Book Review: To Sell is Human

“We’re all in sales” says author Daniel Pink. In fact, in a Gallup study people reported spending 40% of their time working in what Pink calls “non-sales selling,” convincing/influencing/moving people to decide or do that does not involve anyone making a purchase. Dan Pink is always intriguing. Let’s look at a few things his book…

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Leadership from the Inside Out: Becoming a Leader for Life

by Kevin Cashman Berrett-Koehler, 2008 ISBN #978-1-57675-599-0 Reviewed by Ian Cook At the point our body and our senses (eyes, ears, touch, etc.) meet the world lies a crossroads. At this very point we experience a constant, two-way flow from the… Outside in–situations, actions and events in their environment Inside out–how we feel, interpret, process…

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Influencer: The Power To Change Anything

by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan & Gareth Jones McGraw-Hill, 2008 ISBN #978-0-07-148499-2 Reviewed by Ian Cook If you are like me, and like most of the managers we all know, you have a default strategy for influencing people around you. You TELL them what they should do! You SHARE your wisdom…

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Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

By Carol S. Dweck Random House, 2006 ISBN #1-4000-6275-6 Reviewed by Ian Cook John McEnroe reached great heights in the world of professional tennis but, by his own admission, he did not fulfill his potential. Whenever he lost, it was not his fault. Even his defeat at the 1984 French Open he blamed on sound…

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The Dynamic Path: Access the Secrets of Champions to Achieve Greatness Through Mental Toughness, Inspired Leadership, and Personal Transformation

By James M. Citrin Rodale, 2007 ISBN #978-1-59486-358-5 Reviewed by Ian Cook Ground-breaking tennis great Billie Jean King won 20 Wimbledon titles, 13 US Opens, the French and Australian Opens, and was ranked the world’s No. 1 woman tennis player seven times. She went on to do pioneering work on Title IX legislation for women’s…

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Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work

By David Rock HarperCollins Publishers, 2006 ISBN #978-0-06-083590-3 Reviewed by Ian Cook Managers are default programmed to solve problems. That’s what they are paid to do. That’s what they are good at. And that is how they see themselves, at a subconscious level. So, when an employee comes with a problem, the manager’s knee-jerk reaction…

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A Leader’s Legacy

By James M. Kouzes & Barry Z. Posner Jossey-Bass, 2006 ISBN #978-0-7879-8296-6 Reviewed by Ian Cook As a leader, would you say one of your goals is to leave a legacy? Based on their observations of leaders over the last twenty years, Kouzes and Posner expect your answer is probably “yes.”

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Finding Our Way: Leadership For an Uncertain Time

By Margaret J. Wheatley Berrett-Koehler, 2005, ISBN #978-1-57675-317-0 Reviewed by Ian Cook Margaret Wheatley, back in 1992 with her book, Leadership and the New Science, was one of the first writers to bring into mainstream discussion the idea that organizations share a lot of the characteristics of living, self-organizing systems in nature. Large weather systems,…

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Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job

By Dennis W. Bakke PVG, 2005 ISBN #0-9762686-0-4 Reviewed by Ian Cook In 1982 Dennis Bakke co-founded the energy company AES and led it, by the year 2000, to $8.6 billion revenue, over $33 billion in assets in thirty-one countries, 40,000 employees, and an energy provider to over 100 million consumers. He resigned in 2002,…

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