Book Reviews
Here are a selection of Book Reviews taken from our free e-newsletter "In Equilibrium"
- The Courageous Messenger: How to Successfully Speak up at Work by Kathleen Ryan, Daniel Oestreich and George Orr
- The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen R Covey
- Use Your Memory by Tony Buzan
- Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
- Stress Management by Edward Charlesworth and Ronald Nathan
- When Perfect Isn't Good Enough by Martin Antony and Richard Swinson
- Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman
- Beating the 24/7 by Winston Fletcher
- Time to Think by Nancy Kline
- What Do You Really Want for Your Children by Wayne Dyer
- Success Strategies for the Crazy Busy - Edward M Hallowell MD
1. The Courageous Messenger: How to Successfully Speak up at Work
by Kathleen Ryan, Daniel Oestreich and George Orr
Have you ever been in the position of having to speak up about something at work but been very worried about the consequences of doing so? I'm sure everyone has. We often take what seems the easy way out and don't speak up at all. So the bad practice, or worse, bad behaviour continues.
This book doesn't shy away from the fact that it takes courage to be a messenger, especially about difficult issues. It explains in very practical ways what to do and what not to do in such circumstances, how to find the courage and assess the risks involved, and how to go through the process step by step, including preparation and follow-through. What I like about the book is that it answers the big questions (how, what, why, where and when), and does so in a straightforward no-jargon way. Another strength of the book is that it encourages self-reflection at each stage. As someone who has not always thought before he spoke and suffered the consequences, I really appreciated this.
This book has something to teach all of us, not least about ourselves. Being a courageous messenger requires both leadership and courage. The pay-off can't always be seen on the outside, but can certainly be felt on the inside.
2. The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People
by Stephen R. Covey
Funny how American writers always have to have the middle initial. Mine’s a P. just in case you’re interested (I know you’re not). This is one of the most famous personal development books ever written and has since spawned a veritable industry – leadership training, time management systems, you name it. In a way that’s a shame because it dilutes the power of the original work.
I think it’s a great book. I like it because it tells us the truth; and the truth is that personal development and growth is an internal job, and there are no quick fixes. There are many who would have us believe that learning a few specialised techniques will transform our lives, and enable us to become ‘master practitioners’ of communication. They are wrong. These ‘techniques’ will only impress other ‘master practitioners.’ Everyone else will think you’re strange.
The seven habits are fundamental truths, and as Covey explains them, you can feel quite uncomfortable as you remember the many times you did the opposite with painful human consequences. The ideas are powerful and have become part of our language now e.g. the win-win, being proactive. My favourite is ‘the emotional bank account.’ This is the truth that we have to invest in relationships for them to bear fruit. How often do we forget that one, even with the people that we love?!
3. Use Your Memory
by Tony Buzan
I first discovered Tony Buzan when undertaking a psychology experiment at an Open University summer school in Durham about 6 years ago. The experiment was about memory and involved ways of distracting people who were trying to remember about 20 different objects, which had nothing at all in common. To our amazement 2 of the eighteen or so people taking part in the experiment not only remembered all the objects correctly, they also recalled them in the correct order.
When asked how they were able to do this, both said they had read a Tony Buzan book. Intrigued I immediately rushed out and bought ‘Use Your Memory’. I found it fascinating, as it was full of detail about how the brain and memory work and how to put this knowledge to practical use. One of the memory techniques described involves linking whatever it is you are trying to remember to a setting or journey you are familiar with. This could be your own home or your daily journey to work. The trick is to then link or hook whatever you are trying to remember to familiar objects in your story. With a little practice this works very well, but the results improve even more when you bring emotions into the story. This technique helps with everyday items like names and dates but can also help you remember facts and figures for meetings and presentations. Buzan also explains the relationship between your emotions and your memories. If you think about this yourself you will find that your most vivid memories were highly emotional events, both happy and sad. He again explains how this knowledge can be used practically.
The Buzan Mind Mapping techniques are also of great use. I have used them very successfully to help to improve my understanding of organisations or structures that I previously found complicated and confusing. They are also a very effective way of taking notes at a lecture or a meeting. I have also found them to be an invaluable aid when making presentations or any other situation where you need to remember a lot of detail and how it links together. Whatever your need or interest, it is hard to image that you will not benefit from investing in a Tony Buzan book.
