Wild Courage
A Rebellious Guide to Supercharge Your Career
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Wild Courage
Narrated by:
Jenny Wood
Buy Now for ₹323.00
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Narrated by:
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Jenny Wood
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Written by:
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Jenny Wood
About this listen
Read by the author, Jenny Wood.
You know where you want to go. You know you have it within you. You just need the courage to do it.
As a former Google executive and top career coach who chased an attractive stranger off the train and later married him, Jenny Wood knows her way around courage. In this book, Wood shatters conventional wisdom about achieving your goals. She gives you permission to ditch your fear and chase after what you want, unapologetically.
Wood reclaims nine traits from their negative shackles and teaches you how to apply them in a savvy and compassionate way to supercharge your success, whether you’re trying to snag a promotion, launch a company or land a life-changing deal.
Wild Courage will teach you how to be:
- Weird: Win as you or lose as ‘who?’.
- Selfish: Be your own champion.
- Shameless: Beat impostor syndrome and self-promote with ease.
- Obsessed: Push, persist and perform at your highest level.
- Nosy: Get curious to network confidently and learn from others.
- Manipulative: Build influence with empathy and manage up like a pro.
- Brutal: Draw lines and stick to them. Embrace the power of no.
- Reckless: Err on the side of action and take healthy risks.
- Bossy: Steer others to success, even if you’re not in charge yet.
Wild Courage coaches you to smash through your fear of discomfort, failure and the judgement of others, to embrace your boldest self in pursuit of what you want.
Critic Reviews
Extraordinary (Kim Scott, bestselling author of Radical Candor)
A fresh, fearless approach to achieving your goals. This book is both a guide and a cheerleader for anyone on a mission to make things happen (Gretchen Rubin, New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project)
The secret behind Jenny’s powerful debut is that this is actually a book about generous action. Creating the conditions for others to get what they need takes courage (Seth Godin, bestselling author of This Is Strategy)
Jenny‘s approach is just the right balance between audacious and real: she makes people uncomfortably excited. Now more than ever we need her edgy, heartfelt principles (Alan Eagle, New York Times bestselling author of Trillion Dollar Coach, former Managing Director, Sales and Executive Communications, at Google)
Jenny Wood’s no-BS, from-the-trenches tactics for success at work (and everywhere else) will light a fire under you. Are you ready to level up your life? (Noah Kagan, New York Times bestselling author of Million Dollar Weekend)
Jenny‘s work curates twenty plus years of hard-wrought insights into a single package. She teaches the art of the chase through vivid storytelling and counter-intuitive tactics. It’s amazing (John Bunney, Corporate Vice President, Customer Service and Support, at Microsoft)
This book is witty and wise. With provocative new insights and fiery spark, Jenny offers a clear-eyed playbook for how to rise and climb, while being true to yourself (Christina Wire, Vice President, Global Operations, at YouTube)
Jenny was easily one of the best speakers at Google. She is dynamic, entertaining and educational (Allan Thygesen, CEO of DocuSign and former President, Americas and Global Partners, at Google)
Jenny Wood flips the script that keeps so many people paying small. Wild Courage is a treasure trove of insights (Tiago Forte, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Building A Second Brain)
Jenny Wood’s savvy lessons will inspire you to stop seeking permission and to start taking action (Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of Drive)
While many qualities highlighted in the book are well known and have also been described in other books, yet there's something unique about reading it from Jenny Wood. She beautifully captures the real essence of what is being conveyed in the chapters through examples, anecdotes and her vast professional experiences.
This statement sums up the necessity of courage as outlined throughout the book - We are comfortable with risk only when it has paid off. But unfortunately, time only moves in one direction.
She masterfully reframes nine traditionally negative traits—Weird, Selfish, Shameless, Obsessed, Nosy, Manipulative, Brutal, Reckless, and Bossy—as essential "wildly courageous" superpowers that propel ambitious professionals toward extraordinary career success and personal fulfillment.
