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Book Review – Immunity to Change

January 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Immunity To Change

By Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey Harvard Business Press, 2009 ISBN #978-1-4221-1736-1 Subtitle: How to Overcome it and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization The exciting work being done these days in leadership development is not around the skills of leadership. It goes much deeper, tackling the core assumptions and habits of thought that stop OK leaders from becoming great ones. It maps a leader’s journey of growth alongside the route of natural adult development. In other words, the more mature and integrated psychologically a leader is, the more effective she will be in leading others. Kegan and Laskow’s book is a pivotal one because it offers a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Change, Leadership Development Tagged With: , ,

Book Review – Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

July 3, 2010 By 3 Comments
drive

by Daniel H. Pink Riverhead Books, 2009 ISBN #978-1-59448-884-9 In his new book Dan Pink accomplishes two outcomes really well: He consolidates some major social science research around human motivation into clear, straightforward discoveries He challenges the current thinking and practice in the vast majority of our organizations. The Great Debate Am I motivated in my work primarily through what I receive from the organization and the key players around me or through the fulfillment of needs and desires that reside within me? These are the dueling positions of extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivators that have fueled a debate in psychology over the last eighty-plus … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Employee Motivation Tagged With: , , , , ,

Book Review – The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World

June 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment
adaptive_leadership

by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, & Marty Linsky Harvard Business Press, 2009 ISBN #978-1-4421-0576-4 Dealing with change and problem solving–these tasks are at the core of what leader/managers do. But there are two distinctly different types of challenges that precipitate change and bring on problems for managers. The authors of this enlightening book lay these out right at the beginning: Technical challenges – problems that can be pretty clearly defined and can be addressed with known solutions or ones that can be developed by a few technical experts. These fixes can usually be implemented using the organization’s current structures and procedures. No big … [Read more...]

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Book Review – Leadership From the Inside Out: Becoming a Leader for Life

May 19, 2010 By 1 Comment
leadership_inside_out

by Kevin Cashman Berrett-Koehler, 2008 ISBN #978-1-57675-599-0 At the point our body and our senses (eyes, ears, touch, etc.) meet the world lies a crossroads. At this very point we experience a constant, two-way flow from the… Outside in–situations, actions and events in their environment Inside out–how we feel, interpret, process these situations and decide on our response Kevin Cashman talks about this intersection as it applies to leaders. On the one hand, a leader’s environment obviously affects what goes on in the leader’s mind and, in return, the leader’s mental processing generates responses and actions that impact his/her environment. External and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Change, Leadership, Leadership Development Tagged With: , , , , ,

Book Review – Influencer: The Power To Change Anything

May 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment
influencer

by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan & Gareth Jones McGraw-Hill, 2008 ISBN #978-0-07-148499-2 If you are like me, and like most of the managers we all know, you have a default strategy for influencing people around you. You TELL them what they should do! You SHARE your wisdom and advice, often drawn from experience in similar situations. Your SUGGESTIONS are frequently spot on and brilliant. There is only one problem, say the authors of this excellent book. This approach rarely works. Why? Because it so often comes across as parental, manipulating, nagging, not their solution, serving someone else’s interest, and so forth. All these are … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Leadership, Leadership Development Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Book Review – Why Should Anyone be Led by You?: What it Takes to be an Authentic Leader

April 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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by Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones Harvard Business School Press, 2006 ISBN #1-57851-971-3 People want to be led by a person, the authors contend, not by someone with a fancy job title or a manager who has amassed a vast chunk of organizational turf. Employees will choose to follow only a real, live, breathing human being who reveals at least some of their humanity, values, personality and, yes, vulnerability. This is an intriguing point-of-view and one with which I agree. If you, as a leader, accept it too, it raises for you a question: how much of your true self should you reveal to your staff? Should you be an open book, or should there be an element of mystery about you? … [Read more...]

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Book Review – Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

April 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment
mindset

By Carol S. Dweck Random House, 2006 ISBN #1-4000-6275-6 John McEnroe reached great heights in the world of professional tennis but, by his own admission, he did not fulfill his potential. Whenever he lost, it was not his fault. Even his defeat at the 1984 French Open he blamed on sound coming from the headset of a network cameraman. As a world class athlete, he felt he had the right to abuse others. In fact, the image of him screaming at umpires is burnished in the minds of a generation. “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap, the notorious turnaround artist of Scott Paper and Sunbeam fame, slashed jobs and closed plants with a vengeance, then, bored with the idea of helping a company … [Read more...]

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Book Review – The Dynamic Path: Access the Secrets of Champions to Achieve Greatness Through Mental Toughness, Inspired Leadership, and Personal Transformation

March 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment
dynamic_path

By James M. Citrin Rodale, 2007 ISBN #978-1-59486-358-5 Ground-breaking tennis great Billie Jean King won 20 Wimbledon titles, 13 US Opens, the French and Australian Opens, and was ranked the world’s No. 1 woman tennis player seven times. She went on to do pioneering work on Title IX legislation for women’s access to athletics resources in schools and to found the Women’s Tennis Association and the grant-giving Women’s Sports Foundation. Arnold Palmer racked up 61 PGA Tour victories, 19 international tournaments, 12 Champions (Senior PGA) wins and was the first person ever to earn one million dollars from golf. His legacy includes funding a radiation and chemotherapy … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Performance Tagged With: , , , , ,

Book Review – Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work

March 9, 2010 By 2 Comments
review_quiet

By David Rock HarperCollins Publishers, 2006 ISBN #978-0-06-083590-3 Managers are default programmed to solve problems. That’s what they are paid to do. That’s what they are good at. And that is how they see themselves, at a subconscious level. So, when an employee comes with a problem, the manager’s knee-jerk reaction kicks in (pun intended)–right into solution mode. The employee walks out with the manager’s solution and the manager feels great. To quote the author “We make the unconscious assumption that the other person’s brain works the same as ours.So we input  their problem into our brain, see the connections our brain would make to solve this problem … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Leadership, Leadership Development Tagged With: ,

Book Review – True North: Discover your Authentic Leadership

February 24, 2010 By 3 Comments
truenorth

by Bill George with Peter Sims John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007 ISBN #978-0-7879-8751-0 How do you become and remain an authentic leader? This was the question Bill George posed in his in-depth study of 125 leaders drawn from corporations to not-for-profits, to the arenas of politics and academia. George was CEO and then Chairman, from 1990 to 2002, of Medtronic, a world class medical technology company. In this review I want to shine a light on three elements from this book that constitute valuable perspectives for managers. The Crucible His research revealed an interesting common theme. Most of these successful leaders had been powerfully impacted by what he called a … [Read more...]

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