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highly recommended |
Improving the performance of your employees involves one of the hardest challenges in the known universe: changing the way they think. In constant demand as a coach, speaker, and consultant to companies around the world, David Rock has proven that the secret to leading people (and living and working with them) is found in the space between their ears. "If people are being paid to think," he writes, "isn't it time the business world found out what the thing doing the work, the brain, is all about?" Supported by the latest groundbreaking research, Quiet Leadership provides a brain-based approach that will help busy leaders, executives, and managers improve their own and their colleagues' performance. Rock offers a practical, six-step guide to making permanent workplace performance change by unleashing higher productivity, new levels of morale, and greater job satisfaction.
Thought Leadership 
As a professional project manager, the ideas in this book strike a real chord. So many books on leadership spend their time cataloging the attributes and behaviours of good leaders, but offer no advice as to how to implement for ourselves a leadership style that is authentic and appropriate. To anyone who has to manage people in a day to day, pressured environment the advice in this book is very welcome. In particular the emphasis on allowing people to work things out for themselves makes a lot of sense, as well as the focus on insight as the energising mechanism. The information on neuro-science is a bit of a distraction: it may or may not be true, and so runs the risk of detracting from some simple and profound messages. Even just to consider that everyone is thinking differently and therefore having a different experience is, on reflection, self evident, and doesn't need experimental validation. As Einstein explained, the real breakthrough comes from the insight, the experimental validation may never come. There is plenty in this book to help those who would like a bit of help, and, apparently, really annoy those who don't.
Excellent Leadership Book
Quiet Leadership provides guidance for leaders who have busy schedules but still want to be able to provide valuable, effective guidance to their staff in an efficient manner. Many times, we don't teach people how to work out problems and how to think outside of the box, this book gives leaders and managers guidance on how to change their behavior to accomplish this task in an easy, non- threatening manner that is efficient an effective.
The book is designed to assist people who have busy schedules, but still want to provide effective, high quality feedback and professional development for employees. The techniques are based on research on how the brain functions and how to make the changes become permanent.
I found that the brain-based research helped me to understand why these strategies help leaders change their staff's behavior through listening, talking through an issue, allowing the staff member to come up with a solution that works and finally through following up with the staff member and ensuring accountability. This book is an excellent resource for people who have personalities that are fairly laid back and wants encourage others to attain their full potential.
I liked the fact that the author advises the leader to stop giving advice, rather ask questions and listen to the other person to truly understand the issue and work collaboratively to come up with a solution that will work. In addition, the book explains how to do all of this in a non-threatening manner that encourages collaboration in the workplace.
The book is designed to read over a long period of time and the author expects that the reader works to include the activities into their daily life to embed new habits into the reader's behavior patterns. The activities are very valuable and eye-opening to do. The principles in the book are even more effective for busy people because the author teaches you how to effectively provide guidance and leadership in very shirt periods of time, no more than 30 minutes per session.
I liked the fact that the author addressed issues relating to students and working in groups. I am a teacher and also manage a staff for after school programs. The book goes into some detail about how to use these principles when working with unique groups which is a very helpful thing.
The Leading Edge of Leadership 
Quiet Leadership is the best book I have read for tying the most recent advances in neuroscience to leadership behaviors, particularly coaching. Having worked with leadership and coaching for a long time, and just recently starting working with neuroscience, I am personally thrilled to see all of these tied together. I strongly believe that the use of neuroscience in all aspects of business will grow rapidly, so this is a very timely contribution. It is worth reading just for the first sections.
However, the coaching methodology of the Six Steps is too complex for me -- too many steps and substeps. These sections still have some value, particularly the ties to neuroscience, but I would recommend skimming those sections.
Involve Them in the Conversation
When telling does not work, "Why not try asking questions?" might be another way to describe the "Quiet Leadership" approach advocated by training and coaching consultant David Rock in this book that describes his performance coaching methodology of leadership. Designed to get the other party to think, rather than react to your thinking, Rock presents his Six Steps to Transforming Performance as the six sigma of performance coaching. Others might describe the process as respecting the individual (looking for the positive and the possibilities) and using an active listening process to help them get clear on the issues, constraints, and possible solutions. However you say it, the thinking behind the coaching process is solid as a `Rock' and any leader interested in developing the potential of his/her people might pick-up some useful tips from reading this book.
Dennis DeWilde, author of
"The Performance Connection"
reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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based on 21 reviews
