"Becoming a Resonant Leader" by Annie McKee, Richard Boyatzis, Frances Johnston

Becoming a Resonant Leader offers a practical answer to the question: “How do you use Daniel Goleman's theory of Emotional Intelligence to become an inspiring leader?”

It is a reading recommendation coming from Barcelona, where Rosalinda Hernández works as Europe Talent Acquisition at PepsiCo. She tweets at @Recruiter_Rosie.

More Than 50 Leadership Exercises

You don't read this book as much as you use it, with a pen in your hand. Offering more than 50 exercises, it is really a practical guide that aims to make you reflect on how to become a better leader by leveraging your emotional intelligence. It is also filled with inspiring examples. 

The exercises reminded me very much of those I have found so profoundly useful when I read Total Leadership, by Steward Friedman. 

Both books offer a holistic perspective about personal development and leadership: becoming a great leader requires you to know who you are and what you want.

First, McKee, Boyatzis and Johnston make you think about:

• Important people around you : who do you admire, who do you lead, who can help you...
• How you work : your defensive routines, your passions, your strengths and challenges, your philosophical orientation, your learning style...
• What you want : your ideal life, your dreams, your personal vision...

Then, the authors help you use this knowledge to develop a personal learning plan.

And finally, they explain how to ignite resonance in teams, organizations and communities.

Useful Leadership Tools and Concepts

Let me share five tools or concepts developed in the book that seem particularly useful from my HR point of view.

• Resonance is defined as “a powerful collective energy that reverberates among people and supports higher productivity, creativity, a sense of unity, a sense of purpose, and better results”. It is, in other words, the link between emotional intelligence and organizational success.
• Self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence: when you meet a great leader, you feel that she knows who she is and what is important to her. In particular, good leaders show emotional awareness: they can name and manage their emotions. The way to improve emotional awareness is to practice mindfulness, i.e. to become consciously attuned to oneself, others and the environment. (In a recent post on the HRFishbowl blog, I wrote about the link between meditation, mindfulness, and good HR).
• The sacrifice syndrome is precisely one of the things that await leaders when they lack mindfulness. As they try to respond to the many demands they face, their stress mounts above the level they can handle. Their tactics for avoiding this stress are part of the problem. They soon feel overdrawn physically, mentally and emotionally.
• The philosophical orientation questionnaire included in the book lets you determine your preferences regarding three basic operating philosophies:
  • Pragmatic: you appreciate an activity if it helps you achieve your goals. This operating philosophy is linked to utilitarianism and consequentialism.
  • Intellectual: you appreciate an activity if it helps you learn and understand new things. You tend to use abstract variables to understand and describe the world.
    
  • Human: you appreciate an activity if it has a positive impact on specific other people, and on your relationship with them.
    
  • The authors explain that if your scores on those variables are close together, you can feel conflicted when making certain types of decisions. This proved relevant in my case: I scored equally high scores on “intellectual” and “human”, and I'm afraid I'm sometimes an indecisive person indeed.
    
• Planning Style. Annie McKee found in her research that when it comes to think about the future, people use three different approaches:
  • Goal-oriented planners tend to focus on very specific goals and outcomes.
  • Direction-oriented people know the general path they wish to pursue, but they don't set very specific objectives. They might be less effective than goal-oriented people, but they are also more flexible, which helps them spot opportunities.
  • Being action-oriented means living for the moment, without many thoughts about the future. Action-oriented people are spontaneous.
  • And as the authors say, each of these three styles has wisdom for the other.

The book also provides ideas and a methodology to conduct participative processes that could be used for team-building, vision-building or change initiatives.

If you work in HR, it can thus be useful in a variety of ways: for yourself, for people you coach, or for your organization as a whole.

Book Data

• Becoming a Resonant Leader - Develop Your Emotional Intelligence, Renew Your Relationships, Sustain Your Effectiveness
• By Annie McKee, Richard Boyatzis and Frances Johnston
• Harvard Business Press
• 213 pages
• Available on Amazon.com: Becoming a Resonant Leader

The Case for Meditative HR

I am honored and excited to have an article of mine published today on HRFishbowl.com, Charlie Judy's excellent HR blog:
http://hrfishbowl.com/2012/02/guest-post-case-for-meditative-hr/

REWORK, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Rework is recommended by Frédéric Williquet. Frédéric is a Managing HR Consultant at SD Worx. 

This publication stands in the same category as Kawasaki's Enchantment and Ferris' 4-HourWorkweek. Bold, smart, short, easy to read, these books do not try teach us any theories, but they let us feel the trends of the 21th-century workplace.

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are the leaders of a successful software company called 37signals. In this book, they share the recipes of their entrepreneurial success and give their points of view about different aspects of launching and running a company.

The book is hard to synthesize. It is a collection of ideas and statements about how a business should be run. It could have been titled “Lean Business” or something like that.

