Reviews of Books and DVDs

Shackleton’s Way - Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparelli

If you are seeking an inspiring book about a leader who showed the true essence of great leadership under pressure, then this book will not disappoint. From 1914 to 1916, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men survived the wreck of their ship, Endurance, in the crushing Antartic ice, stranded twelve hundred miles from civilisation with no means of communication and no hope of rescue. The temperatures were so low that men could hear the water freeze. Unlike most other polar expeditions, every man survived – not only in good health, but also in good spirits. Their survival was due for the most part to the leadership of Shackleton. Throughout this bold adventure, Sir Ernest proved himself to be resourceful, flexible, considerate, and indomitable.
It is easy to say that leadership is all about character, determination, consideration, vision, and loyalty. But until it is tested, leaders rarely show their true colours. Morrell and Capparell share some wonderful examples with us of what strategies Shackleton used with his team. There is definitely enough meat here to help us with our own leadership challenges. We learn exactly how Shackleton developed individual talent, how he formed teams for tough assignments, how he led in a crisis and how he still managed to create a real spirit of camaraderie. Be inspired!

The Leadership Challenge – Kouzes and Posner

Many authors of leadership books set out with good intent but produce something which is at best a theoretical treatise. At worst it is a case of grand in theory but lacking in the practical advice which is what many leaders seek.
Based on significant research, Kouzes and Posner have produced a roadmap for leaders and many of my clients have benefited from its pragmatic approach. This book is regularly cited as one of the best books ever written on leadership and what it takes to succeed at it. It addresses such challenges as:
How do I improve my ability to inspire others towards a common purpose?
How do I best set an example for others?
How do I build a cohesive and spirited team?
How do I acknowledge the work and efforts of those around me?
Anyone curious to be a better leader or transitioning into that hallowed position would do well to heed its wisdom.

Leadership Presence – Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar

Many leaders today voice a genuine desire to be more inspiring and to command a greater executive presence to their leadership role.
Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar bring a novel approach by applying their professional acting skills. Their innovative toolkit brings the techniques of the stage into the boardroom and gives leaders the tools and techniques they need to connect authentically and dynamically with the hearts and minds of those they lead. Much of their work concerns teaching leaders to be better communicators. Leaders with great presence are compelling individuals who attract attention almost effortlessly. When they enter a room, they have something that makes the energy level in the room rise. People perk up, stop what they are doing and focus on them. The good news is that presence is asset of skills, both internal and external, that virtually anyone can develop and improve. Presence is not skin deep and people can detect its authenticity a mile off. It’ show you show up, how you listen, how you speak, how you connect, act – every move that you make on the corporate stage or in real life combine to create the impact that you make.
Lubar and Halpern address the universal questions around presence such as:
How can you be truly present with your people?
How can you handle the unexpected appropriately?
How can you get the best from those you lead?
How can you connect with anyone?
How can you express passion in a way that inspires and draws people to you?
How can you build trust and credibility by being the best of You to your leadership role?
How do you move from playing your role to being those roles?
This practical book resounds with the conviction that Lubar and Halpern hold and it is simply this: that by making genuine connections with one another, employees will be more fulfilled, teams will be more motivated and organisations will be more inspired. This book can definitely help a leader do just that.

What got you here won’t get you there – Marshall Goldsmith 

This book is for you if you are an ambitious executive who works hard and is doing well in your field. But there may well be something standing between you and the next level of achievement. That something may just be one of your own annoying habits. Perhaps one small flaw - a behaviour you barely even recognise - is the only thing that's keeping you from reaching where you want to be. It may be that the very characteristic that you believe got you to where you are today - like the drive to win at all costs - is actually what is holding you back.

As this book explains, people often do well in spite of certain habits rather than because of them. What they really need is a "to stop" list rather than one more “to do” list. Marshall outlines twenty annoying habits commonly found in organisations. He provides a systematic approach to dealing with these bad habits and offers practical ways to achieve these positive changes in behavioural patterns. Learn how to listen, to acknowledge and to accept feedback graciously.

Marshall Goldsmith's expertise is in helping global leaders overcome their unconscious annoying habits and become even more successful. Marshall has been recently named as one of the world's five most-respected executive coaches by Forbes and he has worked with more than 80 CEOs of the world's top businesses.

