“Openness is contagious. We can build the mental muscle of shifting to being open to expand possibilities, experience joy and achieve potential.”
Open Stance: Thriving Amid Differences and Uncertainty
Available at Amazon Kindle and Soft Cover
and where books are sold
In these uncertain times of disruptions, vast technological and collective world changes, polarization, challenges and trauma, knowing how to be open to what is and flexible to respond rather than react to uncertainty is one of the most critical skills needed today. When you approach life with an open stance you can observe more clearly what is present without collapsing into a stress reaction or disassociating and blaming others and/or yourself. You will be better able to choose actions for greater impact and success. When you adopt an open mindset and open stance, you expand possibilities and experience more aliveness and joy.
Openness is contagious. When we model being open, we inspire openness in others which supports resilience, wellbeing and thriving.
Open Stance: Thriving Amid Differences and Uncertainty shares the case for adopting an open mindset and stance, explains a process for shifting from being closed to open and offers multiple practices for embodying an open stance. Finally, it encourages readers to take action from an open stance to make life better for all.
Ann Van Eron, Ph.D. draws on brain research and decades of executive and team coaching experience to share a memorable system and practices for being open. Leaders, managers, coaches, parents and influencers will benefit as have many from organizations including the United Nations, The World Bank Group, CVS Health, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Ford Motor Company and others.
This is a practical book for how to be mindful while interacting at home, work and in the community. The process supports being emotionally and socially intelligent and shares a way to manage oneself and positively influence others.
What People are saying about Open Stance:
“As an executive coach, I know the first step to great leadership is being open to receiving feedback, understanding your team’s perspective, and staying open-minded to new ideas and suggestions. Ann has done a masterful job of walking readers through the process of staying open and reflective, allowing you to more easily pivot and respond to any circumstance. A critical book for every leader!”
Marshall Goldsmith, New York Times #1 bestselling author of Triggers, Mojo, and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There Thinkers 50 #1 Executive Coach and only two-time #1 Leadership Thinker in the world.
“Being open and adapting to the ever-changing environment is essential for success today. Our leaders are more resilient and are creating enhanced engagement with the Open Stance mindset and skills. Open Stance Leadership and the OASIS Conversations courses have been valuable for shifting to a collaborative culture. We are grateful to Ann Van Eron and her work with our organization. This book is essential for anyone who desires to create more influential, positive, and productive relationships and experience greater possibility.”
–Sherif Kamel, Senior Vice President, CVS Health
“During these complex and unpredictable times, Ann Van Eron has written a book that has us look into the way we think and the resulting impact that thinking has on the stress and pressure we feel. She offers a model for open thinking backed with science that can be used as a tool to overcome our predetermined mindset traps. Certainly, timely and useful for all.”
Sunita Holzer, EVP, Chief Human Resources Officer, Versik Analytics (previously CHRO with Realogy, Computer Sciences Corporation, Chubb, American Express, and GE Capital)
“Ann Van Eron captures the need for centering ourselves in the midst of leadership challenges and provides us the most accessible of methods – our bodies – for reminding ourselves to be at our best. When we are fully present, sensing and not judging, we can be truly open. The wisdom we need is within us. With practice, we share our open stance with others for more trust and better outcomes in any interaction. We need more of this right now.”
Kelly Wojda, Global Learning & Development Director, Caterpillar Inc.
“Ann Van Eron’s clarion call for an ‘open stance’ in today’s divided America is a powerful unifying concept. Individuals need to seek out opportunities to help others at work, in their family, and within their local community. Open stance thinking is an antidote to the tribalism and closed mindedness weakening our nation. The future can be bright if we adopt an open mindset to address both personal concerns and societal controversies.”
Edward E. Gordon, PhD, Author of Future Jobs: Solving the Employment and Skills Crisis and President, Imperial Consulting Corporation
“In Open Stance, Ann Van Eron provides a practical and powerful method that synthesizes research and best practices for shifting from distracting emotions to a full-body sense of possibility and connection to the beautiful essence of life. The approach is elegant and easy to use. It is a nice complement to her previous book on how to have conversations that help others shift perspective. It is clear that Ann loves to bring joy to the world from her heart.”