Things They Like

Here are a few examples of what Fried and Heinemeier Hansson are in favor of:

• Constraints, because embracing them enhances creativity;
• Good enough (a case against perfectionism);
• Quick wins, as they fuel momentum;
• Tiny decisions, because they are temporary and thus let you change your mind when you realize you've made a mistake;
• Fights: naming your enemy (a big competitor) helps you get noticed and ignite passion;
• Underdoing one's competition, meaning that developing a product that has less features than the competition can be a very competitive strategy;
• Saying no, i.e. resisting the temptation to satisfy every customer request;
• Obscurity, defined as the period when your company is too young and small to get noticed, allows you to make bolder choices;
• Great writers, because good writing is a sign of clear thinking;

Things They Hate

And a few of the things they advocate against:

• Workaholism, because it leads to inefficiency: workaholics prefer staying late and feeling like heroes than imagining smart solutions and focusing their energy on what really matters.
• Learning from mistakes, as learning what not to do is not as useful as knowing what to do.
• Outside money: the investors will always end up telling you what to do, with their own financial interests in mind.
• Mass, i.e. procedures, formal rules, policies, long-term contracts and road maps, office politics, etc. don't let you change things as quickly as you'd like.
• Meetings, which are basically a massive waste of time.
• Heroes, because sometimes it's better to be a quitter than a hero. If you realize that a task is going to be much more difficult or time-consuming than anticipated, you should give it up.
• Estimates, as we human beings are really bad at estimating.
• Long to-do lists (don't get done).
• Press releases, which are comparable to spam.
• ASAP, because when everything you ask is “ASAP”, people can't tell anymore what is really a priority.

What's in It for HR pros?

Rework has an interesting chapter about hiring. It can make us think again about the way we recruit and select. For example, in the authors' view:

• Resumes are spam. They are of much less use than cover letters.
• Requiring five years of experience is irrelevant.
• We should exercise a profession ourselves before hiring someone else to do the job (OK, that might be easier in small companies than in Fortune 500 corporations!).

The book also offers a fresh perspective on our work habits. We in HR might play a key role in fighting against bureaucracy, workaholism, or useless meetings. In our own organizations, big or small, we could be the advocates of the type of lean management presented by Fired and Heinemeier Hansson.

Book data

• Rework - Change the Way you Work Forever
• By Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. They run 37signals.com and a blog called Signal versus Noise
• Vermilion (Ebury Publishing)
• 279 pages
• Available on Amazon.com: Rework 

Good to Great, by Jim Collins

What makes a company achieve outstanding results?

• A charismatic, rock-star CEO?
• Huge efforts to build a visionary strategy, followed by a great program intended to catalyze organizational change?
• Powerful incentives to motivate all members of an organization?
• The quick adoption of cutting-edge technologies?
• State-of-the-art HR policies ?

Nope! Building greatness takes disciplined people, engaging in disciplined actions based on disciplined thought.

This is the astonishing conclusion of the in-depth analysis made by Jim COLLINS and his team.

Good to Great is based on the study of eleven American companies that, after a period of ordinariness, at some point made the leap to greatness (as measured by financial performance on the stock market).

The reasons why these companies succeeded in such a spectacular manner derive from a few simple principles:

• Level 5 Leaders. The research showed that Good-to-Great companies were lead by managers who shared two personality traits: a great personal humility and a very strong resolve for their company to achieve greatness.
  
• First Who, Then What. Obviously, you need a great team to build a great company. But what these companies did was first to recruit great people, and then to define a strategy.
  
• The Stockdale Paradox. Good-to-Great companies were able to confront the brutal facts. For example, one of them was able to understand that its core activity was going to disappear and that it needed to redefine its core business. But while acknowledging the tough reality, these organizations never lost faith that in the end, they would prevail. COLLINS called this attitude “the STOCKDALE paradox” after a US army hero. Admiral Jim STOCKDALE was a war prisoner in Vietnam for eight years. He survived and helped his fellow prisoners survive too, by being very realistic about short-term outcomes (don't hope you'll be home for Christmas) yet never stopping to believe that they would be free in the end.
  
  
• The Hedgehog Concept. While a fox is very smart an can implement many strategies, the hedgehog has only one, very simple strategy (rolling up to become a sphere full of spikes) and uses it very consistently. Good-to-Great companies are much more like hedgehogs than like foxes. They find out what they can be the best in the world at, what they are passionate about, and what drives their economic engine. These are simple things, nothing sophisticated. Then, they just focus on this core concept that drives all their actions.
  
• A Culture of Discipline. In Good-to-Great companies, discipline has nothing to do with tyranny or bureaucracy: it is a mix of liberty and responsibility. Discipline also means staying focused on the hedgehog concept, even if it means renouncing to apparent opportunities.