4. Emotional Intelligence
By Daniel Goleman
This is the original, classic book on ‘Emotional Intelligence’. As someone who has never considered himself as being over endowed with conventional intelligence, I found this book answered many questions for me. Goleman explains how Emotional Intelligence (EQ) can, at the end of the day, be more powerful than conventional IQ.
The author constantly backs up his theories with references to relevant scientific research and studies. I was particularly interested in a study of CEOs in the United States aimed at identifying the key attributes of successful businessmen. Conventional expectations are that the cleverest and the toughest individuals generally power their way to the top. However the study Goleman refers to reveals that the commonest single quality of CEOs is the ability to stay on good terms with past colleagues who they can call on to help them to solve problems.
Quite simply the more help you can get when you have a problem the quicker you will solve it. Also, if you’ve taken the trouble to keep in touch with someone then they are likely to respond promptly to your request for help. If however this is the first time you’ve spoken to them for years, they are less likely to go out of their way to help you. For me, this example demonstrates the real power of EQ.
The book also discusses the practical repercussions of low EQ, by focussing on examples of bad management and situations where disasters have occurred because staff are simply too frightened to give their boss bad news. The most extreme example of this is where an airline pilot’s crew neglect to inform him about a fault in the plane's landing gear for fear of receiving his legendary wrath when things go wrong. Any manager who generates fear in their staff is without doubt lacking in EQ. The cost of management by fear is lack of information or receiving too little too late.
Goleman also discusses motivation, teamwork, and how groups respond to good and bad EQ from a leader. He explains how managers with low EQ frequently voice criticisms as personal attacks rather than as complaints that can be acted upon. Such managers are described as displaying an ignorance of the feelings they can trigger in their staff through the use of destructive personal criticism.
This is an interesting and easy book to read, I have no hesitation in recommending it.
5. Stress Management
by Edward Charlesworth and Ronald Nathan
I recommend this book to my clients on a regular basis. The reason for this is that it looks at all the common themes found in stress related problems and breaks them down into manageable chunks. It doesn't blind you with science, it just gives you practical things to do and to think about in terms of how you are living your life and the things you might want to think about changing.
Another thing I like about this book is that you can easily dip in and out of it - if there is an area of your life you want to focus on e.g. anger control, assertiveness, relaxation etc. you can read that section alone, you don't have to read the whole book from cover to cover to get the idea (a common stressor when you have limited time!)
The first 3 chapters focus on understanding stress; how you respond to it, the challenges it provides and discovering where it comes from. The next chapter looks at the various options for beginning to manage your own stress.
Chapters 5-10 cover different aspects of relaxation from progressive relaxation, scanning your body for tension and breathing for relaxation, to imagery training.
Chapters 11-12 look at specific stressors. Recognising your own stress response, and having found a particular stressor you want to target, it takes you through a process of tackling that stressor.
Chapters 13-17 break your stressful behaviours, thoughts and attitudes into manageable chunks. Areas like life changes, how to reduce your physical risk (coronary heart disease), taking the stress out of what you tell yourself, anxiety and anger are covered here.
Chapters 18-20 discuss assertiveness which is often omitted from stress management books, even although I think it is something that is an integral part of managing stress. How do you manage your workload if you can't say no to people? If criticism is something that floors you for days, how can you expect to improve your performance?
Chapter 21 looks at time management, another weak point for many of us. It focuses on what you can do, and how to avoid the common pitfalls e.g."time robbers".
Chapters 22-23 look at exercise and nutrition, again these are good chapters to dip in and out of (although you might be better off going to the pool!)
Finally chapter 24 looks at putting all of this knowledge together, having realistic goals, how to pick yourself up again, keeping motivated etc.
It sounds like it might be the kind of book that you need an extra bag for, it isn't. Its a paperback and is small enough to carry around.
One word of caution: Reading this book alone is unlikely to manage your stress!! Like all the other stress management techniques it is one thing knowing about them and quite another to actually turn it into stress management. If you are tempted to buy it, plan to use the techniques too!! But remember, you can dip in and out of it, so reading the chapter relevant to you and doing something about that particular aspect could do the trick.
6. When Perfect Isn't Good Enough
by Martin Antony and Richard Swinson
I find that perfectionism is often a common underlying theme for a lot of problems ranging from anxiety to depression. This book is full of practical exercises to try to challenge some of the underlying thoughts that make us perfectionist about particular issues.
