StandOut 2.0

Finished May 29
StandOut 2.0: Assess Your Strengths. Find Your Edge. Win at Work by Marcus Buckingham

The book builds on two of his previous books: First, Break All the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths. Here, Buckingham looks at the tools and systems inside organizations that remain stuck in old theories, preventing the now accepted ideas presented in his earlier books from being fully applied. The center for this book is the new tool to identify your strengths. A key to access one free access to the tool online is included in each copy of the book, but if you're sharing a copy, you will need to pay a small fee to use the tool.
Buckingham has analyzed the idea of strengths and boiled it down to 9 strength roles or factors. There are: advisor, connector, creator, equalizer, influencer, pioneer, provider, stimulator, and teacher. The assessment tool shows a chart with your levels for all, but concentrates on your top two factors. The information says that you will get a weekly tip, insights, information on techniques and other ongoing help with your login. So far, even though I did the assessment nearly two weeks ago, I haven't received any weekly tips and logging in only gives me access to my report. It also says that you can customize the report by adding additional information like videos, pictures, articles, and quotes to add to others' understanding of your skills, and that the resulting annotates report can be exported to any social network, although the only options I have at my login are to send the report via email or to download it as a pdf.
It also indicates that there is a check-in tool to capture weekly priorities, track your engagement, and get customized coaching advice, but I haven't seen where to access that.
The is also an option to get a corporate account, and the book says that will allow you to do additional things like create a team dashboard, with performance and survey tools available to team leaders, which sounds interesting.
A couple of important points that are emphasized. The assessment tool is designed to show how you come across to others, not how you see yourself, so your results may surprise you.
One chapter looks at how to use your assessment information to stand out, emphasizing three lessons to build on: your genius (the combination of strengths for you as an individual) is precise; remember who you are (don't get tempted to wander off into other strength challenges); and always sharpen your edge (using activities such as the love it, loathe it exercise). You should be concentrating on what you are doing rather than what is being done to you, and making sure to go back and revisit this at least twice a year.
Buckingham also reminds the reader that innovation is a practice not an idea, which means that it is connected to others and should be thought of as a best practice.
After explaining the factors briefly, the remainder of this book looks at each factor, showing you how to describe the skills identified with that factor, how to make an immediate impact at work, how to take your performance to the next level, and some pitfalls to watch out for. It then looks at how that strength can be leveraged in the areas of leadership, management, client services, and sales. It tells you what natural advantages people with this strength have. It also provides a short section that describes how to best manage someone with your strengths.

The book also includes a technical summary of the design of the assessment tool.

I liked the assessment tool and found my results hit true to home, and thus were meaningful to me. I would like to see how some of the additional features promised in this book become available and can help me and other readers to stay on track. 

Rejection Proof

Finished May 18
Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection by Jia Jiang

Jiang describes his experiences learning how to take the risks necessary to get to the life he wants to live. Jiang was born in China and from a young age envisioned himself as an entrepreneur. He did well in school and was able to go to high school in the U.S. on an exchange program. He then went on to university and a master's degree in the U.S. He got a good job at a successful company and married happily. But he still yearned for the entrepreneurial dream he'd had as a child. His wife urged him to quit his job and work as hard as he could for six months to fulfill this dream. So he did.
He got together a group of people, and after four months of hard work found his concept rejected by investors. This is how his story of rejection-proofing himself begins. He found himself inspired by a website called Rejection Therapy created by Jason Comely to face rejection. He started a blog called 100 Days of Rejection. And he began seeking out situations where he expected to be rejected. Even with that expectation, he found it difficult. But something interesting happened. On his third try, he wasn't rejected, but instead the person he asked worked to accommodate his unusual request. And that happened again on his sixth request.
The blog post for his third request was picked up by Reddit, and went viral, catapulting him into unexpected fame, and offering him interesting opportunities. When faced with new options for his future, Jiang decided to continue his journey into overcoming rejection and focus on a way to overcome the fear of rejection. This led him to research rejection and our reactions to it, and he includes his findings here.
His experiences caused him to rethink rejection, recognizing it not as a whole rejection of the person asking, but as an interaction between two people, based on the opinion of the rejector, something that could be influenced by many factors having nothing to do with the requester at all. This rethinking caused him to look harder at how different strategies could be undertaken to turn that initial no into a yes. This included asking different people, asking why to see what the reasoning behind the rejection was and looking for a way to change the ask to avoid this reason, asking for alternatives to the initial request, looking to collaborate with the rejector to find a way to make it work, and changing the environment of the request.
One thing he learned quickly was not to argue, but to show interest in the reasons, and understanding of the situation. He found that just as it helped him to adjust his request to know why the request was rejected, knowing his reasons for asking helped the rejector collaborate with him for a way to accommodate his request. He found it was important not to make assumptions about the mindset, interest, or needs of others when making his request, and that considering who to select to make the request from was helpful in a successful interaction.
His success also forced him to focus on the other side of the interaction, how to say no to a request he got himself. He, like many of us, didn't like having to turn down people's requests, but he was inundated by so many that he had to. So he looked at how to do this in a good way by looking at how people had responded to him.
He discovered ways to look at rejection in a positive light by examining the reasons for it, and using rejection to motivate him to try harder or work differently towards his goal. This process also led to him finding new meaning in the process in several ways. One was finding empathy: he was better able to understand others. Another was finding value by learning what really mattered to him when it came down to it. A third was finding his mission, his focus and creating a new beginning for himself based on it. He found the freedom that asking gave him, to have new experiences, make new connections to other people, and become aware of what is lost by not asking in the first place. He also found a greater acceptance of himself, finding the importance of fulfilling that inner need for approval before looking to others.
His journey have him the ability to detach the experience from the expectation of results, finding that being results-oriented actually led to worse results because it leaves you unprepared for feedback that could be helpful. He was able to analyse a situation and focus on what he could control, and lay aside the worry about all the elements that he couldn't. This isn't something that he could learn and move on from. He found that he needs to keep exercising that "fear of rejection" muscle to keep it strong.
This is an insightful book that will encourage readers to go after their goals in a thoughtful and structured way.

