| January 19th |
"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 |
| March 16th |
"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 |
| May 18th |
"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 |
| July 20th |
"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 |
| September 21st |
"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 |
| November 16th |
"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 |
