so people to give you an opportunity to enrich. You may have some trouble understanding this until you’re a significant way into the book. That’s because the material on Enrich comes before the material on Delight. That’s necessary for understanding, but it’s the reverse of the way you will use these concepts in real life. There, you delight first to get the opportunity to enrich. Then, you deliver value. Dr. Huang structures her book around 13 principles. She devotes a chapter to each one. Here they are: Principle 1: Hard work should speak for itself. (But it doesn’t.) Principle 2: It’s not about giving it your all. Your basic goods help you get it all. Principle 3: To use your basic goods in distinct ways, go where others don’t. “Basic goods” are the few things that make you singular. They’re what make it possible for you to enrich when you get the opportunity. You need to know and be conscious of your weaknesses as well as your strengths so you know specifically what you can do to enrich. Principle 4: Embrace constraints. Constraints provide opportunities. This is a valuable chapter. Dr. Huang covers the same ground as many writers on creativity. Constraints help us be more creative. But she goes beyond the usual and describes how we often constrain ourselves because we don’t spend enough time on figuring out what the problem is before we jump to solving it. Principle 5: Your powers of discernment come from trusting your intuition and your experiences. Principle 6: Before people will let you in, they need to be delighted. Principle 7: Don’t over plan. Instead, aim for flexibility and opportunities to delight. Principle 8: Stay authentic and embrace how delight occurs in situ. Principle 9: “Being yourself” entails guiding others to all the glorious versions of yourself. Principle 10: Know how others see you so you can redirect them to how they should see you. Principle 11: Guide others to what is within you by recognizing what is around you. Principle 12: It’s not where you’ve been; it’s where you’re going. Guide how others see your trajectory. We’re used to presenting the facts of our life as if they’re a series of static events. Dr. Huang suggests we make that presentation about trajectory--where we’ve come from and where we’re going. It’s a powerful way to guide other people’s perceptions to a place we like. Principle 13: Turn adversity into your edge. Dr. Huang brings us full circle, by describing how hard work fits into her scheme. Here are a couple of explanatory paragraphs from the end of the book. “I would never say that telling someone to work hard and put in effort is bad advice. But it just seems so obvious and basic. It doesn’t seem very helpful, particularly when it’s presented as the panacea for getting a job or receiving some accolade or reward. And yet, I keep hearing people giving this advice and explaining that hard work was the key to their own achievements. /Just keep working hard. Just keep chasing your dreams. The rewards will follow.’ We all know there’s actually a multitude of reasons why someone gets the desired outcome. Luck is one. Systemic privilege is another. And an edge is yet another. Enrich, Delight, Guide, and Effort—these are the components to creating your own edge.” In a Nutshell Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage by Laura Huang is an excellent book about how to defeat others’ harmful preconceptions about you and gain an edge. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2021 by Wally Bock

  • Highly recommended. Delightful. Fun and important practical read, especially for Asian Americans
Full of personal anecdotes and based on research, author and Harvard Business School professor Laura Huang lives and breathes EDGE - Enrich, Delight, Guide, Effort. Hard work alone isn’t enough. You need something else to stand out and give you that EDGE which makes you unique and different. Taking stereotypes and biases and flipping them, discovering your individual story, and then building on it means you can find your authentic self. Be the person no one else can copy because no one has your specific journey, successes, setbacks, insights, and experiences. As a result, no one can replicate the special value and perspectives you bring. This is important in a busy world where people and organizations make assumptions which often are incorrect but will not change unless you take action by empowering yourself with EDGE. I wish I had this book years ago when starting out on my career. Yet by luck and circumstance I stumbled across EDGE. Don't be lucky. Learn from professor Huang and her research. EDGE is reminiscent of Malcolm Gladwell's book, David and Goliath. Being an underdog has a set of advantages and we should embrace them and use them rather than see them as disadvantages. Professor Huang argues the same thing at personal and individual level. As I reflect on many self-help, leadership, and business books that I recommend to colleagues and mentees, I realized that Huang’s EDGE is the only book I’ve read that is from an Asian American woman and a woman of color. For that, I’m eternally grateful to have found this and recommend this book particularly to Asian Americans. On a personal level, as an Asian American, I fully appreciated many of professor Huang’s stories and the high number of Asian Americans she profiles. I feel and see her self depreciating humor, doubts, and insecurities of finding one’s self and identifying in a culture that can be at odds with one’s values and instincts. I appreciated hearing her journey where see ultimately succeeds as she also continues to move forward. What makes her work particularly powerful is when one reads it. Like any excellent work, we react differently to the message depending where we are in our own lives. Early in a career before any professional or personal failures or setbacks reads differently than mid-career at a crossroads of the next step. For that, I look forward to reading it again and again and recommending it to my colleagues and peers. I can’t wait for them to find and use their own EDGE. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2020 by Davis Liu Davis Liu

  • Excellent book for anyone navigating adversity
This is the best business oriented book I've read in a while. I would rate it as equivalent to Strengths Finder and Crucial Conversations in terms of actionable solutions. The author is very transparent and provides insight into her own journey as she explains the principles outlined in the book. There are multiple references to data to back up her writing throughout the book. The idea of embracing constraints is not a new one, but the book is broken down into very common sense pieces. The thing I like about this book is that it is written from a standpoint of strong vulnerability. Leadership books are often written from the standpoint of a person who is a C-suite refugee, multi-billionaire, empire builder whose experience working with others is largely contained to other C-suite like individuals. This book is written so that anyone at any level can find a path by using the principles outlined in the book. One has to be open to some self-reflection and frank honesty about their current situation. If you feel like your entire body is being violently pressed against the glass ceiling and circulation is about to be cut off to most of your proverbial appendages if something doesn't give soon, this is the book for you. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2020 by Jena

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