Guides Books

Now, Discover Your Strengths

Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 328 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Effectively managing personnel--as well as one's own behavior--is an extraordinarily complex task that, not surprisingly, has been the subject of countless books touting what each claims is the true path to success. That said, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton's Now, Discover Your Strengths does indeed propose a unique approach: focusing on enhancing people's strengths rather than eliminating their weaknesses. Following up on the coauthors' popular previous book, First, Break All the Rules, it fully describes 34 positive personality themes the two have formulated (such as Achiever, Developer, Learner, and Maximizer) and explains how to build a "strengths-based organization" by capitalizing on the fact that such traits are already present among those within it.

Most original and potentially most revealing, however, is a Web-based interactive component that allows readers to complete a questionnaire developed by the Gallup Organization and instantly discover their own top-five inborn talents. This device provides a personalized window into the authors' management philosophy which, coupled with subsequent advice, places their suggestions into the kind of practical context that's missing from most similar tomes. "You can't lead a strengths revolution if you don't know how to find, name and develop your own," write Buckingham and Clifton. Their book encourages such introspection while providing knowledgeable guidance for applying its lessons. --Howard Rothman

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 192 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Must read for HR & OD folks! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

It's a short quick read and very informative. Goldsmith offers easy tools to put to practice and they work! Add it to your collection of practical books with solutions to implement.

Editorial Review:

America's most sought-after executive coach shows how to climb the last few rungs of the ladderThe corporate world is filled with executives, men and women who have worked hard for years to reach the upper levels of management. They're intelligent, skilled, and even charismatic. But only a handful of them will ever reach the pinnacle -- and as executive coach Marshall Goldsmith shows in this book, subtle nuances make all the difference. These are small "transactional flaws" performed by one person against another (as simple as not saying thank you enough), which lead to negative perceptions that can hold any executive back. Using Goldsmith's straightforward, jargonfree advice, it's amazingly easy behavior to change.Executives who hire Goldsmith for one-on-one coaching pay $250,000 for the privilege. With this book, his help is available for 1/10,000th of the price.

Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School

Philip Delves Broughton

Amazon Price: $17.13 List Price: $25.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin Press HC, The Amazon Marketplace: 31 new & used starting at $15.84

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

As One L did for Harvard Law School, Ahead of the Curve does for Harvard Business School—providing an incisive student’s-eye view that pulls the veil away from this vaunted institution and probes the methods it uses to make its students into the elite of the business world

In the century since its founding, Harvard Business School has become the single most influential institution in global business. Twenty percent of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are HBS graduates, as are many of our savviest entrepreneurs (e.g., Michael Bloomberg) and canniest felons (e.g., Jeffrey Skilling). The top investment banks and brokerage houses routinely send their brightest young stars to HBS to groom them for future power. To these people and many others, a Harvard MBA is a golden ticket to the Olympian heights of American business.

In 2004, Philip Delves Broughton abandoned a post as Paris bureau chief of the London Daily Telegraph to join nine hundred other would-be tycoons on HBS’s plush campus. Over the next two years, he and his classmates would be inundated with the best—and the rest—of American business culture that HBS epitomizes. The core of the school’s curriculum is the “case”—an analysis of a real business situation from which the students must, with a professor’s guidance, tease lessons. Delves Broughton studied more than five hundred cases and recounts the most revelatory ones here. He also learns the surprising pleasures of accounting, the allure of “beta,” the ingenious chicanery of leveraging, and innumerable other hidden workings of the business world, all of which he limns with a wry clarity reminiscent of Liar’s Poker. He also exposes the less savory trappings of b-school culture, from the “booze luge” to the pandemic obsession with PowerPoint to the specter of depression that stalks too many overburdened students. With acute and often uproarious candor, he assesses the school’s success at teaching the traits it extols as most important in business—leadership, decisiveness, ethical behavior, work/life balance.

Published during the one hundredth anniversary of Harvard Business School, Ahead of the Curve offers a richly detailed and revealing you-are-there account of the institution that has, for good or ill, made American business what it is today.

Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box

The Arbinger Institute

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Amazon Marketplace: 80 new & used starting at $6.50

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 201 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Using the story/parable format so popular these days, Leadership and Self-Deception takes a novel psychological approach to leadership. It's not what you do that matters, say the authors (presumably plural--the book is credited to the esteemed Arbinger Institute), but why you do it. Latching onto the latest leadership trend won't make people follow you if your motives are selfish--people can smell a rat, even one that says it's trying to empower them. The tricky thing is, we don't know that our motivation is flawed. We deceive ourselves in subtle ways into thinking that we're doing the right thing for the right reason. We really do know what the right thing to do is, but this constant self-justification becomes such an ingrained habit that it's hard to break free of it--it's as though we're trapped in a box, the authors say.

