While not a new book, 8 Minute Meditation remains the quintessential guide to meditation for the uninitiated.  This is the book for anyone who has ever been drawn to meditation for its ability to help quiet and focus the mind, but was afraid to try it for fear that they would have to adopt a new religion, sit cross-legged, or spend hours a day in practice.  It’s also for anyone who has ever said “I could never do that; I just can’t focus long enough.”

While meditation does have its roots in Eastern wisdom, Davich skips the Zen and Buddhist philosophy and focuses on how to meditate.  In fact, he shows you eight different slants on the theme, or “ways to meditate”, and suggests that you spend a week on each of the techniques and then decide which ones are for you.

Change Your Questions Change Your Life: 10 Powerful Tools for Life and Work
by Marilee Adams, PhD

The main title is not overstated.  Learning to ask genuine questions is one of the most positive things that a leader can do to change their relationship with the world around them.

Author, Marilee Adams, uses the story of Ed, working with his executive coach, to show us how to use learning questions (as opposed to judging questions) to gain information, solve problems, and improve relationships.  Adams includes helpful charts, including the Choice Map™, and a “10 Powerful Tools” chapter at the end that summarizes the main takeaways from the book and helps us apply them.
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Death by meeting: a leadership fable-- about solving the most painful problem in business by Patrick Lencioni

If your organization holds meetings that seem to go on forever, that try to solve world hunger, but in which nothing really seems to get done – or even if your meetings are not quite THAT bad – this book is a must read.

Lencioni presents a framework that shows readers how to have the right meeting, at the right frequency, for the right purpose. We reread this little gem recently in preparation for discussing it with one of our client executive teams and recalled that while the framework is valuable, Lencioni’s insistence on candid communication and on discussing the seemingly “undiscussable.” was an equally valuable take- away.

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In his newest installment, Pink tackles motivation, tracing its evolution and, using a software analogy, asserting the need for a radically new way of looking at the topic, which he dubs Motivation 3.0.  Practiced by Type I leaders, it relies on autonomy, mastery and purpose to get results.

Many of the ideas on which he bases his premise are not new – we’ve known that the old carrot and stick are not particularly effective in the 21st century – but Pink does give us plenty to think about.  He also presents ideas that will make some readers bristle.  Does your organization pay employees to spend 20% of their time on whatever they want instead of on the work at hand?  Whether you can agree with everything he supports or not, Pink uses interesting life stories and research studies to support the case for a new way of motivating others.

This book has been recommended time and again to Peeler Associates clients who report back that, while not telling them anything that they did not already realize on some level, it hit them upside the head with just what they needed.  Through stories and anecdotes that support her points, Scott insists that we confront reality, acknowledge what is true, and deal with it in our conversations. 

While this might sound to some like a license to run roughshod with words, she is also quick to point out what we all know which is that, even when a leader whispers, others hear her (or him) shout.  Things that we say, that may seem insignificant to us, come back to haunt us when the words become bigger than life.  Therefore, it is imperative that we be present and fully engaged during our conversations and stay mindful of the “emotional wake” that we leave. 

She encourages us to “deliver the message without the load” and provides us with tools such as “mineral rights” and a model for confrontation.   A relatively quick read, Fierce Conversations, illustrates why leaders must have honest conversations – even difficult ones – and then demonstrates how. Back to top

We love books that are quick reads and yet give us a profoundly different way of looking at things. According to the book, much of the trouble that we have with our work, our lives, and our relationships stems from living in self-deception and, while blaming others, failing to see that we hold the power to “get out of our boxes” and do the right things for the right reasons.

The book is yet another in the leadership fable genre but we seem not to tire of them. We have been learning our most important lessons from stories presumably long before the brothers Grimm.

A Peeler Associates client recommended this book to us because of its potential to completely shift one’s way of looking at things. After we read it, we agreed.

Many of us have a bias for books that distill a lot of useful information into few words.  Most leaders complain that they want to do more reading but have little time for it.  In fairly concise form, John Kotter lays out, in this now classic book, an eight step formula for creating momentum for sustainable change in organizations. The process offered is a sound and succinct blueprint for leaders to follow.  However, this recommendation is offered with a few caveats.

The first step, which is to create a sense of urgency, is indeed essential.  People and organizations tend not to change without a compelling reason to do so.  But some of Kotter’s recommendations seem a bit draconian.  Deliberately creating a financial crisis and allowing a mistake to blow up are the kind of underhanded

management tactics that keep organizations and the people in them in a state of unhealthy stress.

None-the-less, other outlined tactics, such as placing information about revenue and other metrics in the hands of more employees and removing silos by measuring people against broader organizational goals, are sound and reasonably progressive.