You don't have to be perfectionist in every angle of your life to benefit from this book - I think it is healthier to think of perfectionism in a similar way to stress, in that we all tend to suffer from it at some point at some level throughout the course of our lives.
I don't think of myself as a particularly perfectionist character, however I do know that there are times, particularly when I am feeling stressed, that I have unrealistic expectations of myself. If you recognise this in yourself, you may find this book useful.
This book does tend to look at problems that have reached a level where they are interfering with your day to day living, and so at times it is very intense, but if you can read it and just take from it what you feel you need, I think it can be very useful.
The book is divided into 3 main parts: Part 1 is about understanding what perfectionism actually is. It looks at the areas of your life it might affect, the origins of it, why some people don't appear to suffer from it and the impact it has on your life. It looks at perfectionist thoughts and behaviours and the typical styles of thinking that accompany these.
Part 2 is about overcoming perfectionism, looking at how much it actually affects you, developing a plan for change and ways of changing perfectionist thoughts and behaviours.
The last few chapters (part 3) look at specific problems that often go hand in hand with perfectionism and these include depression, anger, social anxiety, worry, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, dieting and body image.
If you dread making mistakes and feel that nothing you do is quite good enough this book offers hope and help to overcome the need to be perfect and it might even help you to find ways of accepting yourself with your limitations!
7. Learned Optimism
by Martin Seligman
Why is it that some people can overcome adversity and others can’t? Why are some people more prone to depression than others? How can some sales people keep going despite getting one ‘no’ after another, while some give up after the first ‘no’? This brilliant and important paperback answers these questions.
Martin Seligman is one of the most important psychologists of the last fifty years. His early work on ‘learned helplessness’ proved that in an expectation of failure for example, the thought that ‘nothing I can do will make any difference’, dramatically increases the risk of depression. In his early experiments he found that animals that could not influence the outcome of stressful events (in this case, getting an electric shock) became helpless. This ‘learned helplessness’ is also shown by most humans in exactly the same way. However, a minority of experimental subjects bucked the trend. Some of us he found, even in the face of extreme adversity that we cannot control, don’t give up and don’t become helpless.
It’s all down to our ‘explanatory style’, how we think about and rationalise the bad things that happen to us. Seligman discovered that the resilient people were optimists. Optimists tend to think of adversity as temporary, specific, and external, whereas for pessimists adversity is more likely to be thought of in permanent, pervasive and personal ways. For example, sales people have to make cold calls and get a lot of knock-backs. The pessimistic salesman might think: ‘I hate cold calling. I just annoy people and I’m not cut out for selling’. The optimistic salesman might think: ‘I gave it my best shot, but she was obviously in a bad mood’. Maybe she had a bad day at work.’ The pessimist is likely to very quickly give up and feel depressed, whereas the optimist will keep going and not feel depressed because he doesn’t feel responsible for the poor outcome.
Using this book, you can find out how optimistic or pessimistic you really are (you might be surprised), and how this affects you in different ways. Seligman clearly demonstrates how you can train yourself to be more optimistic and challenge or ‘dispute’ your pessimistic thoughts and ‘catastrophising’. It’s not a book about positive thinking as such. There are times when it is appropriate to be pessimistic. Rather it is about finding appropriate thinking strategies that maximise your chances of success and happiness, while minimising your risk of illness and depression, especially when confronted by adversity.
The advice given in this book is not opinion or hype. Seligman’s work is based upon many years of hard research with control groups. We can say with real conviction that this stuff works!
8. Beating the 24/7: How business leaders achieve a successful work-life balance.
by Winston Fletcher
I don't really know what I was expecting when I ordered this book, I suppose, having recently returned to work after having a baby I was looking for some help in combining work and family life as I have suddenly become aware of the organisation required!
As well as some general tips on creating a healthy work life balance for yourself, this book contains 16 chapters of work/life interviews with business leaders from Sir Dominic Cadbury to Sir Richard Branson.
Each chapter covers their thoughts on the main areas which are important in creating this work life balance: questions over working hours, working weekends, how contactible you are, whether you are interupted in your holidays, how you deal with technology such as email and mobile phones, whether you make it to your childrens sports days etc.
In retrospect I was naively expecting a book with all the answers, and I didn't think these would involve getting up at 4am every morning in order to be able to do it all! The interviewees don't really encourage this, but I would definitely say that this book is full of real practical tips rather than 'airy-fairy' ones that don't actually involve any effort on your part. To quote the author Winston Fletcher:
"...but the real secret is there is no secret. Nothing works better than working at it: aim to improve your work/life balance and your work/life balance will improve.