Crucial Conversations – Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler 

When stakes are high, when opinions vary, and when emotions rise, it is too easy to either avoid a testy conversation or to handle it badly and both can have serious consequences to our relationships with work colleagues as well as loved ones. The authors of Crucial Conversations give us a simple roadmap to handle these difficult yet important conversations. They teach us how to make it safe for others to enter into a conversation with us that is difficult for both sides to embark upon. They encourage us to sort out fact from fiction in our own minds and to get clear with ourselves first about what outcome we truly want from such conversations.
The authors also outline helpful strategies to help us to continue to listen to the other person even after they have got angry or emotional with us; to seek to persuade rather than adopt an abrasive stance and to understand what behaviours we revert to when we are under pressure so that we can manage ourselves better when those situations arise. Many of my clients have found this book extremely helpful in tackling such dreaded situations.

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal - Jim Loehr , Tony Schwartz

Many of my clients have benefited greatly from the advice laid out in this very readable and highly practical book. In fast paced working environments when time is at a premium, many executives struggle to find the balance between managing themselves and managing the ferocious demands that are being made of them. Only by developing and using your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual "muscles", can you become "fully engaged."
Your life isn't a persistent marathon. It’s actually a series of sprints. To be successful, you need to balance recovery time with actual sprinting. The greatest players develop rituals to help relax themselves in the short time between points. The less successful players don't have rituals to help them recover. Their heart rates remained high between points, and they don't seem to be able to alleviate their stress.
This book will give you real tools to manage your energy effectively and ultimately improve the quality of their professional and personal lives.

On Form – Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz  

One of the great assets of a rising star in a company is the energy of that individual. So often, we believe that if we were just able to manage our time better, then we would be so much more effective. This book reveals how much more important it is to understand how we can manage our energy. From their own work with high performance athletes, Loehr and Schwartz examined how humans spend and restore energy in everything we do. A fascinating insight for me was that we diminish our energy levels as much through underuse as much as overuse.
One of the most useful elements of the book is that it offers the reader examples of positive energy rituals which they could implement themselves straight away.
These routines – which may physical, mental, spiritual or emotional aspects - can help any leader be so much more effective. The rituals may help the leader who when tired becomes irritable and disparaging with those around him. They may also help the leader who finds it difficult to listen to his people and build healthy relationships with his people. Or the leader who is so enthusiastic in work that she has no time or energy left for a life outside of work.
`Whether you just want to get a bit more balance into your life or break an old habit or boost your energy levels, I could not recommend this book more highly to you.

Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results - Harry Paul, John Christensen, and Stephen C. Lundin  

Many years ago, I presented a fun afternoon at a telecoms conference using the themes presented in FISH to a very engaged audience. So when I got the chance to visit Pike Fish Place on a recent trip to Seattle, I jumped at the chance to see whether the guys really did live up to their team philosophy - and they really behaved exactly as they outlined in this short and simple video! (Amazon.co.uk stocks the book; go to Amazon.com for the DVD)
The fishmongers approach their work together around four principles:
• Play – cultivate a light-hearted attitude and have fun in the workplace can make work an enjoyable experience.
• Make Someone's Day - go that little bit further for your customers: it makes you memorable and keeps them coming back
• Choose your Attitude - if you are at work for so many hours each week, why not have fun, be positive and enjoy it?
• Be Present - when someone is talking to you, give them your undivided attention rather than the Blackberry. Really focus on them and make a connection because people notice and it counts.
A great present for a team or a team leader that needs a boost.

The Wisdom of Teams - Jon R. Katzenbach

If you're seriously interested in diagnosing nonperforming teams and creating ones that perform, you'll enjoy this book.
This book is the result of research into why teams are important, what separates effective from ineffective teams, and how organizations can tap into the rigour of building highly effective teams which combine to make high-performance organizations. Katzenbach and Smith share their insights into what makes teams work by sharing real examples of teams at work in 47 of the most well known companies in the world.

The Long Tail - Chris Anderson 

Anderson first coined the term The Long Tail back in an article for Wired magazine in 2004. The essential point he was making was that in a digital world inhabited by YouTube and Amazon , the combined revenue that publishers and e-commerce players make from the sales of the thousands of back issues, is actually higher than the revenue they make out of the handful of mega hits each year. If you plot the popularity of various products for example books on Amazon) with the most popular products at the left, the left part of the curve will be very vertical (the head) and there will be a long list of items to the right that will have relatively few sales (the tail). Mr. Anderson's point is that as it becomes economically viable to produce and distribute more low-volume products (such as print-on-demand books and e-books), there will be more items available to purchase at any outlet . . . and the length the tail to the right will grow.