Emotional Vampires at Work

Finished April 5
Emotional Vampires at Work: Dealing with Bosses and Coworkers Who Drain You Dry by Albert J Bernstein

This self-help book takes a look at personalities, behaviours, and culture in the workplace. Rather than look at why people behave the way they do, this book emphasizes how to recognize certain behaviours as potential problems for you at work, and offers ways to deal with these behaviours.
First, the author offers a quiz that helps you to identify your own behavioural tendencies so that you know your weak points and can modify your reaction to others' behaviour to allow for these, or at least think about them before you act. The author encourages slow thinking, rather than the fast thinking that is more reactive in nature. By taking the time to look at a situation, think about who certain actions benefits, why someone is telling you something, and what your options are, you can act smarter and more productively.
He categorizes five types of emotional vampires. These are more extreme than difficult people, often because they have strong personalities that can draw you in. These five types are Antisocials, Histrionics, Narcissists, Obsessive-Compulsives, and Paranoids. He acknowledges that many people may show some aspects of these behaviours, including yourself, but the key is that most of us recognize those behaviours in our selves, and thus have a level of self-awareness that protects us from acting to an extreme. The emotional vampires do not. They have several aspects of one of these types of behaviours, but don't seem themselves in these descriptions, and react badly if you try to show them how they do. For each of these types, the author describes traits, shows how these might manifest themselves in different general senses, and talks about strategies to still have a productive workplace while dealing with these people. He also talks about how an organizational culture can take on these traits if the people at the top are emotional vampires.
All readers will recognize some people they have worked with at some point in their lives, or that they know in their personal lives. They key to dealing with these people is not to take things personally, but think with care about who benefits from their actions, protect yourself, and leave the organization if necessary.
An interesting read.

Nine Minutes on Monday

Finished May 5
Nine Minutes on Monday: the quick and easy way to go from manager to leader by James Robbins

This book lays out an interesting method to increase your leadership skills. Because leadership is, in essence, focused on people, so is this book. It lays out a system that you look at weekly, Robbins suggests Monday morning. Each of your nine minutes is focused on one of nine aspects of how you relate to your direct reports. Robbins warns against trying to do too much too soon, an easy trap to fall into when you go to a good conference or workshop or read an inspiring book like this one. While he lays out nine areas, each with a question to ask yourself once a week, he encourages the reader to start with the basic four and work on those before adding more. He also shows through a couple of case studies how each question doesn't have to be addressed every week, but should respond to your individual circumstances. As the subtitle suggests, the process is easy and doesn't take a lot of time. He also addresses those with staff working remotely. Added to the book is a website with follow-up tools and resources that will assist at putting this plan into action.
I finished this Sunday, perfect timing to get me started for Monday morning.

Work-related title

Finished July 12
151 Quick Ideas to Deal with Difficult People by Carrie Mason-Draffen
The ideas given here cover a large range of situations and personality types. They include help on confronting conflict, both as a player and as a third-party. A lot of them relate to communication including what to say, how to say it, body language, and who to say it to.
There are also ideas given that help to prevent problems from occuring in the first place, much easier than cleaning up afterwards. The ideas also relate to a variety of situations: issues between peers, team issues, meeting issues, and supervisory issues. Some were common sense, some were intriguing, and others were a bit unlikely. Overall a good tool to improve your people skills. Everyone should be able to get something out of this book.