More Good Reads
AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP
Harvard Business Review Press
Harvard Business Review have compiled the insightful How to be human at work collection of HBR articles as part of their Emotional Intelligence Series. The Authentic Leadership compilation provides perspectives from experts on authenticity, vulnerability and empathy. The collection explains the place of authenticity in emotionally intelligent leadership, with guidance on discovering and developing your own genuine brand. Learning about how to use emotional expression appropriately in different circumstances, and to recognize the cliched responses that will damage your reputation and limit your effectiveness.
All the books in this essential reading series are grounded in evidence based research and offer practical advice for managing our emotions and handling difficult people and situations constructively in emotionally effective ways.
change your questions, change your life
Marilee Adams
Marilee Adams uses her business focused story about Ben Knight, an experienced executive, to explore the power of questions to shape the way we listen, think and behave. In an intellectually stimulating and entertaining read, Adams introduces “Questions Thinking”, based on her years of research and experience, and shares how we can apply the beneficial outcomes to leadership. We see how Ben, a familiar and relatable figure, is coached using several simple practical tools to recognize questions that are limiting or counterproductive and replace them with resolution focused alternatives that constructively drive him forward.
Her 3rd Edition has been expanded and revised to include twelve powerful tools that build trust in relationships, stimulate creativity and productivity and impact the bottom line.
The book is an excellent guide for coaches and leaders and the positive impacts of this powerful approach spill over from business to personal lives.
Compass
Peter Scisco, Elaine Biech, George Hallenbeck
Center for Creative Leadership
The Center for Creative Leadership have come up with another excellent resource that emerges from robust research whilst maintaining easy accessibility for line managers or training and development professionals. This book provides a comprehensive guide, quite literally, a compass, to help leaders and managers develop leadership skills for themselves or others.
Compass is built around the “Fundamental Four” leadership competencies that are essential for every leader: Communication, Influence, Learning Agility and Self-Awareness. The second section of the book focuses chapter by chapter on 48 additional competencies that CCL’s research has shown are significant for leadership success. A third section addresses how you can overcome five key career stallers to keep your career on track and the final section of the book provides guidance to help you set the goals that will put your development plans into action.
Scisco, Biech and Hallenbeck have done an excellent job clearly describing each leadership competence, outlining a contemporary definition with a workplace example and sketches of “high performance” as well as “what’s in your way” before outlining development opportunities, how to self-coach and how to improve. For each competency there are additional resources and suggested activities for improvement.
This is a much valued update on "FYI For Your Improvement A guide for Development and Coaching For Learners, Managers, Mentors, and Feedback Givers" Michael M Lombardo & Robert W Eichinger – Lominger – also from the Center for Creative Leadership.
As a coach, I have found that most of the frequently occurring struggles leaders's embody are addressed within these pages.
I particularly recommend the book to emerging leaders, although the pearls of wisdom are equally useful in re-energizing seasoned managers who are becoming set in their ways.
Lead 4 Success
George Hallenbeck
Center for Creative Leadership
Any individual wanting to polish up their leadership skills will benefit from picking up Hallenbeck’s 285 page self-help guide, Lead 4 Success, which eloquently hones in on developing the essence of leadership.
Hallenbeck and his CCL associates set a leadership context when they focus on three” Fundamental Truths of Experience – Driven Leadership”: Experience matters (leaders are made not born), Experience is variable (not all experiences are equal) and Experience is the Past, Present and Future at once. Once established, these truths are coupled together with the four essential leadership competencies, the “Fundamental Skills for Experience Drive Leadership”: Self-Awareness, Learning Agility, Communication and Influence to create a robust leadership foundation. Leaders are then encouraged to round out their leadership skills by rediscovering their past, seizing their present and shaping their future while they are taken on a time voyage through an additional 16 core leadership competencies.
Hallenbeck balances sound research-based information with real life case studies, quotes, self-assessments and challenges to keep the learning fresh and engaging. As a coach, I have found that many of the frequently occurring struggles that leaders embody are addressed within these pages.