Dr. Marcia Reynolds, Author of Outsmart Your Brain and President of Covisioning
“If you coach, teach, lead others, are a parent, spouse or in a role of professional or personal influence, this book will significantly enhance your effectiveness. It will feed your soul’s yearning for goodness and grace, for meaningful connection and for creating shared and common goals collaboratively. It is a MUST read for continued personal and professional development. My clients are already raving about how their teams are communicating more openly and constructively, resulting in more team productivity and cohesiveness, more trust and respect. Get this book. Talk to Ann about her vision for building communities of openness. She is a blessing and gift to our world!”
Geraldine Grossman, Executive Coach
“Ann Van Eron has done it again in her second book! The Open Stance process supports enhanced awareness of ourselves in order to positively influence our interactions. The process is invaluable in creating and changing cultures. I wish I could have introduced this book to my social work students and colleagues throughout my years of teaching and practice.”
Dolores G. Norton, PhD, Samuel Deutsch Professor Emerita, The University of Chicago
“By writing a clear and challenging book that couldn’t be more timely and on the mark, Ann Van Eron has done it again. It is one thing to want to be open, yet quite another to know how to make the shift from closed to being open, that is, curious, compassionate, courageous, and kind—the key components of actually becoming open. Thank you, Ann, for once again showing us the way to be more of who we can be.”
Warner Burke, PhD, Professor of Psychology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
“Open Stance crystallizes the essence of what is needed to be resilient and thrive in our increasingly uncertain times. In this practical book, Dr. Van Eron elegantly articulates what it means to choose to be open (i.e., being present, receptive, curious, and anticipating possibilities) versus closed (ungrounded, judgmental, stressed, reactive) and offers a simple framework with actionable skills for helping oneself get to a more open state. This is, indeed, a valuable book for our era!”
Nisha Advani, PhD, Executive Coach and Consultant, Former Head of Executive Talent and Organization Development, Genentech
“Ann Van Eron is a world-renowned expert in teaching people to communicate in a way that fosters understanding and connection. Her new book, Open Stance: Thriving Amid Differences and Uncertainty, builds on her earlier work by offering readers specific guidance in how to become more open and receptive to the world around them. Linking together neuropsychological research with behavioral techniques, she has created a model for how to live with resilience, optimism, courage, and compassion.”
Gail Golden, PhD, Author of Curating Your Life, Executive Coach
“Ann Van Eron’s latest book, Open Stance: Thriving Amid Differences and Uncertainty, is brilliant in its conception, timeliness, and simplicity! On the heels of arguably the most complex and daunting challenges of our lifetime, Van Eron offers a very simple refuge—be open! Embodying an open stance is both an art and a lifelong commitment to become your best self. This gem of a book is essentially a deep inner dialogue, examining heart and mind to build the spiritual muscle to engage wholeheartedly with the world. It calls on each of us to be the intention for peace and connection that we so desperately need. The promise therein cannot be overestimated!”
Kathleen FitzSimons, PhD, Executive Coach, KathleenFitzSimonsConsulting, Inc.
“Being open is such an essential quality in today’s world where each of us face increasing levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in our lives and careers. We need to be open to so many things—open to life, to our feelings, our perceptions, our pain and fears, being wrong, new ideas, changes, etc. Ann’s book is a wonderful guide exploring how and why each of us must invest time in creating as much openness as possible in our lives—both at home and work. She shares some really helpful questions that we can ask ourselves to deepen our self-reflection on being more open. You will particularly find valuable her open stance postures framework about being open-minded, open-hearted, open-centered, and open-handed!”
Nigel Cumberland, Best-Selling Author of 100 Things Successful People Do and Award-Winning Executive Coach and Facilitator
“Open Stance: Thriving Amid Differences and Uncertainty is a simple yet profound user’s guide for living an impactful, successful life. It does not require working harder or smarter. Rather, it offers a clear explanation and simple tools for becoming a better leader, employee, partner, parent, and human being. Ann Van Eron’s writing is that rare combination of easy to understand and inspiring. I found myself feeling more calm and joyful just by reading this book!”
Laurie Zuckerman, President, Zuckerman Consulting Group, Inc.
