Books with Tools, Part 1

Some of the best books in personal and organizational development contain assessment tools or exercises that enrich the learning experience for individuals or groups.  I have found many of these tools useful in my consulting practice, working with organizations on planning, team building, or otherwise improving their processes or operations.  Here are some of my favorites. Click on the title of any of these books to download a free two-page summary written by me.  

The Strengths Series:  One of the fastest and best ways there is to help a group of people unite as a team is to have them each take the Strengthsfinder 2.0 assessment online and then share their results with each other.  The code for the online test comes with several books, each building upon the last.  Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton (The Free Press 2001) explains the strengths theory in some detail and provides tips for managing or working with individuals who have the various signature themes of talent.   Strengths-Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie (Gallup Press 2008) breaks the signature themes into categories and shows how well-rounded teams make the most of each individual's unique talents.  Another great one by Marcus Buckingham, Go, Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance does not make use of the 34 signature themes but provides its own online tool for identifying strategies individual readers can use to offer more of their best at work.



Building Functional Teams:  The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, 2002) is a fable-style story about the most common barriers work groups most overcome if they are to be effective.  The book contains a 15-question self-assessment that I have used productively both to help client organizations determine how they might work together better and also to measure progress over the course of a team-building project. 



Understanding the Nature of Trust: When Stephen M.R. Covey and Rebecca Merrill first published The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything (Free Press, 2006) I was truly amazed at what a rich and deep subject matter the nature of trust can be.  The authors provide easy-to-understand bullets on what they call the "Four Cores of Credibility" and also the "13 Behaviors of Trust" which make a nice handout for groups wrestling with trust issues.  Because the most important action anyone can take to rebuild trust where it has been lost is to address their own trustworthiness, the authors provide two self-assessments that individuals always find eye-opening, if not disturbing. 


The Habits of Successful Organizations:  Those interested in a book that is more worksheets, checklists, and templates than actual narrative will be glad to pick up Six Disciplines for Excellence: Building Small Businesses that Learn, Last and Lead by Gary Harpst (Synergy Books, 2007).  Harpst, the founder and CEO of an organizational development firm, provides dozens of illustrations for each of the six areas of the cycle of excellence he describes: 1) Decide What is Important, 2) Set Goals that Lead, 3) Align Systems, 4) Work the Plan, 5) Innovate Purposefully, and 6) Step Back.  There are tools for analyzing likely return on investment, for collecting stakeholder feedback on draft goals, for conducting brainstorming exercises, and hundreds more. 

There are many books such as these with tools and exercises to explore and deploy, so check back here next week for more.