Review: Excellent advice and even more excellent examples and demonstrations
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 15, 2014
First off, we have to start this review with a mea culpa. We don’t often read nonfiction. In fact, we are, in almost every way, far removed from the genres of self-help, memoir, and leadership training. So everything we say in this review must be taken with a grain of salt–even more so than usual, that is. This is a review from someone who has no experience in these genres, and therefore can only give the perspective of a complete newcomer to this subject. We suppose that can be valuable in its own way; certainly, we are a part of the market that does exist, and so our reactions are probably similar to others in the same situation. We can say this book taught us a heck of a lot in a very short time, and it leaves us wondering if we should read more nonfiction. In any case, here are our reflections on this book:1) StorytellingOther reviewers of this book mentioned that they liked its emphasis on the author’s story. Now that we’ve read it, we’re happy to concur: the “real life examples” given by this author were by far the best parts. Not just because they were all interesting, but also because they helped make the discussed concepts much more concrete to us. After expressing concepts about leadership in a straightforward, declarative statement, the book will immediately delve into real examples from the author’s own life. She starts by giving smaller examples, and then piles on bigger and bigger cases of the same concept until the reader can fully grasp what is being communicated. For this reason alone, the book was worth the read: we never had to sit and wonder what she was talking about, because as soon as the questions were forming in our heads, she was already filling in the blanks with illustrative and memorable examples.As a result, we would say that this book is probably very valuable for beginners to this genre. We certainly felt as though it had a lot of information, but the author chose to communicate this information in such a way that it never made our heads hurt.2) Business and familyOne of the common themes throughout the book was the idea that what is good for running a business is also good for running a family. We thought this was a great, special touch, and could truly appreciate how intertwined these two aspects of life could be. This also gave an added way to explain the qualities that were necessary for a good leader: if someone doesn’t understand the examples given in a business setting (although we think that this is unlikely, given that they are well crafted), then surely the same demonstration, but in a family setting, will be comprehensible.3) De-compartmentalizeWe may not have much experience with leadership and self-help books, but we have heard some people give advice about “compartmentalizing.” They will say something to the effect that someone should have many hats, that business is business and home is home and so on and so forth. Well, this book won’t have anything to do with that, and after hearing the arguments made, we can completely agree. Instead of compartmentalizing, there is a repeated emphasis on being an upright and integrity-filled individual in all aspects of one’s existence. In simple terms, if someone is not a leader (re: possessing integrity) at home, then he won’t be at work. And vice versa. There is no such thing as multiple hats: rather, it is the same hat used in different situations. It is impossible to be good in one element of one’s psyche, but allow the rot of vice to spread elsewhere. This is a humbling and hard message to take, but deep down inside, we all know that it’s true. We could appreciate that the author was taking no pains to hide this: she was “telling it like it is,” and thankfully there was no dancing around the issue. This abrupt honestly helps the reader take a good, hard look at himself, and hopefully will inspire him to improve what needs improving inside.4) Reflection questionsWe can’t overstate how essential these are; the first time we read through the book, we didn’t bother using them. The second time, however, we decided to try writing small answers down to each of the questions. What a level of depth that added! We were only doing a review, and time was running short, so we actually had to stop ourselves from writing long pages worth of information at each question. Looking back at it, we think that these questions would be even more valuable in a group setting. It would be great if two or more people could answer the questions individually, and then discuss them together; there is probably hours worth of good brainstorming to be found. In short, the questions at the end of each chapter were an extremely important part of the book, so don’t skip them.5) ConclusionAll in all, we found this to be a very good introduction into the world of self-help and leadership books. It may in fact be more than that, but given that we lack the necessary knowledge base it was definitely an introduction for us, and we didn’t feel as though it was ever “too much” to handle. It was a truly inspiring book: we enjoyed it, even as it crammed our skulls full of new information. We’re definitely going to remember this experience and will try to put at least some of its advice into practice. A good number of its examples make the concepts very concrete, so that it’s much easier for readers to realize how they can accept and adapt these concepts into their own lives.Best of all, the author is sure to mention that ten percent of all profits gained from this book goes to her organization, the ACCV (Australian Charity for the Children of Vietnam). Given the information in the book, it’s hard not to think of this as icing on the cake: buyers not only get a valuable source of information, they also can help contribute to a worthy cause in the process.