Welcome to the PMI-OC Book Club! On this page, you will find a wealth of information. First, you will find takeaways (provided by Book Club participants) from books that the Book Club has already read and discussed. Second, you will find rankings of those books. Books are ranked from "1" to "5" where "1" is the worst and "5" is the best. For each book, the initial ranking is a survey of initial thoughts about the book. The final ranking is a post-discussion ranking to discern opinions after discussion in case the opinions have changed. Finally, you will find information for the book to read for the next Book Club meeting.

Books Read

Book Information and Takeaways	Initial Rank	Final Rank
"Dare to Lead" by Brene Brown Vulnerability is an asset and not a weakness. The most successful and courageous leaders are risk takers who are not afraid of failing. In fact, failures often lead to creativity and great opportunities. Perfectionism can be unhealthy due to the constant need for approval and fear of criticism and failure. This leads to missed opportunities and mental paralysis, which hinders creativity. Be clear as to what you value and live those values. Be curious about what you don't know. Walk in other persons' shoes before judging. Think empathy in place of shame, even if you fail; don't fear failure. Embrace it as a learning opportunity.	4.45	4.32
"The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni Most people are conflict averse, but conflict is healthy for teams to perform at a higher level. The greatest dysfunction of a team is a lack of trust ‐ without it, the other dysfunctions cannot be managed/corrected and nothing can get accomplished.	4.63	4.71
"Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman EQ (Emotional Intelligence) can be improved. Our emotional health not only affects our interactions with others, but has just as much power over our individual successes and growth potential. With emotions being such a driving force, it behooves us to understand how emotions function physiologically, socially, and directly in our professional lives.	3.8	4
"Atomic Habits" by James Clear Does a thorough job in explaining the tools of engineering desired habits and eliminating unrewarding ones. For discussing the book in a professional business environment, I wish that there were more relevant examples from commerce and enterprise settings. The author's anecdotal examples were rather simple (e.g. losing weight, waking up early and improving athletic performance). The book focuses on one's habits, but, in the context of business, it's about developing and orchestrating the habits of your customers, employees, and other stakeholders.	3.83	3.18
"The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace" by Gary Chapman and Paul White Authenticity matters! Sincere appreciation is a powerful motivator. Everyone has a different appreciation language (e.g. words, acts, quality time, tangible gifts, and physical touch.) Understanding and speaking the right appreciation language to colleagues and direct reports is important. Mismatched expressions of appreciation can lead to misunderstandings and even worse, workplace dissatisfaction. I recognize and encourage appreciation at workplace. But the book attempts to tackle this topic with an engineered formula. In some ways, I feel that getting along with coworkers is a lot like "Be a good person..." so sometimes a lot of stuff in the book felt like common sense. All in all, I didn't find this helpful or satisfying as the original 5 Love Languages was for personal relationships[...] I am remote in my job and the book felt like so much of it was related to people you work with in person.	3.2	3.2
"Accidental Agile Project Manager" by Ray Frohnhoefer Provides a good summary of a wide variety of agile methods. Explains why agile methods are useful to use on certain projects. Full of practical tips and easy to follow. I really enjoyed Ray talking about his recommendation of starting with a small team of the best people — who work together, then build up credbility and roll it (the project/solution) out, bug free. That is the approach I beleive in and have found to be successful.	4.2	4.7
"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey One of my favorites as well. "Begin with the end in mind" is one of my go-to strategies. That book club session was so much fun! In both my professional life and personal life, I jump from deadline to deadline and focus too much on urgency that often I neglect what’s important. Time to “sharpen the saw” in 2024 and remind myself to set aside time for people or causes that are important to me. The richness of the discussion highlighted the relevance of Covey’s principles to the challenges project managers face. The discussion on empathetic listening was a cornerstone on improving communication with others.	4.5	4.82
"The Jelly Effect" by Andy Bounds My understanding of the book could be summed as, "Poor communication is like throwing jelly at a wall - it does not stick." "People do not care about what you say. They only care about what they are left with AFTER you’ve said it." I loved the author’s explanation of AFTER. It is like determining the effect you want your communication to have before the conversation starts. The communication tips within this book are great because they apply to a wide variety of situations, like how to network to promote professional development and specific strategies regarding it, how to give a presentation to a team or executives, or how to think about and understand the needs of stakeholders. "The Big Fish Concept : The people you are itching to meet (decision makers in organizations & influencers), once you identify them, you will see that they are everywhere." Although I have always known this, reading it in the book was very profound for me.	4	4.5
"How to Measure Anything" (Chapters 1 -7) by Douglas W. Hubbard My understanding of the reading could be summed as, "You can measure anything you want, as long as you know what you are measuring in a very concrete way." The section in the book on calibrating estimates was very exciting as it presents a very visceral way of understanding choices in the context of what it means to have a confidence interval of any given amount. Would you rather take a given chance to be right with your decision or answer or would you leave it up to spinning a wheel of the equivalent chance? I liked the discussion on risk management as it goes against traditional methods of risk assessment and reveals what those issues are and ways to rectify the shortcomings.	4.2	4.5
"How to Measure Anything" (Chapters 8 - 14) by Douglas W. Hubbard One of my takeaways is learning the skill Bayesian reasoning with the intent to integrate new information into decisions." A part I liked was the discussion on how, while correlation does not prove causation (which is something everyone says), the book makes the point that correlation is evidence of causation.	3.25	3.4
"Business Acumen For Project Managers" by Steven Haines I enjoyed learning about the importance of establishing relationships throughout an organization and not limiting myself to just my department in order to understand how everyone fits into the organization's overall goals. A part I liked was the discussion on the interaction between business strategy (how to get there), business goals (where to go), and the makeup of the business (where we are now).	3.7	4

