Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long is highly recommended. “In this book you’ll get to know your brain in a way that brains like: by reading a story.” Author and leadership coach, David Rock, wrote the book like a play, going scene-by-scene as the two main characters, Emily and Paul, read more…
Book reviews
Book Review: How Full is Your Bucket?
Totaling in at fewer than 100 pages, How Full is Your Bucket? is a quick and easy read for anyone working in teams or in a leadership position. The authors, Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton, guide readers through six chapters that include research, case studies and applications of the power of positive (and negative) read more…
Book Review: Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
In the positive psychology world, Flow is a classic book, and for good reason. It was published in 1990 by one of the founding fathers of positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, after he had already led decades of research on “optimal experience”. Csikszentmihalyi (he coaches us to say “chick-sent-me-high” to get close to the correct pronunciation) and read more…
Book Review: Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
Nudge is a book for people who want to help –but not force– others to make better decisions. I first learned of this book when Daniel Kahneman raved about it in Thinking Fast and Slow. I was looking forward to Nudge and was not disappointed. I recommend it to anyone who might be presenting choices to others, and therefore affecting read more…
Book Review: Mindsight by Daniel Siegel
What is mindsight? In the words of the author, Dr. Daniel Siegel, “Mindsight is a kind of focused attention that allows us to see the internal workings of our minds…without being swept away by them.” Mindsight is essentially Siegel’s term for mindfulness meditation. Focus attention to achieve success Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation teaches us the read more…
Book Summary and Review of We: How to Increase Performance and Profits through Full Engagement by Rudy Karsan and Kevin Kruse
We: How to Increase Performance and Profits through Full Engagement is so titled because the authors view employee engagement as a partnership between employees and their employers. I couldn’t agree more. Pay for Performance and Employee Engagement Early on in the book though, there is a part with which I disagree: the authors strongly argue that read more…
Book summary and review: 12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter
12: The Elements of Great Managing introduces the Q12, a set of twelve questions that Gallup uses to measure employee engagement. Gallup’s extensive data suggests these 12 questions are key to measuring the things that make a performance difference. These questions (actually statements that people are asked to agree with, or not, on a 5 read more…
Employee Engagement 2.0
Kevin Kruse keeps employee engagement short and sweet. In Employee Engagement 2.0: How to Motivate Your Team for High Performance (A Real-World Guide for Busy Managers), which many will read in under an hour, he delivers a lot of important points. Definition & Data Kruse defines employee engagement as the emotional commitment an employee has read more…
Terms of Engagement: New Ways of Leading and Changing Organizations
We all know we need engaged employees who willingly work hard to give their best. Employee engagement is a win/win/win that benefits the employees, the organization they work in, and the customers they serve. But how do you get engagement? One expensive but solid approach to significant organizational change is the “conference model” advocated by read more…
Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined
What are intelligence, creativity, and talent? How can we measure them? Are they innate, or learned? And how can we each uncover our own? Scott Barry Kaufman tackles all of these important questions and many more in Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined. I found the book compelling, well-researched, and powerful, especially because Kaufman speaks both from his read more…