Summary of the key traits to use as a catalyst for our self-growth are mentioned below -
Weird - Win as your authentic self early in your career or risk being forgotten as "who?" Take more opportunities when stakes are low to build visibility, then course-correct later to focus on priorities—fear of judgment breeds conformity, but standing out makes you memorable for leadership roles.
Selfish - The book teaches to be Selfish by championing our own goals, doing 10% less NAP (not actually promotable) work, recognizing sunk cost fallacies, aligning to new goals when originals fade, etc.
Shameless - Go Shameless by finding your swagger through tasteful self-promotion—consistently highlight your achievements using words like "proud" ("I'm proud to share I achieved 3 of 4 goals"), sharing wins without shame (even Harry Styles listens to his own albums), reframing imposter syndrome, building power assets, and remembering executives expect people to ask for things, etc.
Obsessed - Be Obsessed by pushing, performing, and persisting: Show up daily whether in the mood or not, treat yourself like a star athlete nurturing mind/body/spirit, send detailed agendas before meetings, avoid the trap of too much talking and too little doing, pursue meaningful goals beyond financial returns (like a dentist finding satisfaction in cleanings), and embrace the IKEA effect (if people are more involved in the thing, they like to do it with passion). She beautifully gives the example of a seasoned dentist who still performs dental cleaning himself because he finds it extremely satisfying to take control of his own work by ensuring it gets done in the best possible way, while he could have always focused on root canal treatment which would fetch him more financial gains.
Nosy - Turn Nosy into insatiable curiosity that leads to serendipity: Ask at least one question in every meeting to be known and remembered, woo with "you" since people love talking about themselves or their work, steal blueprints from top performers, realize when questions are avoided, read the room, build cohort relationships over burying your nose in textbooks, note how curiosity drives outsized success (e.g., Jewish culture's education emphasis yielding 20% Nobel winners from 2% of the population), and understand there's always more room at the top.
No one got to the top without any help. Someone answered their question on the way up.
Manipulative - Master Manipulative influence through empathy: Manage your network and influences sideways, up, and out; leverage generosity reciprocity without fearing motive suspicion; seek sponsors who shape careers over mentors who merely guide; influence your manager’s peers; embrace office politics and seek power without chasing promotions too soon in a new role; and persist past minor obstacles.
Brutal - Be Brutal by drawing lines and sticking to them: Value your limited time by dedicating less than 15% effort to low-value work even if it helps the team, focus on high-visibility deliverables that move the business (and your career), ignore sunk costs, keep delivering every quarter high-value, high-visibility and high-impact work, remember being brutal and kind aren't mutually exclusive, and prioritize the real rewarding work that matters.
Reckless - Go Reckless by erring on the side of action: Take one small smart risk at a time, put 10 minutes a day into concrete action on new starts, don't use planning to postpone learning, sleep on significant decisions under pressure, listen to your gut, quadruple failures to double successes (half of what you do is always below your bar), inaction is more regretful than negative outcomes (research shows this), take big swings early in careers and relationships, treat perfection as a direction not destination ("The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago; second best is now"), and leverage problems since the show must go on.
Bossy - Finally, be Bossy to steer others to success: Violate social norms to signal leadership, give constructive feedback generously as an engine of growth (top performers crave it in good cultures), use a 5:1 positive-to-negative ratio, good talent is rented never owned, build relationships and influence ethically (or stick to individual contributor paths if uncomfortable), and watch "bossiness" transmute into respected leadership when results pay off.
Jenny also notes that When embracing the qualities pays off, these behaviours are regarded differently. Shamelessness transmutes into confidence, nosiness to curiosity, recklessness to courage.
She also warns us at times with reality checks such as Being an effective leader requires serious manipulation. If you’re uncomfortable building relationships and influencing others, forget about moving up, stick to being an individual contributor.
If connecting with others isn’t your happy place, find ways to gain seniority and more pay without entering management.
Overall, it's a very well written book by an extremely passionate and seasoned leader and has numerous examples and learnings from her very own experiences which are invaluable for anyone trying to assimilate and adopt the route to self-growth in an effort to propel their life and career to new highs.
very well written and narrated
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