Book Reviews: Nigel Risner & Stephen R. Covey

Posted: August 22, 2016 by Jaime Stenning

This week we have a guest author for the Directors’ Centre Book Month Blog. Adam Harris of Fresh Mindset.

Adam specializes in providing leaders with the insights and tools they need to develop expertise in making the right introductions, and leverage this knowledge for strategic sales success.

He reviewed two books for us, Nigel Risner – It’s a zoo around here and Stephen R. Covey – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Thanks Adam!

 

Nigel Risner

“It’s a Zoo Around Here” – The new rules for better communication

A great little book to read over your lunch hour- short, simple and something for everyone. Nigel tries to create communication types and group them based on styles, prompts and stimuli. It’s a fascinating but essentially simple guide to identify the types of people in your teams and how best to motivate, inspire and all round get the best out of them, by adapting your own strategy when communicating with them.

Are you a playful extrovert monkey? Or a caring supporting dolphin? Identify the differences and choose your style to get them to respond. I tried it at home too – that was an interesting evening…

Read it in under an hour and change how you perceive your colleagues – and maybe your family too!

 

Stephen R. Covey

“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”

Don’t inwardly groan – I know EVERYONE in management has apparently read this book, and further more EVERY coach and trainer has referred to it and waxed lyrical about it. There’s a reason for that…

It’s actually very good and stripped down to its simplest form by the power of social media as a short cartoon video, it had a massive effect on a team that I worked in recently. This was a team who did not read management books, who did not embrace training and learning, but saw it very much as a ‘trial’ in-between getting on with their work. That little video was all we needed to allow everyone in the group to identify one of those habits, and for it to resonate.

Then they read the book.

You will still be coming back to this text years ahead – and still finding ways to implement it, especially in teams new to you, and where ineffective and unconscious behaviour prevails. If you have read it in the last 12 months – go find the LinkedIn cartoon recap for three minutes – you will enjoy. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure do give it a go. It’s full of practical examples and stories from Covey’s life that illustrates what he is trying to say. Well worth a 27^th read!