Workplace stress is rising while employee engagement and performance is sinking. A major cause is mediocre managers and bad bosses. The poorest leaders are often the ones who need leadership development the most. But they’re too crazy-busy and running faster and faster on their treadmill just to keep up, and don’t take time for development.
Not all learners are leaders, but most highly effective leaders are learners. Reading leadership books continues to be a popular way for learning leaders to continue their growth and development. With personal development time getting squeezed ever tighter, leaders want books that:
- Cut through the clutter to the vital topics and applications more relevant in today’s fast changing organizations
- Are grounded in research to identify what’s practical and easiest to apply
- Succinctly get right to the point
- Entertain and inspires action by lighting logic on fire
I’ve written about a dozen development books, field guides, and application planners. I’ve also posted hundreds of blogs across more than 40 development topic areas indexed on our web site. You could say that research and writing about personal, team, and organization development writing is a wee bit of a passion for me.
You know how some “technogeeks” joyfully create features that are really fun for them, but regular people don’t use? Last year I began to review all that research and writing to identify core themes and topics most relevant in these turbulent times. As a “leadergeek” I want to avoid writing a book that’s fun for me but won’t help leaders succeed today.
Eight major topic areas emerged. As part of a “readersourcing” project, we invited senior executives, managers, and HR/development professionals to rank order the eight topic areas (with descriptive sub-sections). Nearly 500 people completed the survey.
The envelope please… the top rated topic areas were:
Gold mining companies crush and process tons of rock to get one ounce of gold. I’d appreciate you joining our Book Advisory Panel to help find “the gold in them thar hills” of development theories and approaches. If you’d like to help, please rate the sub points in the top four topic areas, your opinion on why each one ranked in the top topics, and what you think are the biggest issues a book should address for each topic. Please click on Book Panel Advisory to complete this short readersourcing survey.
A critic once told an author “I’ll waste no time reading your book.” Your help can keep me from writing a book that wastes time — and causes me to pull out what little hair I have left.
Want to discuss this post? Contact us!