Book Club

Live & Learn BOOK CLUB

WHICH BOOKS SHOULD BE KEEPING LEADERS AND MANAGERS AWAKE AT NIGHT? EDGE REVIEWS SOME OF THE MOST INTRIGUING TITLES AROUND

The Connector Manager

Authors Jaime Roca and Sari Wilde Price £14.99 Virgin Books

Making the right connections illuminates those around you

In this disrupted, topsy-turvy world, we see established elements that we viewed as immovable being upended. The authors of this book have given management the same treatment.

The difference with The Connector Manager is that the book is based on wide and extensive research that produced some surprising results. The connector manager emerged as consistently performing – better than the rest, even better than the coach manager.

As an experienced coach myself, this was a bitter pill to swallow, but reading more of the authors’ findings allayed my fears that coaching was under threat. It was the constant and sometimes over-coaching manager that performed less well. From their research, the authors identified four manager types: Teacher, Always on, Connector and Cheerleader. We can all identify previous managers we’ve worked for, who have demonstrated these styles to varying degrees of success.

It was no surprise, though, that they identified the organisation, the team and the employee as the three areas where the Connector Manager was most effective. They gave Narongsak Osottanakorn as a fascinating, but inspiring, example of leadership in extreme circumstances, and someone who demonstrated the effectiveness of connecting to the right people. He led the rescue of the Wild Boars youth football team, which became trapped by rising water in underground caves in Thailand.

OK, management in the less dramatic world is not always like that, but the ‘connector’ skills that Osottanakorn demonstrated brought about their safe rescue. Unfortunately, one of the Thai Navy divers lost his life in rescuing them. You’ll need to read the book to find out more. The practical application of three imperatives throughout the book enables us to envisage how we might, as connector managers ourselves, improve our performance, and hence the performance of our teams and organisations. I’ll leave it to you to make your own connections. Reviewer Barry Wilding-Webb is a learning and development practitioner, leadership coach and training manager

It’s the Manager

Authors Jim Clifton and Jim Harter Price £27.99 Gallup Press

Advice for helping your organisation to prosper

Jim Clifton is chairman and chief executive of polling and analytics company Gallup, while Jim Harter is its chief scientist. Following Gallup’s study on the future of work, they have a clear message: the one thing you need to improve the fortunes of your organisation is great managers.

How Leaders Learn To Boost Creativity in Teams

Author Rob Sheffield Price £40 World Scientific Europe

A book for the more academic manager

I feel compelled to be honest in my feedback on this book: it over

The authors introduce a number of concerns. Companies are relying on acquiring competitors as their growth strategy, rather than growing organically. Productivity is waning and therefore household income is suffering because of rising expenses.

Then there is change within the workforce. A new generation is coming through, which has different expectations of work. For them, purpose trumps a pay cheque. They don’t want a boss, they want a coach. Out goes the annual review, in comes ongoing feedback. Their focus is not their weaknesses, but their strengths. And this is not just a job to them, it’s their life.

The authors’ call-to-arms is simple. If you want this generation promises and under-delivers. Now I will explain why.

It has a great title: How Leaders Learn to Boost Creativity in Teams. ‘Learn’ is the word that made this book appealing – we hear a lot about needing to do it, but not so much about learning how to do it.

I set out to read the book with an open mind, since I am not new to text or practice on innovation. Quickly, however, I came across what, for me, was the first stumbling block. I like to get completely absorbed in a text, looking for it to spark ideas in my mind that link the author’s thoughts to real-life opportunities that I can work on. This book didn’t really do that. It is a complex book and not for to do well, if you want to grow your business, if you want your customer engagement, sales and share price to increase, it all comes back to how good your managers are. They cover 52 ‘breakthroughs’ from their research, which they want you to dip into for inspiration. Each breakthrough is around two pages. So, if you like detail and practical information, you’re going to be left wanting. Disappointingly, as this book is not low budget, the conclusion is reached by page 186, which leaves hundreds of pages of appendices, references and notes. Reviewer David Price MInstLM is a manager and author of several books on entrepreneurship, leadership and management.

Follow him on Twitter @DavidLeoPrice someone who is looking to flick, find an idea and have a go at it. It is a scientifically grounded book that shows the reader how innovation can be learnt, but not how to learn it.

One point I did take from the book is the need to have innovation as part of the regular weekly meeting agenda. I totally agree with that. Innovation can’t be an elitist subject that is owned by, for example, the quality team. The cover price of this book is £40. Maybe that gives an indication that it isn’t meant to be a book to be browsed. It’s more of a book to take seriously. Reviewer Penny Whitelock FinstLM is director of coaching firm Crystal Clear Business Solutions

Leading by Coaching

Author Nick Marson Price £27.99 Palgrave Macmillan

Fails to deliver

I tried to like this book, but couldn’t even finish it. This is one of the worst books I have ever read. It seems unsure of its own purpose. The title suggests it is about ‘becoming a better leader by coaching your people’, but the content seems to be mostly about coaching leaders. The book flips between the two. Although it provides several nice generalities about coaching (“You coach at the speed of trust, one conversation at a time”), it rarely delivers specifics on how to achieve those things. Instead, it repeats the same idea, sometimes in the next paragraph, sometimes a page or two later, over and over. And over.

Often this seemed more like a brain dump of notes for a book that will be structured later. I often finished a chapter, with little or no idea of what the key message was.

Try The Coach’s Coach by Alison Hardingham instead. Or perhaps Max Landsberg’s The Tao of Coaching. Or Core Coaching by Sheridan Maguire. Reviewer Finn Jackson is a strategist, coach, consultant and author

Live & Learn BOOK CLUB

Purposeful

Author Jennifer Dulski Price £14.99 Virgin Books

Have you got what it takes?