Learning how the process of self-deception works--and how to avoid it and stay in touch with our innate sense of what's right--is at the heart of the book. We follow Tom, an old-school, by-the-book kind of guy who is a newly hired executive at Zagrum Corporation, as two senior executives show him the many ways he's "in the box," how that limits him as a leader in ways he's not aware of, and of course how to get out. This is as much a book about personal transformation as it is about leadership per se. The authors use examples from the characters' private as well as professional lives to show how self-deception skews our view of ourselves and the world and ruins our interactions with people, despite what we sincerely believe are our best intentions.

While the writing won't make John Updike lose any sleep, the story entertainingly does the job of pulling the reader in and making a potentially abstruse argument quite enjoyable. The authors have a much better ear for dialogue than is typical of the genre (the book is largely dialogue), although a certain didactic tone creeps in now and then. But ultimately it's a hopeful, even inspiring read that flows along nicely and conveys a message that more than a few managers need to hear. --Pat McGill

What Color Is Your Parachute? 2008: A Practical Manual for Job-hunters and Career-Changers

Richard Nelson Bolles

Amazon Price: $12.89 List Price: $18.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Ten Speed Press Amazon Marketplace: 66 new & used starting at $10.85

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 36 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Not Too Useful 2 out of 5 stars.
10 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I don't understand why this book is considered such a classic reference. I found it badly written, not that useful, and WAY too religious. The chapter about how to determine your true mission in life is ALL about God and religion. You may agree or disagree with the author's religious views, but regardless I do not think that belongs in a job-hunting book. As a disillusioned corporate worker trying to change careers, I really needed practical, real-world advice.

The book seems to written for ADD people because it keeps repeating the same things only a couple of pages later. Also, some of his advice I disagree with - he keeps saying that the Internet is not a good way to get a job. What century is he living in?? I have gotten almost all my jobs over the last 12 years through applying over the Internet (Monster, CareerBuilder, etc.)

It has a few listings of sites that may be useful, but the book overall was a waste. Unless you want to bring it to your Bible study group.

Editorial Review:

WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE? is still the best-selling job-hunting book in the world. A favorite of job hunters and career changers for more than three decades, it continues to be a mainstay on best-seller lists, from Amazon.com to Business Week to the New York Times, where it has spent more than six years, and has been translated into 12 languages. The 2008 edition is an even more useful book, with its updated, inspiring, and detailed plan for changing readers' lives. With new examples, instructions, and cautionary advice, PARACHUTE is, to quote Fortune magazine, "the gold standard of career guides."

David Busch's Nikon D300 Guide to Digital SLR Photography

David D. Busch

Amazon Price: $19.79 List Price: $29.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Course Technology PTR Amazon Marketplace: 19 new & used starting at $18.63

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 51 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Have you unpacked your new Nikon D300 digital SLR camera and want to get started right away taking professional quality pictures? David Busch’s Nikon D300 Guide to Digital SLR Photography will show you how, when, and why to use all the cool features, controls, and functions of your camera to take great photographs of anything. After a brief introduction to the camera to help you get your bearings, you’ll dive right into all the exciting, innovative capabilities of the D300 including the focus controls, flash synchronization options, how to choose lenses, and which exposure modes are best. Beautiful, full-color images illustrate where the essential buttons and dials are, and you’ll find tips and techniques that can be applied to any type of photography to help you take better pictures with your new digital SLR. Whether you are new to digital SLR photography or an experienced pro, David Busch’s Nikon D300 Guide to Digital SLR Photography will help you maximize your camera’s capabilities.

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Doubleday Business Amazon Marketplace: 68 new & used starting at $12.47

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 205 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Do you want to get ahead in life?

Climb the ladder to personal success?

The secret, master networker Keith Ferrazzi claims, is in reaching out to other people. As Ferrazzi discovered early in life, what distinguishes highly successful people from everyone else is the way they use the power of relationships—so that everyone wins.

In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi lays out the specific steps—and inner mindset—he uses to reach out to connect with the thousands of colleagues, friends, and associates on his Rolodex, people he has helped and who have helped him.

The son of a small-town steelworker and a cleaning lady, Ferrazzi first used his remarkable ability to connect with others to pave the way to a scholarship at Yale, a Harvard MBA, and several top executive posts. Not yet out of his thirties, he developed a network of relationships that stretched from Washington’s corridors of power to Hollywood’s A-list, leading to him being named one of Crain’s 40 Under 40 and selected as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the Davos World Economic Forum.

