Recommended Books
Explore these great books for additional insights into improving team and individual performance.
Development
The Conative Connection: Acting On Instinct
Kathy Kolbe
Understanding how we do things the way we do really allows us to make better choices about our work and improves our personal lives too. Kathy Kolbe explains how to harness, rather than work against, the tremendous power of our striving instincts. This is the best of the four books she has written and provided an incredible insight into my life.
StrengthsFinder 2.0
Tom Rath
What are your top 5 strengths? The learned methods that you use every day to achieve results. By identifying these strengths you can focus on making them stronger. Rather than trying to fix our weaknesses, take the same energy and grow your strengths. A wonderful and simple understanding with a great lesson for knowing yourself to make better choices and create a better life.
Unique Ability: Creating the Life You Want
Catherine Nomura and Julia Waller with Shannon Waller
Your Unique Ability is a combination of your personal talents, passions, and skills. You’ve always had this ability, but maybe you never stopped to clearly identify it. Figuring out this important foundation of who you are, helps you to do even more what you love doing. This book provides a simple and powerful approach to creating a life that works better, because it comes from who you truly are and what you’re all about.
Sales & Service
Hug Your Customers: The Proven Way to Personalize Sales and Achieve Astounding Results
Jack Mitchell
Contains all-encompassing methods on running a successful business from the leader of a multi-generational family store.
The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable
Patrick Lencioni
An engaging story that explores the four disciplines of one special founder/president, providing inspiration to successfully grow a team and a company.
Strategy
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
Jim Collins
Arguably the best business book ever written. Covers everything from how to create a long-term growth and success strategy to why you need to hire the best people and get the others “off the bus.” Five years in the making, it’s an amazing analysis of what pushes a good company into greatness. A reference you’ll keep on your shelf and refer to over and over.
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
Chris Anderson
Demonstrates how electronic distribution is changing the face of knowledge and experience sales, and provides insights into what to do for your business.
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant
W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
Looks at the age-old business strategy of winning market share by competing on price (red ocean) and shows that the way to true success in a commoditized world is to create new markets (blue oceans). Filled with great business examples and key steps to follow. A must-read.
Teamwork
Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results
Stephen C. Lundin, Ph.D., Harry Paul, and John Christensen
A story about how to create a great workplace using the four simple methods of Seattle’s Pike Place Fish Market: Choose Your Attitude, Play, Make Their Day, and Be Present.
First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently
Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
The best primer on managing people ever written, with clear, definable “rules” on how to get the most from yourself and your team. A key tool is the list of Twelve Questions.
The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable
Patrick Lencioni
Outlines a roadmap to success for the leader of an organization or team. This book was later turned into a team building book called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
The Gifted Boss: How to Find, Create, and Keep Great Employees
Dale Dauten
While one gifted boss mentors another, this story explains the key ways in which gifted bosses and great employees find each other.