Of course, work/life balance isn't just for people with children, its for people with lives and without that balance you won't have a life! Friendships, extended family, hobbies, time on your own are all discussed in this book, and the interviewees all seem to have gone through a process of prioritising what they want to spend their time on.
Of the 16 business leaders only 4 are women. The support of the partner is an integral part of the success for all of these people as they tell of there own experiences. One sad fact I would say is that generally speaking the person who has made a success in their business life has had a partner who has been able to totally commit to that success rather than someone who is themselves trying to achieve a business career. It would appear to be the case that we do not live in a culture where a couple can both combine career and family life easily. On the whole, it seems that one person has to take responsibility for family life (usually the wife in these examples) to run smoothly.
Each chapter ends with the interviewees top tips for keeping your balance, so it is a great book to refer back to, just to make sure you are still on course. Here is a selection of some of the top tips, they demonstrate the diversity of experiences and opinions in the book:
Sir Richard Sykes
(Formerly Chief Executive and subsequently Chairman of GlaxoSmithKline)
"Emails, mobiles and faxes are not intrusive at all. A mobile phone only works if you turn it on. So I use my mobile, it doesn't use me."
Michael Grade CBE (Formerly Chief Ececutive Channel 4, Controller of BBC1)
"If you need time to unwind when you first get home of an evening, or to wind yourself up in the morning, explain this to your partner. A single explanation will avert a thousand misunderstandings"
Baroness Hogg (Chairman of 3i and of Frontier Economics)
"The more I look back on my working life, the more convinced I am of my dependence on good fortune. If you are working and bringing up a family, having luck, in terms of one's childrens health and the general ability to run one's life on a continuing basis, without having to drop everything and concentrate exclusively on them - and I was well aware at all points that something could easily happen that would mean I would have to do that - was just very fortunate."
Sir Christopher Bland (Chairman of BT)
"The more often you work through lunch, the less often you will need to work late or take work home."
Sir Richard Branson (Chairman of the Virgin Group of Companies)
"Spend as much time as you can, while you can, with your parents."
"Being able to sleep well at night is quite a good way of judging whether one is leading a good life or not. One day you are going to have that last night before you go to sleep permanently, and it will be quite nice to know that you have managed to tick everything off in a fairly decent manner."
Lord Stevenson CBE (Chairman of HBOS)
"Do not be too proud, too macho, or too scared to discuss your failures as well as your successes with your partner. A problem shared is a problem punctured."
I found this book interesting and motivational. The work-life balance I want to achieve might be slightly different from the ones the interviewees talk about in this book, but one thing is for sure, the only person that can make my work-life balance work for me is me, and this book spells that out with numerous examples!
9. Time to Think: Listening to ignite the Human Mind
by Nancy Kline
On the first year of my degree course I was shocked by the lecturers attitudes towards essay writing, you were not expected to come up with any original ideas - an original thought was seen as a rather negative thing!
Everything we wrote had to be backed up by research. I thought to myself, how is anyone going to have any original ideas if they constantly have to be in the context of research that has already been done. To this day I still believe that a lot of education has the effect of reducing original ideas to essays of regurgitated old research.
This book "Time to Think" challenges that whole climate. It introduces the concept of the "Thinking Environment". Which is an environment where we are encouraged to think freely.
The ideas in this book are based on the assumption that the quality of everything we do depends on the thinking we do first, and our thinking depends on the quality of the attention we give each other.
It describes a "Thinking Environment" which is 10 components that can be applied in any setting to enable others to think for themselves. One of the main ideas is that "The brain that contains the problem probably also contains the solution".
One of the main things that I like about this book is the way in which it is based on equality and respect for all people. The idea that, given the right environment, we are all capable of coming up with genuinely new and interesting ideas. The author talks about negative assumptions being the main things that cause blocks and stops free thinking from taking place. She demonstrates ways to ask incisive questions to shatter the assumptions and free us to think again.
Here are some extracts from the book on various topics, from the concept of competition to the ability to listen. You might, like me, find some of the concepts quite refreshing!
A fascinating section challenges the foundations of competition: "..to compete does not ensure excellence. It just ensures comparitive success."
