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.

Book Review: Strengths-Based Leadership

Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Building off of the others in this series, this book is really helpful when working with groups. There is little in my consulting practice which is as much fun as assigning a group of work colleagues to each take the Strengthsfinder 2.0 test online and then share their printouts with each other.  As each person in the room tells what they learned about each of their top signature themes of talent, you can almost see lightbulbs coming on.  People grow in their understanding not only of themselves, but of each other.  And that is a beautiful thing.

Stengths-Based Leadership is especially fun, not just because it provides tips and strategies for leading with the various strengths (or leading others with the various strengths) but because it sorts the 34 by-now familiar themes into four categories: Implementing, Strategic Thinking, Relationship-Building, and Influencing.  The authors teach us that individuals do not need to be well-rounded - but groups do.  I like to plot group members' strengths on a grid and then look at it when everyone is finished.  It helps to see how the team can make the most of each person's unique contributions to the group, and sometimes to see what kinds of strengths to look for in new teammates.

It turns out that my own strengths are stacked up in Strategic Thinking, with little in Relationship Building and nothing in Influencing.  That is all well and good, until I desire to influence others.  That's when I need a partner with a healthy dose of Woo, or at least Communication or Self-Assurance.  The truth is that it is very helpful to know this.

These guys could put out a new book every year as far as I am concerned.  Keep the learning coming fellas!  The applications of the strengths knowledge must be endless!

Wanna see a two-page summary? You can download it for free here!


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Book Review: Go, Put Your Strengths to Work

Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance by Marcus Buckingham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It took Marcus Buckingham six years after publishing Now, Discover Your Strengths to bring out this follow-up guidebook for making the most of our unique talents and strengths, but it turned out to be worth the wait.  The practical advice and step-by-step process of self discovery and action planning provided by Go, Put Your Strengths to Work benefited me the first week I read it and probably every week since.  Of particular importance to me was the permission to STOP doing tasks that deplete me or that I have no natural aptitude for.  That one change made life better for me, and it will for you, too.

I hope to meet Marcus Buckingham one day and when I do, I will ask him "How does one maximize their unique talents when what one loves to do above all things must be paid for by doing something one does not enjoy?"  In going through the exercises in Go! I discovered that my number one first favorite way to spend time at work is in collaborative writing.  I am super-energized by co-creating ideas, editing something someone else has started, and being edited by others.  But in order to have an opportunity to swap drafts with someone, I usually have to sit and face a blank computer screen by myself... a lonely task which often causes me to shrivel up inside.  Getting colleagues to actually provide feedback is a real trick.  Most people are too polite to say anything constructive, so the pressure is always on me to make the first draft a good one. I have yet to solve this conundrum, (i.e. find a steady writing partner) but I suspect that when I do I will be launched.   Thanks to Marcus Buckingham (and his co-authors over the years) I have a clear picture of what the path forward looks like for me.  And that is worth the book's weight in gold!

For a two-page summary, written by me, click here.

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Book Review: Lean In

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have rarely been this happy to have read a book - or this grateful to an author - as I am after savoring every page of Lean In.  I feel like I have just had the opportunity to sit with a world-class leader and pick her brain about all the stuff I care most about.  And what a brain!  The subject is timely and super-important. The writing is friendly and clear.  The tone is welcoming and gracious.  Sheryl Sandberg has given all of us a tremendous gift, which I, for one, plan to pay forward.

Here is my two-page summary.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever had from someone in a position to be a mentor to me professionally was that I should not compare myself to others.  We can never truly know what is in other people's hearts.  We are often oblivious to their failures, peeves, insecurities.  So to compare how we feel inside to how someone else presents themselves on the outside is a losing game. 

Still, it feels really, really good to find out that Sheryl Sandberg's insides are a lot like mine.  Important stuff sometimes doesn't occur to her. She shrinks on occasion then wishes she hadn't.  She lets herself be influenced by others... men, women, younger, older, more senior, less senior.  She gets out of balance and out of focus.  She has struggled to find her voice and then felt hurt by criticism when she uses it.   

And, oh boy has there been criticism.  As far as I can tell, much of it seems to be coming from people who haven't actually read the book.  Just yesterday I heard a woman on TV say something about Sheryl Sandberg out there advising us all to be more like men.  What?  What page was that on?  There was nothing like that in the book I just read.  This was Sheryl Sandberg offering heart-felt and well-thought out advice to other professional women about not limiting ourselves.  She wants us to support each other and champion each other and to let others do the same for us.

Count me in Sheryl!  I've already joined the Lean In group on LinkedIn and will soon be working to pull together a Lean In group here locally. (Interested readers should call me.) This is exactly the kind of new women's movement we have been needing, but maybe we weren't ready for. Nothing but good can come from unleashing the power lurking deep in each of us. Let's get started!





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Book Review: Strengthsfinder 2.0

StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This isn't the one that started it all.  I think that distinction goes to 2004's How Full Is Your Bucket?  But this is the one I use with clients to start them on their journey along the wide-open road of strengths-based living.  I always try to explain what I am up to: I believe that people work best when they are doing things they enjoy, which is a predicted by things they are already good at.  I believe that teams work better together when everybody knows something about everybody else and supports each other's unique ability to contribute to group success. Blah Blah Blah.  I explain it... but there is no substitute for making someone sit in a chair and take the online Strengthsfinder test.  I have watched as people read the computer printout of their unique strengths and realize that what is written there is absolutely true for them. And then they share it with their colleagues.  Such opening up occurs!  I've had people report to their supervisors and other colleagues that I am a genius... and all I did was introduce them to Strengthsfinder. 

So what if everyone has to have their own copy of the book in order to get the secret code to take the online test?  It is absolutely worth it. Still, click here to download a two-page summary to whet your appetite.

The 30-page explanation of the science of the test and the background of the strengths theory is quick and easy to understand.  My favorite part of the book is the Ideas for Action that accompany the descriptions of each of the 34 signature themes of talent.  I've gone back to them again and again for ideas about how to unstick myself or get along better with someone I know to have a particular talent.  I can't imagine the giant jigsaw puzzle these authors had to put together from their billions of data bits, but I am glad they figured it out.  Anyone who picks this up and takes it seriously will benefit. 



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