The three books reviewed offer different ways in which one can be a successful leader. How Successful People Grow: 15 Ways to Get Ahead in Life by John C. Maxwell is focused on becoming a successful leader personally. The Weekly Coaching Conversation: A Business Fable by Brian Souza focuses on a person developing their potential as a leader of a group and would be helpful to someone moving from a practice to leadership role. J. Keith Murnighan's Do Nothing! How to Stop Overmanaging and Become a Great Leader approach assumes that those you are managing know their job, and I think this approach would be very successful with professionals such as nurses.
How Successful People Grow: 15 Ways to Get Ahead in Life by John C. Maxwell. Published by Center Street, New York, 2014. Book length of 139 pages or 3 hours 47 minutes via audiobook. Cost between $3.14 as a used book or up to $14.00 as an audiobook. Contents include Acknowledgments, Introduction, and 15 chapters that have exercises specific to the chapter content.
In the introduction, Maxwell states that "potential" is one of the most wonderful words in any language as it looks forward with optimism. He states that reaching your potential is through growth and that each person's potential is unique to themselves. The specifics of growth change from person to person, but the principles are the same for everyone.
Maxwell suggests reading a chapter a week, discussing it with friends, doing the application exercises at the end of each chapter, and keeping a growth journal. He states that you must incorporate what you are learning into your everyday life because you cannot change your life until you change what you do every day. By learning and growing every day, over the years, you will be astonished at how far it takes you. So what are the 15 chapters about?
Chapter 1 is to Become an Intentional Learner because growth does not just happen. He presents eight Growth Gap Traps with which it is easy to identify. Maxwell presents four considerations necessary to make the transition to intentional growth. The second chapter is about developing self-awareness because knowing yourself is essential to growth. Maxwell discusses the three types of people when it comes to having direction in life. He presents 10 questions to help you determine your passion and purpose.
Chapter 3 focuses on believing in yourself. Maxwell states that you must see value in yourself to add value to yourself. The power of positive self-esteem and how low self-esteem puts a ceiling on potential are presented. Ten steps to building your self-esteem are discussed. An important action, in my opinion, is the focus of Chapter 4. Setting aside time to reflect and allowing growth to catch up to yourself. Questions to reflect on are offered to help the reader develop personal awareness. Chapter 5 looks at the need for daily discipline to maintain growth.
Maxwell discusses the advantage for growth by seeking a positive environment in Chapter 6. Questions are asked to help determine your positive environment. In accordance with the right environment, Chapter 7 looks at the need to become highly strategic to maximize growth. I think the gem chapter in this book is Chapter 8, which discusses turning negatives into positives. I particularly appreciate Maxwell's Pain File, negative experiences that became positive gains in growth. I could relate to them.
Chapter 9 is Grow from the Inside Out. The idea that character determines the height of personal growth is explored. Maxwell presents the rungs on his character ladder that may help the reader improve as well. In Chapter 10, Maxwell tells the reader to get used to stretching yourself. He discusses how growth stops when you lose the tension between where you are and where you could be. He discusses why stretching has great value.
Another key chapter in my mind is Chapter 11, which presents making smart trade-offs. He first discusses the truth about trade-offs and offers food for thought. He then discusses trade-offs worth making and how to develop guidelines to help the reader decide what to strive for and what to give up in return. He offers five trade-offs he has thought that may help the reader develop guidelines. Chapter 12 encourages asking why. Maxwell offers 10 suggestions for cultivating curiosity.
Chapter 13 discusses the need to find a good mentor. As Maxwell states, it is hard to improve when you have no one but yourself to follow. In Chapter 14, the author asks whether the reader has maxed out their capacity. Maxwell postulates the focusing on enlarging your potential is possible. He discusses how to increase your thinking capacity and your capacity for action. The ideas presented are very doable. Finally, the author discusses how the reader can help others reach their potential. I like the phrase he uses-be a river, not a reservoir.