The first two chapters of Purposeful talk about everyday people inspiring change, and offer a vision of those with a real sense of passion standing up for something they believe in. General social issues are cited, such as athletic wear for women wearing the hijab, or healthy food for children.

In the third chapter, Purposeful moves on to practical ideas for those seeking to initiate a change movement, whatever its nature. I was struck by the number of techniques that were familiar to me – and probably many readers – as a result of our general management and leadership experiences. How To Fix Your Sh*t Author Sháá Wasmund Price £9.99 Penguin Life

If you do nothing, nothing changes This book was waiting for me on my return from holiday – a time when most of us have good intentions about changing our lives. In total, it took about 90 minutes to read and was easy to digest.

As the title suggests, the book does not solely focus on sorting your work life out. It is a book about sorting your life out in general. Whatever problem you want to address – your weight, your smoking addiction, your relationship, the fact that you’re not quite where you want to be – this book aims to address it.

IT TAKES MORE THAN ONE BIG IDEA TO BE SUCCESSFUL

The book did a good job of pulling together a range of these tools and techniques, and showing how they could, and have been, used to create movements. The book has a lot of examples, mainly success stories, but it also shows that it takes more than one big idea or a feeling of injustice to be successful. A person who wants to be a movement starter needs energy – bags of it – and personal resilience, sufficient for a long haul.

A clear vision is essential to starting a movement, backed up by a strategy that can be communicated to others and will enthuse them. It is essential to build a team and take on responsibility for leading and managing it.

Reflecting on the things I would need to do to take an idea of my own and create a movement, I’m not sure I have enough time or passion to see it through. But Jennifer Dulski’s book is quite inspiring, and I believe that by learning from it, I will increase my chances of having a Reviewer Christine Elgood MBA designs management games and business simulations. She is managing director of Elgood Effective Learning

positive impact.

Author Sháá Wasmund MBE is a serial entrepreneur who knows what it’s like to face challenges. She lost her partner and the father of her son when she was in her mid-thirties. So, in the book, she talks honestly about the overwhelming grief she felt at her loss, which adds depth and resonance to the narrative.

Wasmund’s main message is that if you want to change things, you need to quit the excuses, self-criticism and self-pity, and just get on with it. She does include some more practical advice, however, which is centred around surrounding yourself with the right people, asking for help, continuing to learn and addressing your negative inner voice. She is also an advocate of getting up early – she wakes at 5.30am every day, including Sundays.

At a high level, I would say that the contents of this book are more geared towards why you should sort your life out, as opposed to how you can do it. For me, that left it a bit lacking.

I did find it quite motivational, however, and I was impressed by the author’s obvious go-getting attitude. Reviewer Sally Percy is editor of ‘Edge’

The same but different

National responses to the Covid-19 pandemic reflect diversity in cultural values

If you want to judge a culture, see how it tackles different kinds of problem. The Covid-19 pandemic, which was caused by the novel coronavirus, has struck the entire world this year. East Asia plus China, despite having far less notice, survived the initial onslaught of Covid-19 much better than North America and Europe.

So what accounts for the variations in how countries responded? Cultural diversity expert Fons Trompenaars and I have measured cultures on different value dimensions. Significantly, some values protect us from this kind of shock better than others.

Take universal rules and particular exceptions. China and the East tend to see exceptions before they see rules. The novel coronavirus, unknown to science, was as exceptional as they come. In February, Taiwan stopped flights to China in an effort to control the spread of the virus and it screened all returnees – even while the World Health Organization was saying this was unnecessary. Vietnam closed its borders on the day China warned the world. Singapore had its police interview all suspected cases and locate their contacts.

Nations also differ on individualism and community. The virus is a direct threat to communities. The speed with which East Asian nations locked down their communities, enforced social distancing, tested for the virus and rushed protective gear to their medics was remarkable. A hospital was built in the Chinese city of Wuhan in just ten days. In contrast, the West fretted about curtailing freedoms. Different US states competed with one another and so increased the costs of protective equipment. The pretence was that medics were “sacrificing themselves” heroically when, in fact, governments were

By Charles Hampden-Turner

letting them down through lack of preparation. The UK permitted a quarter of a million people to attend the Cheltenham Festival in mid-March. It had also allowed its National Health Service to pay for the financial fiasco of 2008.

Cultures differ greatly in their attention to ‘specific things’ and ‘diffuse wholes’. Things include money, property, rights and bullets. Wholes include human relations, flows of knowledge and infections that jump from one person to the next. With Covid-19, it was the latter that had to be addressed immediately and at whatever cost to property, rights and profits. But the West reacted grudgingly. Florida beaches were still crowded in late March. In Australia, people flouted warnings and Bondi Beach had to be closed down. Supermarket shelves were stripped of essentials. Meanwhile, in the US, handgun sales went through the roof. Did they think the virus could be shot with bullets as they sheltered in igloos of toilet paper?

Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede measured approaches to short term and long term. He found that the Chinese were three to four times more interested in the long term than most of the West. Markets cannot deal with pandemics, for the simple reason that until the disease strikes, there is no market for treating it and once it strikes, it is repugnant to let prices rise while people die. Only those countries with long-term preparedness can respond with sufficient speed. Having borne the brunt of the 2003 Sars outbreak, East Asia was alert.

The Covid-19 pandemic reminds us, at a terrible cost, that world cooperation and health infrastructure are indispensable. Charles Hampden-Turner is a British management philosopher, and was a senior research associate at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge