Book Club Recommended Reading

One of the sessions at this year's Spring Conference was a new one, Book Club. The concept was a simple one: four presenters were to choose a business book and discuss it for the participants. Then the whole group would discuss recent reads and share some of the ideas learned through the process.

The session was spearheaded by Elise Mitchell of Mitchell Communications Group, with the panel comprised of Lisa Simon of Simon Public Relations Group, Monty Hagler of RLF, Roy Reid of Consensus Communications and myself of The Cohesion Group.

The books reviewed by the panel included these four titles:

• Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace by Mark Perry
• Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync? by Seth Godin
• Full Frontal PR: Building Buzz About Your Business, Your Product or You by Richard Laermer, and
• The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni

Partners in Command focused on the relationship between and the leadership qualities of George Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II, outlining how they made an extraordinarily effective team during the war and in their efforts to bring peace and stability to the world.

Meatball Sundae defines 14 trends no marketer can afford to ignore. It addresses what to do about the increasing power of stories, not just facts; discusses shorter attention spans and how to work within that new framework; and explains the new math that says that five thousand people who want to hear your message are more valuable than five million who don't.

Full Frontal PR is a practical primer (and a refresher) on media relations. It's a tactical "how to" on placing stories in traditional print and broadcast outlets with some surface treatment of new media.

The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive provides a model for effective team leadership though a fictitious account of how the process works. The opening line, "if everything is important then nothing is," captures the foundation of the author's premise that leaders must have a system to help their teams effectively deal with the most important issues, including defining them.

Participants also discussed the following books and recommended them as good reads:

• Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton
• Go Put Your Strengths to Work by Marcus Buckingham
• Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone
• What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter
• The Customer Comes Second by Hal Rosenbluth and Diane Mcferrin Peters, and
• How Not to Come (in) Second by David Kean

All of these titles are available at your favorite bookstore or online book retailer.

If you have a recommendation for a book, article, publication or blog you think other Counselors Academy members would find interesting, please add a comment to this post.

No one mentioned whether or not you'd receive a gold star for choosing a selection from this list this summer. Surely it was an oversight.

Comments

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Thanks ;-). Teller.