I recommend this book because it presents doable actions to increase the reader's potential. The suggestion the author makes to read and ponder a chapter a week is very doable even with life's busyness.
The second book is The Weekly Coaching Conversation: A Business Fable by Brian Souza. Published in 2012 by Evolve Publishing Inc. Cost is between $4.99 and $24.99. What makes this book different and quite interesting to read is that the author tells a story or fable to make his points.
Although the focus of the fable is a sales manager who needs to become as sales leader, this quickly read book highlights that a manager is not a leader unless their goal is for their employees to be successful. The book has an introduction, 16 chapters, acknowledgments, and author information. The fable begins in a bar where Brad, the sales manager, arrives ready to celebrate his sales manager award announcement with his team. Not one of the 10 team members stops by the bar. One of the bar regulars, Coach, learns that Brad is there to celebrate but when no one joins him, Coach offers to coach him. So each week, on a Friday evening, Brad meets with Coach for conversations and lessons. Coach asks Brad to ponder the question why do the best players make the worst coaches.
Over the next few weeks, Coach leads Brad through different conversations that result in pearls of wisdom for Brad to incorporate into his work. Important concepts for new managers hoping to become leaders are dispensed and discussed as to why they are important and how they move a manager to becoming a leader. Many of the concepts are widely known but not necessarily widely incorporated by managers. One of the most important concepts presented is the weekly coaching conversation. Before being able to effectively use the coaching conversation, Brad needed to make some changes to his outlook on what his job really was.
I think this would be a great book for a nurse moving from a focus on practice to a focus on leadership. The principles presented are important and offered in such a manner as to make them digestible. This book alone does not provide in-depth content, but it does frame it in such a manner that it makes sense to someone new to the role. The fable provides a framework for further education and study on how to be a leader.
The third book seems to run contrary to the second one; however, the concepts fit together nicely. Do Nothing! How to Stop Overmanaging and Become a Great Leader by J. Keith Murnighan. Published in 2012 by Portfolio/Penguin, New York. This book has 224 pages, containing a preface, nine chapters, Acknowledgments, Bibliography, and Index. Cost for this book ranges between $4.08 and $17.00 and as an audiobook is $21.30.
The premise of the book is that our natural tendency is to actively pursue our goals, which stands us in good stead until we move into management. At this point, Murnighan states that our natural tendencies lead us to do too much and overmanage or micromanage. Murnighan states that to be an effective leader, you need to stop doing the work yourself and let other people do it.
Chapter 2 presents the five natural problems of individuals as leaders and suggested solutions. Murnighan uses numerous examples throughout the book to illustrate his ideas. In Chapter 3, he suggested the leader start at the end. He labels this approach backward induction and describes how this approach is successful and why. In Chapter 4, Murnighan presents why leaders should trust more. He discusses how trusting more, we discover people who are more trustworthy than we realize, resulting in outcomes that benefit everyone. Chapter 5 presents releasing control and the benefits of such actions. In Chapter 6, titled Bear Down Warmly, the need for leaders to be wire walkers and strike a balance is presented as one of the biggest challenges for a leader. The chapter contains numerous stories illustrative of this principle.
Murnighan suggests that the use of performance goals results in losing sight of other equally or more important goals. This contradiction is discussed in Chapter 7. Chapter 9 concludes the book, reviewing unnatural leaders. The individuals selected are a wide mix of people, and each one is cited for differing reasons. This chapter concludes with a section where each leader's approach highlights the book's central premise of Do Nothing. This section neatly summarizes Murnighan's thesis.
I recommend all three of these books as worthwhile to leaders and those who hope to be effective and successful leaders. How Successful People Grow: 15 Ways to Get Ahead in Life by John C. Maxwell focuses on personal potential, whereas The Weekly Coaching Conversation: A Business Fable by Brian Souza focuses on a person developing their potential as a leader. I believe that using J. Keith Murnighan's Do Nothing! How to Stop Overmanaging and Become a Great Leader approach would be very successful with professionals such as nurses.