Books for Prep | |
 - Developing The Leader Within YouExcellent Book. Big Maxwell fan. Bought copies for staff to review and discuss. Full of insightful topics on leadership. A must read. Rating: - Insight at a legible levelI have found John Maxwells work to provide a great deal of useful thoughts, hints, and guidance, and all done without needing a masters degree in linguistics to decipher his language. He provides a good base for moving ones self into a thought process like a leader, with plenty of usable applications and steps. Very useable, and very inspiring. Something I am sure that will help everyone. Rating:  - Developing leadership qualities Developing the leader within you gives basic instructions for developing leadership skills. John C Maxwell, author of this book believes that being a leader is not necessarily an in born skill but rather can and should be developed. This book stresses that even natural leaders need to learn appropriate skills in leadership in order to utilize their skills to the maximum. Basically his book is telling us that being a leader and being a manager are not the same. Managers are short term oriented. They are concerned with the day to day operations and are adept at controlling organizing and monitoring resources. Leaders have a shared goal with their team, they process the skills to motivate the team and inspire as well as energize the team toward a shared goal. John Maxwell's book also focuses on priorities. He fells priorities never stay the same and are constantly changing. John Maxwell's book also focuses on priorities. He fells priorities never stay the same and are constantly changing. A good leader possesses the skills to create positive change. Followers don't like change. Resistance to change is universal. Change disrupts routing and creates a fear of unknown. After reading this book, I felt that it was very informative, and helpful. It was a easy to read book, to help anyone become a better leader. By the end of reading this book I knew that I already was a better leader. The book also increased the awareness in feeling and thought to help the leader develop an effective team. Throughout the book Maxwell, chose many quotes from famous people to just everyday people that he met. However, as the book went on it seemed to be very repetitive. Overall this book was a wonderful book to read to form better leadership skills. By reading this book if you are already a leader it will teach you to become a better leader. Rating: - I used this book to train my leaders.I think that this is one of the best books around in really getting to the basics of Leadership and not just Management. I am the COO for a 50 person company and I have 4 branch managers that I oversee who are newer to management. I bought them all this book and we went through it in discussions over a 7 month period and I felt it was VERY helpful. I recommend it! Rating:  - I gave it a star for each time I listened to it. 3x'sThis book is a three. I gave it a star for each time I listened to it. (three times) Pros: I liked the concept of "planned neglect" of one thing when working on a different "more important" growth area. I also liked the example of the eagle and obstacles: Obstacles for an eagle to overcome and fly with greater ease and speed is the air. Yet if the air were withdrawn and the eagle were made to attempt to fly in a vacuum, it wouldn't be possible. The very element that offers resistance to flying (air) is at the same time a condition that makes the flight a possibility. A necessary evil. Cons: I see lots of overlap in the overall message Maxwell delivers and Zig Ziglar's body of work (which he does give due credit). The end of the book and the topic on dealing with people unfortunately isn't done as well as Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence Others" The other thing I couldn't get my mind around was the many lists presented throughout. There are just too many to remember and not enough storytelling to cement the points already made. Rating: Good Enough to listen to, but maybe borrow it or get it used. In association with Amazon.com | |