• Technology as an Accelerator. Good-to-Great companies do not feel the need to be the first to adopt new technologies. They take the time to understand how they can use technology in a way that is consistent with their hedgehog concept.

A Solid Methodology

Jim COLLINS used to teach at Stanford. To write this book, he worked with a strong team that spent several years collecting and analyzing huge quantities of relevant data. The statistical significance of their method was validated by two distinguished professors: a statistician and a mathematician.

The skeptical reader can find details about this solid methodology in the notes and appendixes.

Good to Great and the Social Sectors

Working in healthcare, I was particularly interested by “Good to Great and the Social Sectors”, a short monography COLLINS wrote to accompany “Good to Great”.

COLLINS explains why, for non-profit organizations, being more “business-like” is not a relevant approach: after all, most companies are either mediocre or merely good anyway.

We should not try to imitate the world of business but embrace (and adapt) the principles that can lead to greatness.

How is this book useful to HR practitioners?

Good to Great challenges some beliefs that are widely shared amongst HR professionals:

• We often think that we should select the professionals that best fit our organization's strategy. Instead, maybe we should first hire the best professionals and then, define the strategy with them. The “First Who, Then What” principle shows that recruiting is the first step on the path to success. Good news for HR!

• We are generally interested in the theme of Motivation. COLLINS thinks that it is useless: in his view, if you hire the right people and do not make stupid or unfair decisions, they will always be motivated.

• The idea of “Level 5 leaders” may challenge our common approach to leadership. Maybe the best leaders are not the most charismatic.

• Personally, I think I need to use the hedgehog concept. The book has made me understand how discipline and focus are at least as important as creativity and innovation.

Book data

• "Good to Great - Why some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't"
• By Jim COLLINS
• Harper Business
• 218 pages (+appendixes)
• Available on Amazon.com: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

And:

• "Good to Great and the Social Sectors- Why Business Thinking Is Not the Answer"- A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great
• By Jim COLLINS
• 35 pages
• Available on Amazon.com: Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great

This is the first time that I have posted a comment about a book that was not recommended by a fellow Human Resource professional. I simply felt the urge to read it because it was cited as a must-read in many of the other HR books I have read. I'm happy I made this choice !

Nonetheless, if you are an HR practitioner, please do not hesitate to send me your book recommendations (by e-mail or via @HRbooks on Twitter) or to share your thoughts about Good to Great.

Enchantment, by Guy Kawasaki

The HR expert that recommended this book to me is Christophe Lo Giudice, Chief Editor at Peoplesphere, a Belgian HR magazine and community.

Written in a humorous and informal style by the sympathetic former chief evangelist of Apple, Enchantment is an interesting “how-to book” covering various subjects related to marketing, public relations, entrepreneurship and people management.

The subjects covered are:

• How to make people like you, including how to smile, dress, accept other people's ideas and values...
• How to build trust
• How to prepare and to launch your project, your big idea
• How to overcome resistance (tips for convincing skeptical people) and how to make your influence last in the long term.
• How to use presentations, e-mails, websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Youtube
• How to manage people by enchanting them
• How to make your boss like you
• How to avoid being influenced by other people (for example, how to resist mass-media marketing).
  
  

How Is Enchantment Useful to HR Practitioners?

Many of Guy Kawasaki's tips can be really useful for HR professionals. They can help us communicate better, help us use the tools of our times to build a stronger influence.

In particular, the chapter titled "How to enchant Your employees" provides interesting leadership advice.

Book Data:

• Enchantment. The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions
• By Guy KAWASAKI
• Penguin Books, 2011
• 211 pages
• Available on Amazon.com: Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions

You can follow GuyKawasaki on Twitter, where he posts huge quantities of interesting stuff (and don't forget to follow HRbooks also!). 

The 2011 global ranking of management thinkers: what's in it for HR?

Thinkers50 has just published its 2011 global ranking of management thinkers. This year, the winner is Clayton Christensen, author of « The Innovator's Dilemma ». For sure, all these 50 gurus have plenty to teach us. 

And of course, we all should know the basics of innovation, strategy, or marketing. But which of these leading management thinkers are particularly relevant for HR professionals ? I mean, directly related to HR. Approximately half of them are, in my humble opinion. Here is my personal selection:

