The Unspoken Rules

How to become a top performer at work

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How to become a top performer at work

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The comprehensive guide on how to become a top performer at work, based on 500+ interviews. Endorsed by Arianna Huffington, Cal Newport, Rich Lesser (CEO, BCG), Ginni Rometty (fmr CEO, IBM), Julie Zhuo (fmr VP, Facebook). Published by Harvard Business Review.

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Launch tags:Hiring•Productivity•Startup Books

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Hi PH family! I’m Gorick, author of “The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right” (Harvard Business Review Press; on sale: April 27, 2021). I wrote this book after realizing that there are many resources out there on how to get a job and how to be a CEO, but nothing on how to become a top-performing employee. Startup leaders kept telling me about how they wanted to hire more interns and recent grads, but dreaded needing to teach new hires the basics of how to take ownership, manage expectations, communicate effectively, and prioritize effectively. These are soft skills that no one teaches and that are often learned through life experience. And so I thought, What if I could aggregate all of this tacit knowledge, distill it down to a single guide, and democratize it to every company—even those that can't train employees at scale? That’s where “The Unspoken Rules” comes in. It’s a compilation of over 500 interviews I personally conducted with professionals across geographies, industries, and job types on what managers expect but don't explain and that top performers do but don't realize. Packed with frameworks, check-lists, and fill-in-the-blanks, think of this as “a toolkit on what you learned through trial and error (or still haven't learned) in the first 10 years of your career, condensed into ~240 pages.” Although the beachhead market for this book is interns and new/recent grads, I’ve had a number of leaders tell me that this book is just as useful for managers who want to build more productive and inclusive teams. So, if you're a manager who wants to set better expectations, delegate more efficiently, motivate more effectively, and have more productive one-on-ones, consider giving this book a read. I know a book that took 5 years to write isn't exactly a *minimally* viable product, but I still very much see it as a v1.0. So, if there are any topics that are missing or that make you cringe, please reach out! I'll add you to my v2.0 acknowledgments list 😊 Interested in learning more? Here are some links: ⚡️ Amazon order link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/produc... ⚡️ Non-US order link: https://www.bookdepository.com/T... ⚡️ My website (to download the first 25 pages): http://gorick.com/ ⚡️ My TikTok (where I've been sharing content from my book): https://www.tiktok.com/@theunspo... ⚡️ Real early reader reviews: https://www.goodreads.com/book/s... ⚡️ Cal Newport calling this a book that is "destined to be a classic": https://www.linkedin.com/posts/g... ⚡️ A list of the 500+ people who've contributed to this book: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i... ⚡️ My interview on HBR IdeaCast (podcast): https://hbr.org/podcast/2021/04/... ⚡️ The New York Times’ excerpt of my book: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/... ⚡️ Fast Company’s excerpt of my book: https://www.fastcompany.com/9061... ⚡️ Fast Company’s adapted excerpt of my book: https://www.fastcompany.com/9060... ⚡️ My Q&A in Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rod... ⚡️ The Financial Times’ review (showcasing this as one of the top business books of April): https://www.ft.com/content/4a5e6... ⚡️ The Boston Globe's review: https://www.boston.com/jobs/job-... ⚡️ The New York Post's review: https://nypost.com/article/best-...

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5yr ago

checkDaily.org

Looks like a great book with lots of concrete examples. Very excited to especially check out the frameworks provided. Great job!

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5yr ago

Maker

@zalmay_karimi Frameworks are my favorite. Lots of frameworks. You'll be frameworked out by the end 😁

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5yr ago

This book contains so much crucial advice that I wish I had coming into and experiencing Harvard as a First Gen Low Income, female, immigrant student, not to mention how I still need it today and far into the future to navigate the workplace, my career, and organizations I work with in the future.

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5yr ago

Maker

@yingzi_sakura_huang thanks for sharing your story! So relatable!

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5yr ago

I've read it cover-to-cover. Great book with lots of practical information. If you're managing a young team, do yourself (and your employees) a huge favor and get them this one. Highly recommended.

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5yr ago

Maker

@isaiah_b glad to hear you found it useful and practical!

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5yr ago

This is a phenomenal book - it's the clearest, most concise, and best structured book of this sort that I've come across. It is chockfull of memorable frameworks and corresponding real-world anecdotes that help make everything stick. Best of all, it's very actionable. I've personally read it, re-read it, dogeared it, and annotated it.

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5yr ago

Maker

@samir_junnarkar so glad to hear it was so useful to you!

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5yr ago

Congratulations on the release! Very excited to check this out and apply these lessons to my career :)

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5yr ago

Maker

@promitghosh I'm eager to read / hear your feedback!

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5yr ago

Up Next

I'm excited to share this with my team. Thank you for putting this out into the world @gorick_ng!

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5yr ago

Maker

Thanks so much for picking it up, @ellenli! I'm excited for your reactions!

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5yr ago

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