Current Book to Read:

"The 360 Degree Leader" by John C. Maxwell

Synopsis from Amazon

Regardless of your position, learn how to lead with impact by utilizing John C. Maxwell's thirty years of experience teaching people how to make a significant difference in their organizations.

[...] John C. Maxwell debunks the myths that hold people back from leaning into and developing their influence. In this inspiring call-to-action, he shows middle managers how to leverage their unique positions and become 360 degree leaders by exercising influence in all directions--up (to the boss), across (among their peers), and down (to those they lead).

[...] The 360 Degree Leader equips you with the skills you need to begin making a difference in your organization, career, and life, today--with or without the promotion.

In "The 360 Degree Leader", you will:

Discover the truth about the seven myths every leader in the middle must face.

Learn strategies for dealing with the seven challenges of middle leadership, including the Frustration Challenge —following an ineffective leader.

Review the 9 principles you need to master in order to lead up, beginning with leading yourself exceptionally well.

Understand, practice, and complete the leadership loop as one of seven ways to lead across.

Reviews

—"John Maxwell‘s book is excellent on laying down guidelines to help you become a better leader. If you are willing to make changes in your own leadership style to become a better leader, just follow the steps and allow the changes to happen naturally and the people you lead will also learn how to be better leaders by the Example that you set."

—"In The 360 Degree Leader, by John C. Maxwell, he takes leadership out of the realm of top management only and puts it back into the hands of those in middle management positions as well! He does this by taking his over 30 years of leading and sharing insights that will help those in the middle of organizations to influence those around them in all directions — those above them, those below them, and even those on the same level as they are. This is what Maxwell calls a 360-degree leader!

In this book, Maxwell does a great job at getting us to consider how, if we want to, we truly can influence those around us regardless of where we’re at or where they are in our organization (and I would argue in our life as well). One of the tools he uses to do this is the real-life stories from himself, his team, and other leaders he knows sprinkled through the book. Each of these stories really helps to bring home a point that he is trying to make.

I also enjoyed how each of the main sections was broken up into bite-sized chapters covering only one main principle each. This made the concepts easier to digest and allowed him to build whole sections’ concepts up over time. However, if you are trying to read whole sections of the book at a time, this can get a little overwhelming due to their size.

If you are into leadership development and desire to have more influence, especially over your bosses, then I recommend this book to you!"