Rank	Author	Main field of expertise
4	Jim Collins	Management
7	Marshall Goldsmith	Leadership
8	Marcus Buckingham	Self management
10	Malcolm Gladwell	Society, career, decision-making
11	Sylvia Ann Hewlett	Talent management, women at work
12	Lynda Gratton	People in organizations, the future of work, collaborative working
13	Nitin Nohria	Motivation, leadership, sustainable performance
16	Linda Hill	Leadership, innovation, cross-organizational relationships, talent management
18	Teresa Amabile	Creativity, organizational life and its influence on people and their performance
22	Jeffrey Pfeffer	Evidence based management, human resources, power, leadership
23	David Ulrich	Leadership, talent, human resources, culture, coaching, change
25	Rosabeth Moss Kanter	Leadership, change, globalization
28	Herminia Ibarra	Leadership, women's careers, career transition
29	Daniel Pink	Career, self employment, motivation
30	Henry Mintzberg	The work of the manager, how managers are trained and developed
33	Tammy Erickson	Generations at work : workforce demographics and values
35	Amy Edmondson	Teamwork
37	Howard Gardner	Intelligence
39	Daniel Goleman	Emotional Intelligence, leadership
40	Vineet Nayar	Employees First, Customers Second
42	Fons Trompenaars	Cultural Diversity in Business
45	Stewart Friedman	Work/life integration, leadership
47	Stephen Covey	Leadership, personal effectiveness

Previous posts on this blog have featured books by Stew Friedman, Dave Ulrich and Jeffrey Pfeffer. I now have many reading opportunities for the months to come. Fellow HR pros, please send me an e-mail or leave a comment to let me know which of these thinkers have written the greatest books...

Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management, by MARTIN and HETRICK.

I owe this great book recommendation to Jean-Marc MICKELER, Partner at Deloitte, Responsible for Employer Branding in France.

A Challenging Book

MARTIN and HETRICK are two Scottish HR specialists with both academic and consulting activities. Their book is based on experience, as it offers a number of cases concerning mainly HR challenges in large international corporations.

It is also based on a theoretical approach, with a very much balanced and critical point of view on MINTZBERG, ULRICH, PFEFFER, PORTER and many more management and HR authors. One typically academic aspect of the book is the emphasis placed on the correct and precise use of concepts:

• Social identity is not the same as social identification.
• Psychological ownership is different from engagement, which is not the same as commitment.
• Corporate reputation differs from corporate image and corporate brand.

It is thus a challenging book, firstly because it is not easy to read (for me at least) and secondly because it criticizes many popular management ready-to-use ideas:

• Is it always such a good idea to implement “management best practices” in your organization?
• Can you really make a distinction between leadership and management?
• When selecting leaders, should you always focus on the candidates' potential (as opposed to craftsmanship) ?
• Do most senior executives agree with Milton FRIEDMAN's view that a corporation's sole focus should be to generate high returns for shareholders?

MARTIN and HETRICK very interestingly answer “no” to these four questions.

HR and the Corporate Agenda

The main purpose of the book is to show how HR can contribute to the corporate agenda, which comprises:

• Corporate branding (what is the corporation's promise?)
• Corporate reputation (How is it perceived a time goes on)
• Corporate identity (Who are the members of the organization, what are their affinities?)
• Corporate social responsibility (CSR)
• Corporate governance

Here are only a few of the interesting propositions developed in the book:

• Brand reputation has an impact on sales, through the company's image (the customer view), but also on employee satisfaction and retention,through identity (the employee view).
  
  
• It is important to achieve consistency between these two views, i.e. to make sure that there are no significant gaps between employee's understanding of the organization's identity and how outsiders view its image.
  
  
• HR leaders need to gain a deep, evidence-based, knowledge about the various psychological contracts present in their organization. The notion of psychological contracts is very well defined and deeply discussed in one chapter.
  
  
• The “best practice” approach to HRM, although interesting, can be criticized: context matters a lot when it comes to make management choices.
  
  
• Very much like customer segmentation is an important marketing tool, HR professionals should use workforce segmentation: they should realize that not all employees have the same expectations, needs, abilities or values, so it makes little sense to apply a uniform set of practices.
  
  
• A 21^st century approach to corporate communications emphasizes dialogue, interactivity, and involvement of all functions and people. 
  
  
• Becoming an employer of choice does not depend solely on traditional HR practices, but also on the quality of top management, the company's values, and corporate social responsibility. 
  
  
• HR professionals tend to be more and more specialized, i.e. focused on HR itself ad its sub-specialisms. This is a dangerous trend, as it leads our function to become disconnected from the top (lack of connections with the organization's strategy) and from the bottom (lack of direct relationships with employees). Instead of just an expertise, we should see HR also as a craft and as an art. In other words, we should not rely only on our technical specialism, but also on experience, vision and leadership.

Book data

• Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management – A Strategic Approach to HR
• By Graeme MARTIN and Susan HETRICK
• Butterworth-Heinemann (Elsevier)
• 384 pages
• Available on Amazon.com: Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management: A Strategic Approach to HR (Advanced HR Practitioner)
   

You can also find more about the book on reputationsandhr.com, and you can read Graeme MARTIN's HR and People Management blog.  


I welcome your comments and feedback. If you are an HR professional, please do not hesitate to suggest other HR book recommendations through stephaneolivierdeoliveira@gmail.com or by sending me a Twitter DM at @HRbooks.