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Compass
Peter Scisco, Elaine Biech, George Hallenbeck
Center for Creative Leadership
The Center for Creative Leadership have come up with another excellent resource that emerges from robust research whilst maintaining easy accessibility for line managers or training and development professionals. This book provides a comprehensive guide, quite literally, a compass, to help leaders and managers develop leadership skills for themselves or others.
Compass is built around the “Fundamental Four” leadership competencies that are essential for every leader: Communication, Influence, Learning Agility and Self-Awareness. The second section of the book focuses chapter by chapter on 48 additional competencies that CCL’s research has shown are significant for leadership success. A third section addresses how you can overcome five key career stallers to keep your career on track and the final section of the book provides guidance to help you set the goals that will put your development plans into action.
Scisco, Biech and Hallenbeck have done an excellent job clearly describing each leadership competence, outlining a contemporary definition with a workplace example and sketches of “high performance” as well as “what’s in your way” before outlining development opportunities, how to self-coach and how to improve. For each competency there are additional resources and suggested activities for improvement.
This is a much valued update on "FYI For Your Improvement A guide for Development and Coaching For Learners, Managers, Mentors, and Feedback Givers" Michael M Lombardo & Robert W Eichinger – Lominger – also from the Center for Creative Leadership.
People Skills Handbook
Aanstad, Corbett, Jourdan, Pearman
People Skills Handbook
At a time where Emotional Intelligence, EQ or EI have become popular buzzwords, People Skills Handbook have come up with a very pragmatic and easy to use guide to help individuals translate the established theory into practice. Aanstad and co-writers start with a helpful overview of Emotional Intelligence, making the case for why it is so important to our success in dealing with people at work or in our social lives. The reader’s attention is grabbed by the startling research data indicating that 75% of careers that derail do so due to poor emotional competencies, the most common of which are a lack of ability to deal with change or build trust, poor team player abilities or deficient increase their effectiveness in both their personal and professional lives.
The authors adopt the popular clustering of EQ competences into three groups, starting with the foundation of understanding the self, then managing the self before reaching the pinnacle when further knowledge is applyed to work effective with others. Throughout the body of the book, which splits these three clusters into their component 54 competencies, a standardized format chapter is devoted to each competency. In this way the reader is able to focus in on a development area of interest, and discover a definition and context, along with descriptions of talented, skilled and unskilled examples of using the competency. Common “barriers to effectiveness” are described with typically half a dozen practical tips for development. Each chapter ends with a list of related competencies, personal or professional development suggestions and further resources. To help the reader further, the authors helpfully provide 8 separately described toolboxes to help with practical applications.
Anyone struggling to grasp the intricacies of emotional intelligence will be rewarded with jargon-free explanations and guidance that will help them to embrace and master these critical skills.
Connection Culture
Michael Lee Stallard
Jason Pankau and Katharine P Stallard
Organization and leadership trends move through many phases. Stallard provides compelling reasons to focus on organizational cultures that foster a high level of connection benefitting from higher levels of productivity, profitability, employee engagement, and lower levels of absenteeism, quality defects and turnover. Moving away from a competitive focus on individuals that create dysfunctional cultures of control or indifference, Michael Lee Stallard offers new and practical insights to foster a Connection Culture built around synergistic collaboration, respect and trust.
Stallard condenses the wisdom of disparate research strands into his three key buckets of Vision, Values and Voice. These foundation blocks are then illustrated with abundant insightful stories drawn from his own consultancy observations and personal experiences.
To help leaders and individuals take actions to build and nourish a culture of connection, Stallard provides guidance via 15 best practice approaches addressing Vision, Values and Voice. To support culture development, the Connection Culture also contains a wealth of ideas around 24 character strengths developed by the VIA Institute of Character. Although these are organized into six different virtue categories, there is a high degree of overlap with Stallard’s Vision, Values and Voice, and the descriptions provided create a fabulous resource to prompt thought around the desired culture creation.
The result is an engaging practical book that is well researched and insightful.