Book Beat

Wired for Authenticity: Seven Practices to Inspire, Adapt, & Lead

Leadership today is more challenging than ever. Trends including the rapid pace of change, constant restructuring, and a 24/7, always-on work environment are creating overwhelmed employees and eroding trust in workplaces. Gallup has conducted employee engagement surveys for over thirty years with research involving over 17 million employees in 192 companies in 49 industries and 34 countries. Interestingly, over those three decades, the numbers have remained consistent with only 13 percent of employees engaged, 63 percent not engaged, and 24 percent actively disengaged. Wired for Authenticity: Seven Practices to Inspire, Adapt, & Lead (©2015, iUniverse), by Henna Inam, offers tools on how to practice a new model of authenticity: to be more agile and trusted and less overwhelmed; to engage and influence clients, peers, and bosses more powerfully, and to lead team members with more inspiration and ease .

 
You Are Singletasking: Get More Done One Thing at a Time

As author Devora Zack explains in Singletasking: Get More Done One Thing at a Time (©2015, Berrett-Koehler), multitasking is unnatural, ineffective, stressful, and occasionally dangerous. The book presents methods for tackling your insurmountable list of to-dos with less effort and greater ease. Sprinkled throughout with quotes, quizzes, and suggestions, the book tackles ways to focus on what’s important so that you can succeed—whether in the office or in your personal space. Of course, we all know that technology, which gives us the ability to plug in 24/7 and the expectation that things must be tackled and responded to immediately, is a big part of the problem. Zack cites from researchers at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, who found that:


  • 86% of executives say its inappropriate to take phone calls during meetings;
  • 84% of executives believe it’s rude to write texts or emails during meetings;
  • 75% of executives find it disrespectful to read texts or emails during meetings; and
  • 66% of professionals think it’s inappropriate to go online during meetings.
Unleashing the Leadership Skills You Already Have

Traditional business advice suggests that you should work on improving your weak skills, ttying to turn then into strengths. Hidden Strengths: Unleashing the Leadership Skills You Already Have (©2015, Berrett-Koehler), by Thuy Sindell and Milo Sindell, suggests the opposite—that you focus your energies on identifying and elevating middle skills, those 70% of your abilities that lie between your weaknesses and strengths. Unlike weaker skills, the authors maintain that these underdeveloped skills are the richest source for growth. The authors have identified four categories of skills critical to professional success: leading self; leading others; leading the organization; and leading implementation. The book identifies and discusses specific skills within each of these categories and how they lead to success.