“In this time of great division in our world, Ann Van Eron shows us how to sharpen the critical skills needed to depolarize difficult situations. With clarity and wisdom, Ann guides us to respect our fears and the choice to shift into an Open Stance. This powerful shift in both mindset and body readies us to courageously build bridges across the challenging divides we are faced with everyday. Often the broader perspective gained in a strong Open Stance leads to taking actions that make a difference, a difference that we so long for in today’s world.”
Pat Ruzich, Ruzich Consulting, High-Performance Coaching
“In Open Stance, Ann invites the reader into an experience that activates a shift in mindset, promising possibility, and opportunity, through openness and awareness. Her expertise as a researcher, certified master coach, and accomplished consultant bring credibility and integrity to an individual way of being where resilience, wellbeing, and flourishing are present. Her book is an unselfish gift that helps to make the world a better place.”
Diane Rogers, Author of Leading hArtfully: The Art of Leading Through Your Heart to Discover the Best in Others, President of Contagious Change
“More powerful, effective leadership, parenting and influence? This is what we gain from following the distilled easy-to-remember three steps in Dr. Ann Van Eron’s latest book Open Stance: Thriving Amid Differences and Uncertainty. Based on her expertise from decades of study and real-world global practice, the book meets us at any level—from a streamlined overview to the pertinent details of how our physiology, nervous system, and brain work. I’ve been benefiting from her thought leadership for years, and this book sustains and expands those benefits.”
Marie Meade, MBA, Founder, HWP-You.com (Healthy Wealthy Perennial, LLC)
“When I learned from Ann that openness is contagious, I tried it out with my team at work. Pretty soon, others on my team had adopted an open mindset and were asking me how I had developed mine. The culture of openness that began with just my team spread throughout multiple teams of my company, including leaders, and now Ann’s OASIS model is used at my workplace, and I teach seminars to other teams at my office that involve her techniques to adopt an open mindset. Open Stance has encouraged me to expand my personal practice of adopting an open mindset. In particular, the practice of being open-minded and developing curiosity about others, as explained in the book, has helped me develop my relationships at work.”
Kevin Welcher, Senior Web Developer, WillowTree
“The practices Ann teaches in Open Stance have helped me to adopt an open mindset in every sphere of my life, leading to happier interactions with family, friends, and coworkers, and more inner fulfillment also. I now seek out opportunities to be open and have gained new friends where I did not expect to. I also have developed a personal practice using Ann’s open mindset stances when I just cannot seem to be in an open state. My relationships are better than they have ever been. The result is a richness and sense of harmony in my life.”
Natasha Richter, Open Stance Course Participant
“For all people who strive for excellence and making a difference in the world, the challenge is to understand how their approach to engaging with others affects all their activities. Ann Van Eron’s distinction between open and closed mindsets helps all readers in active self-reflection and creative self-organization to engage in a more open, receptive, and activated stance of possibility.”
Dorothy E. Siminovitch, PhD, MCC, Author of A Gestalt Coaching Primer: The Path Toward Awareness IQ, Founder of Gestalt Center for Coaching
“Ann Van Eron’s Open Stance and OASIS Conversations Courses are invaluable programs to give leaders the critical skills, abilities, and tools vital to adapting to the ever-changing business environment, and to bringing out the best in themselves and others. No matter how excellent your formal education or subject matter expertise is, business always comes down to judgment calls, relationships, and conversations with others. Most people have had no training in conversation skills or how to manage oneself to shift to be open in the moment to what is in front of us. OASIS Conversations gives people a wonderful model to explore any challenging issue through how you have a conversation. Open Stance provides a way to shift one’s attention and being to make the most out of the current moment. I highly recommend the programs and Ann’s books on these topics to anyone who works with others. (And that would be most of us!)”
Jackie Sloane, Executive Coach, CEO, Sloane Communications
“I am so grateful to Ann Van Eron for writing Open Stance. I have always considered myself an open-minded person, but this book made me realize just how often I am closed off to people and ideas and how much more beneficial my life could be if I opened myself more to the possibilities. I have found the practices she offers are invaluable for making the shift to being even more open than I was. I’m more excited about my future and the future of my relationships after reading and applying this book. Thank you, Ann.”
Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD, Award-Winning Author of Narrow Lives and The Best Place