Leadership and Self Deception - The Arbinger Institute

This short yet insightful book reveals how most of us are not fulfilling our potential because of self deception. It suggests exactly how we get ourselves into this self deceiving box but fortunately, it shows us how we can get out of that mindset and have a much more positive effect in everything we do. Self deception blinds us to the true causes of our problems and because of this blindness, we cannot imagine the solutions that will make things better. This blindness is particularly critical in a leadership role because other people look to the leader to improve matters. This book definitely offers some profound insights which each of us can learn from.

The Art of Effortless Living - Ingrid Bacci

The Inner Game of Tennis - Timothy Gallwey

At first glance, his book would seem to be suitable for tennis players but it so much more. Best-selling author Timothy Gallwey tackles the problem of how human beings interfere with their own ability to achieve and learn. Based on his own experience of taking part in competitive tennis matches, he suggests that every game has actually two parts – the outer game which is played against an external opponent to overcome external obstacles and the inner game which takes place inside the mind of every player. The inner game is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness and self-doubt.
Gallwey reassures us that the player of the inner game comes to value the art of relaxed concentration above all other skills. He discovers a true basis for self confidence. He learns that the secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard. It is about learning to quell the fear and anxiety and allow the performance to flow. Gallwey offers some very practical strategies, both physical and mental, to increase our opportunities to be in the flow of peak performance and to minimise our nasty habits of self criticism and harsh judgments.

Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play - Mark Forster

If you procrastinate more often than you wish or you just want to work more effectively this gem of a book is money well spent. One of the strengths of this book is that the author is writing from his own experience as a reformed procrastinator. His practical and honest approach offers us deceptively simple principles and exercises that could solve years of struggle in the battle to get on top of what you have to do or should be doing.

The core concept is that we do know deep down what we should really be doing at any one time. What we don’t often acknowledge is how much resistance we feel about doing it. Focus on what you're resisting most, he says, and you'll focus on what's most important. The book equips you with the vital strategies to tackle that resistance and get those vital things done.

If you want to know how to keep yourself energised, motivated and how to tackle fatigue or stress, then you will find some wonderfully sane tips right here.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey

A best seller which appears on many top ten personal development lists, Stephen Covey has put forward the following seven simple principles which can change the way you think & operate:
He encourages us to:
(1) Be Proactive rather than wait for things to happen
(2) Begin with the End in Mind rather than focusing on the minutiae first
(3) Put First Things First rather than not thinking through what’s most important to you
(4) Think Collaboratively rather than always wanting to score against the other party
(5) Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood.
(6) Synergize rather than firing off in all directions
(7) Sharpen the Saw rather than always doing what you habitually do.
While some of his vocabulary may seem very American to European readers, his principles remain amazingly powerful. I particularly like Rule 7: Sharpen the Saw. In the business of daily life, it is too easy for us to keep doing the same things, often with diminishing returns but by regularly sharpening up our act, we are constantly renewing our effectiveness. The challenge is to live by these rules after you’ve read the book!

The Speed of Trust - Dr. Stephen M.R. Covey

This book is written by Stephen M.R. Covey, the son of the famous personal development guru Stephen Covey Senior. The author tackles the subject of Trust with the same level of integrity and honesty that one has come to expect of his father.
In explaining trust, Covey tackles a number of themes – how we can strengthen our personal trust in ourselves; how we can build the trust in our relationships with others by behaving consistently; how the trust in organisations can be strengthened with true alignment and how we can generate more trust in society when we seek to contribute rather than to always seek to receive.
While the explanation of the principles is helpful, I found the actual behaviours critical to building trust the most useful. They include: being a straight talker, demonstrating respect, being transparent, right wrongs promptly, show loyalty, get better, confront reality, clarify expectations, practice accountability, listen first, keep commitments, and extend your own ability to trust others. The book also gives you ways to regularly monitor your performance and to create plans for improvement.

The Pursuit of Happyness

The Legend of Bagger Vance

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Highly recommended by one of my clients!)