The remaining seven steps outlined by Kotter continue to take the leader through the essential elements.  The steps end with “anchoring new approaches in the culture” and truly represent a logical progression of action that is necessary in order to create change that sticks. 

Kotter does not recommend exactly what changes an organization should be contemplating; that is another book and this, after all, is a diminutive volume that does a great job of focusing on and explaining the eight essential steps leading change. Back to top

On the surface, this book appears ridiculously simple, unless you’ve read Leading Change, also by John Kotter, and also realize that changing an organization is never simple.

This is another easy to read book in the business fable genre that takes advantage of the appeal of a good, if light, story. The characters are the members of a penguin colony who slowly – some more slowly than others – come to realize that the iceberg that they call home is in danger and that they must find another.

Someone who had not read Leading Change might miss the execution of each of the eight steps for leading a successful change effort.  But those who have read that previous book will appreciate the complexity and importance of the issue that Kotter and Rathgeber have handed the penguins and will value seeing the execution of the eight steps.

The cover of the most recent edition of this now-classic book by Stephen Covey purports to have sold over 15 million copies since its first publication in 1989; this gemstone is certainly no insider secret.  However, it is surprising how many leaders still have not read it. 

With lessons like those on Empathetic Communication and Interpersonal Leadership and tools such as The Time Management Matrix, it is one that we find ourselves recommending to leaders in all phases of their careers time and again.

This is the book that spawned an empire.  There are now “7 Habit” books for Highly Effective Teens, Highly Effective Families, Happy Kids, and Highly Effective Marriage.  And don’t forget the 8th Habit or First Things First as well as many others.  This the book that

started it all, making it the foundation for all other versions.

One of the original versions of this book (still on our shelves) was subtitled “Restoring the Character Ethic.”  Indeed, the previous subtitle and the current one are both appropriate, as this book is about You; that is, who you are, what you bring to the world and how you relate with it.  Nothing is more relevant for leaders today.

This is a classic and the first book a leader, or anyone else wanting a positive relationship with the world around him or her, should read. Back to top

The EQ Edge successfully glides the reader through the landscape of understanding Emotional Intelligence in a fairly systematic and simplified (but not overly-simplistic) way.  One of the authors is the publisher of the EQ-I, an assessment of emotional intelligence that is based on Reuven’s Bar-On emotional intelligence model. Even so, the book is far more than a commercial for the test.

The authors explain the five realms of emotional intelligence: the intrapersonal realm, the interpersonal realm, the adaptability realm, the stress-management realm, and the general mood realm.  They devote full chapters to explaining the skills and attitudes that make up each realm.  These include emotional self-awareness, assertiveness, independence, self-regard, self-actualization, empathy, social responsibility, personal relationships, problem-

solving, reality testing, flexibility, stress tolerance, impulse control, happiness, and optimism.  For each, the book provides reflective questions for self-assessment and “self-coaching” assignments for improving that attribute.

For anyone who had heard the term “emotional intelligence” and didn’t know exactly what it encompassed, or thought that it simply meant controlling one’s darker emotions, this book will provide a working knowledge of a subject that is being increasingly acknowledged as one of the most important driving factors of leadership success.  This is also a great book for someone who already understands the building blocks of emotional intelligence and wants some help in making improvements.

While these skills and attitudes do correspond to the 15 scales on the EQ-I test, one does not in any way need to take the test in order to understand and self-assess themselves in the skills and attitudes. Back to top

Leadership fables are all the rage.  Why not?  While some get downright silly, others are enjoyable to read and manage to impart a few lessons along the way.  The Five Dysfunctions of a Team falls into this latter category.  With just over 200 pages of type large enough to almost qualify the regular book as a “Large Print Edition”, it is a quick read – great for those of us who follow the mantra “too many books, too little time.” 

The story follows the mythical Kathryn Petersen, the not-so-warmly embraced newly hired CEO of the equally mythical DecisionTech, Inc.  Kathryn has just come onboard to turn-around the formerly successful company, only to find very quickly that the team at the top is the company’s greatest impediment.

Through telling the story of Kathryn’s work with her executive team, Lencioni unveils a five-step model illustrating what he believes are the five primary reasons that teams are dysfunctional, hence the title of the book.  The story shows the reader why overcoming the five dysfunctions is so critical, but yet so difficult for most teams.

Anyone who has ever struggled with attitudinal or conflict-adverse team members, or attempted pulling together a team that “just wasn’t a team”, will appreciate Kathryn’s challenges and learn something about what makes great teams accomplish great results. Back to top