WORKING THINGS OUT

Last year, amid the global recession, there were many opportunities to rethink our goals and how to reach them. This year is going to be a challenge, yet you swear to be better in every way. Don’t sweat it: Maggie Tiojakin reviews five books that will have you hitting the ground running this year and beyond on the road to success.

It’s been said before that running a legitimate, professional business is hard, but it’s a lot harder to run the business of people and relationships, which ironically is the key to every successful enterprise.

These books, all published in 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, the New Jersey-based publishing company that prints academic and motivational books geared toward students and professionals, are fine guides to help employees navigate their way through the corporate world.

The Five Dysfunctions of A Team (Manga Edition): An Illustrated Leadership Fable
Text By Patrick Lencioni
Illustration By Kensuke Okabayashi

Adapted from Patrick Lencioni’s best-selling The Five Dysfunctions of A Team: A Leadership Fable, published in 2002. This edition, illustrated by Kensuke Okabayashi, who teaches at the Educational Alliance Art School in New York City, gives the story a comic-book look without losing its hefty message. An interactive presentation that aims to entertain and enlighten at the same time, the manga edition of Lencioni’s best seller is just as riveting and groundbreaking as the original work.

In it, Lencioni introduces the five major dysfunctions that often plague a team and eventually lead to its demise: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results.

Using a fable to approach his readers, Lencioni creates a fictional company in dire need of organizational help. The main adviser, or character, in this fable is Kathryn, an experienced problem solver and the new CEO of Decision Tech in Silicon Valley, who attempts to get everyone at the company together on the same page – one meeting at a time.

Every imaginable hurdle that a team may come across is presented here, and each character has a tearing-out-their-hair moment complete with the exasperated look of someone who’s either underappreciated or plainly lacking audience, including Kathryn.

But as she goes about boosting the team’s morale and having them learn the importance of supporting one another as a single entity, you’ll find yourself nodding in agreement, even if you started out a little skeptical. Plus, Okabayashi’s illustrations makes it that much easier for readers to take in the concepts in one sitting.

Me, Inc.: How to Master the Business of Being You
By Scott W. Ventrella

Scott Ventrella is the executive vice president at a global consulting firm, SAI, whose clients comprise primarily executives of Forbes 500 companies. When Ventrella speaks, he does so from experience; and as a consultant, he molds his experiences into solutions that others can benefit from.

Me, Inc. is one such offering from this guru of self-development. Ventrella is not the kind of teacher who meets people halfway – he tackles the reader head-on, or not at all. This book, for instance, refers to its chapters as “milestones”, thus signifying a sense of accomplishment as the reader goes through the pages. And Ventrella doesn’t lecture, any more than he points out the different ways you can create a better you by following simple rules that will help you reach higher goals.

Me, Inc. is not a regular book, and it’s not a thesis. It’s the equivalent of signing up for boot camp or grad school, where you’re obliged to follow a set of activities or tasks in accordance to the goals you’ve set yourself. Ventrella calls his book “A Personalized Program for Exceptional Living” – and he’s not kidding. Each “milestone” ends with a worksheet that comes with check lists, a quick review before starting on a new journey toward the next milestone.

The best way to get the most out of Me, Inc. is to follow the trail of crumbs Ventrella has scattered to help you stay on the right track, because – as we all know – change is easy, but sticking to it is the difficult part. Fear not, though, for Ventrella has got you covered.

Blind Spots: Achieve Success By Seeing What You Can’t See
By Claudia M. Shelton

What are blind spots? “They’re the things we think and do unconsciously that can negatively influence how other people feel about us,” says the author, a professional life coach and president of the Hopewell Group.

In her latest work, Blind Spots, Claudia Shelton not only addresses the many flaws we consider as strengths, she also lists the reasons we’re due for a reassessment of our own self-portraits. Written in a conversational tone, Blind Spots urges the reader to improve their self-portrait by constantly checking on their behavior and habits. The book delves deep into our inner psyche and boldly challenges us to look within ourselves for all the things we feel we seriously lack – confidence, energy and optimism, among others.

More than that, Shelton doesn’t hold back when dispensing the set of techniques and tools she’s found to be useful in all the years she’s been coaching business entrepreneurs, managers and executives alike. And although the book seems to focus heavily on business-oriented personalities, the various elements included in each chapter are applicable to almost everyone with the general purpose to succeed in their lives.

While most self-improvement books are hell-bent on giving advice to their readers, Shelton merely shares her experience – which makes Blind Spots a great read. The book, at its best, will help you cultivate all your potentials to get to wherever it is you’ve always wanted to be in your life.

The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (and their Employees)
By Patrick Lencioni

Patrick Lencioni is a gifted storyteller, but he’s an even better management coach, whose take on the perilous aspects of corporate culture is nothing short of prodigious. He writes as well as any fiction writer known for their graceful prose and intriguing plots, though his aim has less to do with acquiring a dramatic balance in a story than it does with creating mental balance in a fable about grueling hours spent by corporate workers who feel as though they have come to a dead end.

The Three Signs of a Miserable Job doesn’t drag, as it’s filled with rich personalities from all walks of life who share one desire: to end their work-related misery. Even though Lencioni addresses plenty of issues faced by corporate executives who dread the idea of waking up in the morning and going in to their miserable jobs, he doesn’t limit the book to the inhabitants of the corporate realm. In an interview, Lencioni says The Three Signs of a Miserable Job is for everyone who has a job – people who know what it’s like to hate what they do and still force themselves to do it anyway.

This is the basis of Lencioni’s latest masterpiece, and by setting an example led by the characters in this fable, he urges his readers to identify three things that cause their misery – irrelevance, immeasurability, anonymity – before making the necessary efforts to turn their work experience into something meaningful that they can take pride in. After all, why stay miserable if you can work toward being happy?

Practical Intelligence: The Art and Science of Common Sense
By Karl Albrecht

A veteran in the business of strategic coaching and publishing, Karl Albrecht is the chairman of his own consultancy, Karl Albrecht International. A best-selling author who always believes in the power of the mind, Albrecht is a seasoned adviser to countless executives the world over.

His book, Practical Intelligence, is thought-provoking and rife with sensible (and informative) explanations that will help readers understand how having the IQ of a genius does not make one an intelligent person.

In a thick volume that spans nearly 400 pages, Albrecht dissects the human mind into thinking corners that generally, and inexplicably, respond to certain events. He separates street smarts from textbook genius, emotional and social intelligence, reality and non-reality in ways that will have the reader glued to the book from start to finish, as he takes examples from people’s daily habits and scrutinizes our thinking pattern as study materials.

Much of Practical Intelligence is candid and entertaining, with friendly approaches that steer clear of lecturing and adopt the warmth of heart-to-heart conversations. One subchapter is titled “We’re All Neurotic, And That’s OK” – answering the many issues raised by individuals who find their friend, co-worker, boss, lover or partner to be neurotic and difficult to deal with. Albrecht’s solution: “Take your time.”

Highly informative and very insightful, the book promises to change the way you think (and the world in which you live).

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