Ferrazzi's form of connecting to the world around him is based on generosity, helping friends connect with other friends. Ferrazzi distinguishes genuine relationship-building from the crude, desperate glad-handling usually associated with “networking.” He then distills his system of reaching out to people into practical, proven principles. Among them:

Don’t keep score: It’s never simply about getting what you want. It’s about getting what you want and making sure that the people who are important to you get what they want, too.

“Ping” constantly: The Ins and Outs of reaching out to those in your circle of contacts all the time—not just when you need something.

Never eat alone: The dynamics of status are the same whether you’re working at a corporation or attending a society event— “invisibility” is a fate worse than failure.

In the course of the book, Ferrazzi outlines the timeless strategies shared by the world’s most connected individuals, from Katherine Graham to Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan to the Dalai Lama.

Chock full of specific advice on handling rejection, getting past gatekeepers, becoming a “conference commando,” and more, Never Eat Alone is destined to take its place alongside How to Win Friends and Influence People as an inspirational classic.

What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People

Joe Navarro, Marvin Karlins

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

He says that's his best offer. Is it?

She says she agrees. Does she?

The interview went great—or did it?

He said he'd never do it again. But he did.

Read this book and send your nonverbal intelligence soaring. Joe Navarro, a former FBI counterintelligence officer and a recognized expert on nonverbal behavior, explains how to "speed-read" people: decode sentiments and behaviors, avoid hidden pitfalls, and look for deceptive behaviors. You'll also learn how your body language can influence what your boss, family, friends, and strangers think of you. You will discover:

• The ancient survival instincts that drive body language
• Why the face is the least likely place to gauge a person's true feelings
• What thumbs, feet, and eyelids reveal about moods and motives
• The most powerful behaviors that reveal our confidence and true sentiments
• Simple nonverbals that instantly establish trust
• Simple nonverbals that instantly communicate authority

Filled with examples from Navarro's professional experience, this definitive book offers a powerful new way to navigate your world.

The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play

Neil Fiore

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 91 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The "unschedule" is the best day planner ever 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Please stop beating yourself up long enough to read this book. I have gotten more done on languishing projects in less time and had much more fun in my life since applying the "Unschedule" instead of my former process that began with an impossible to-do list followed by a day of procrastination and an evening of regret and guilt (sound like fun?). This is a new way of thinking about planning your time that not only works but makes you enjoy your time more. If you have any guilt over things you haven't done (calling all writers!) read this book and take a sigh of relief.

Editorial Review:

Originally published by Tarcher in 1988, The Now Habit has sold more than 58,000 copies, and is as relevant as ever!

Author Neil Fiore offers the first comprehensive strategy to overcome the causes of procrastination and to eliminate its deleterious effects. His techniques will help any busy person get more things done more quickly, without the anxiety and stress brought on by failure to meet the workplace's pressing deadlines.

This revised, redesigned edition includes a new introduction and a section that provides strategies to understand and deal with the complex role technology plays in procrastination today.

Hot Prospects: The Proven Prospecting System to Ramp Up Your Sales Career

Bill Good

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Whatever good or service you're selling, five likely customers are worth a hundred random names. No one can help you find new business by finding those five -- or five hundred, or fifty thousand -- best-qualified customers better than Bill Good.

For over a decade, Bill Good's guide to increasing new business by finding the right prospective customers has been an invaluable resource to people in every imaginable profession involving selling. Now completely revised and updated to include lessons on how email, fax machines, and the Internet can be incorporated into an effective prospecting and selling campaign, it is the most valuable tool a salesperson can own.

Anyone who does any prospecting or selling by phone -- from securities, insurance, and real estate to fund-raising -- knows the frustrations and rejections inherent in "cold calling." Many people come to fear it. But why should this be so? Certainly there are people out there who need and want the product you're selling. If only you could more efficiently generate a list of just those people, weed out the hopeless cases, and launch a simple and highly effective campaign to win them to your side. Prospecting Your Way to Sales Success shows you how to do just that. Bill Good draws on all he's learned from a long, successful career teaching companies and individual entrepreneurs how to create successful prospecting campaigns. He jettisons the stale, old-school, don't-believe-a-customer-who-says-no philosophy for a plan of attack that finds good prospects while quickly screening out unqualified, uninterested customers. From the first contact to the final close, Bill Good will help you design a complete, customized prospecting campaign.

In this new revised edition, bursting with fresh ideas for incorporating new media and new technologies into his proven campaign strategies, Bill Good has updated a classic and given salespeople everywhere a book they can't afford to live without.