"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 |