"Focus on a good idea rather than winning"
"The minute you begin listening to someone, your assumption about their ability to think for themselves will affect how well you pay attention and how confident you are in the likelihood that they will think perhaps even better than you can about their issue. If you think their brain is inferior to yours, they will know it even if you do a dance a minute trying to hide it. "
"Equality helps the loud people from silencing the quiet ones. But it also requires the quiet ones to contribute. In a thinking environment noone can abdicate responsibility for thinking. "
For me the main benefit of this book wasn't so much in the practical application of the techniques, but more in the enthusiasm for free thinking that it fired up in me. As you can see from my description of my college years, I think creating that enthusiasm is something that is far too rare in our culture today, but if we don't start to incorporate it into education and business we may have to put up with regurgitated ideas from our greatest resource, ourselves!
10. What Do You Really Want For Your Children?
by Dr Wayne W. Dyer
This book has helped so many parents and also teachers since it was published five years ago. It is full of common sense, as a parent told me they kept nodding in agreement as they read it. We live in a culture with many pressures on our children whatever their age and on through the teens and later (yes, many adults have found this book helpful as well).
How do we help our children to enjoy life whilst also making sensible life choices so that they do not get hurt or hurt others?
The content includes:
- Seven simple secrets for building your child's self esteem
- How to give young children love without 'spoiling' them
- How to stimulate creativity (research has shown in America that the average child loses forty per cent of its creativity within two years of going to school)
- How to encourage appropriate risk taking and overcome the fear of failure
- Action Strategies for dealing with your own anger and frustration and the child's
- The secrets of raising children relatively free of illness
- And much more......
I thoroughly recommend this paperback and wish it had been around when our children were small.
11. CD - Success Strategies for the Crazy Busy - Edward M Hallowell MD
You may thrive in an atmosphere of high adrenaline, high energy, and high excitement. But have you found yourself going the next stage further, when you become so busy that you are not enjoying much of anything and feeling there is too much demanding your attention with new technologies, longer working days, escalating demands and higher expectations at home?
Dr Hallowell is an expert in ADD and has found that adults under pressure can develop a culturally induced state similar to ADD. This programme is to help you build a manageable game plan for turning a hectic life into a happy, productive, rewarding, and satisfying life. He gives 10 key principles to managing modern life. He also gives a six-step plan to deal with overload.
The most stressed are getting into what is called the F State: frenzied, flailing, fearful, forgetful, furious. Instead learn to be in the C State: cool, calm, clear, consistent, curious, and courteous.
CD 1 How did we get Here? Includes the Type A-isation of our society. Why are we so busy. The irresistible force of staying busy, etc.
CD 2 Dealing with the ADD-like World Dealing with overload, a three step plan to dealing with toxic worry. The myth of multitasking. Preserving your mental energy, etc.
CD 3 Dealing with Distractions Sources of distractions, C state compared with F state. 12 ways of preserving the C state. Setting limits for email, cell phone, and the computer. Finding life's rhythm.
CD 4 Creating a System that Will Work for You Do what matters most to you. Looking at where your time does go. Creating a C state environment for yourself. Slow down. Learn to say no, etc.
CD 5 Improving Your Ability to Focus and Enjoy Life: The Power of Connection Elements of a connected life in all areas of your life. Making sure your children are connected at school. Six steps to deal with overload. Dealing with guilt. The truth about time management systems. Paying attention.
CD 6 Keeping Your Brain Sharp with the 7-Step Brain Plan The importance of finding the right fit for you. Step 1: Select an Assessment - Questions 1 to 20. Step 2: Connect (5). Step 3: Imagine (6). Step 4: Practice (7). Step 5: Mastery (8). Step 6: Recognition (9). Step 7: Take care of your brain. As shown in brackets each step has several stages.
CD-ROM Workbook: The Busy Person's Survival Guide
Just as computer software has improved vastly in recent years so have the techniques for the human computer, our brain. But like a computer it depends how it is used and what software we run! I recommend this course to those who are really serious at becoming their own experts.
Reveiwed by Dr D Mason Brown
Dr Hollowell is the founder of the Hallowell Centre for Cognitive and Emotional Health in Sudbury, Mass. He is a psychiatrist and a member of the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School from 1983 to 2004.
Nightingale Conant are the largest producers of psychology, health, well-being, and quality of life products usually in CD form. This course can be requested on a thirty day trial. Tel:01803 666100. Cost: £72.90.
Consists of 6 CDs and a CD-ROM workbook
