Found 0 posts
About The Coaching Habit: say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
Coaching is an important skill for leaders, but often, managers are too busy or overworked to coach their direct reports well. However, author Michael Bungay Stanier argues that coaching can be done in increments of 10 minutes or fewer.
Drawing on years of experience on training managers through his consulting company, Box of Crayons, Bungay Stanier argues that coaching can be a regular, informal part of every day by asking seven essential questions:
Why Cydcor Recommends This Book
In 242 easy-to-read pages packed with anecdotes and explanations of the seven essential questions, Bungay Steiner offers a fresh and innovative take on the classic how-to manual. He combines insider information with research based in behavior and neuroscience to provide a new way to coach mentees. The book contains question-and-answer sections that will help readers identify old habits and start new behaviors.
The seven essential questions are also a great tool for sales professionals. They’ll help them get past the five basic objections to a product: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust. By using the seven questions to uncover what is actually important to a customer, it’s much easier to get to a “yes.”
Our Favorite Part
Each of the seven essential questions has its own chapter. The graphic design, including bulleted lists, pullout quotations, and other visual aids, helps readers to understand the highlights of each question. The book even has spaces and lines for readers to write about their thoughts and the actions they can take to develop the habits Bungay Stanier recommends. At the end of each of the seven chapters is a “Masterclass” section that helps to solidify the points the author made, allowing readers to strengthen their new habits.
Check out this book and tell us what you think. Share with us on Twitter and follow us @Cydcor.
We are Cydcor, the recognized leader in outsourced sales services. From our humble beginnings as an independent sales company based in Canada to garnering a reputation as the global leader in outsourced sales, Cydcor has come a long way. We’ve done this by having exceptional sales professionals and providing our clients with proven sales and marketing strategies that get results.
Learn more about Cydcor, based in Agoura Hills, CA, by visiting our profile on CrunchBase.
About The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller
In today’s fast-paced world, people often try to improve every aspect of their lives at once, but usually aren’t as successful as they’d like to be. Author Gary Keller proposes a simple and powerful concept in this book: focusing on what matters most in our personal and work lives first. Most people want fewer distractions, fewer things on their plate, and fewer things to stress them out. The ONE Thing proposes a new way of looking at things we want, and provides an action plan to achieve them.
Why Cydcor Recommends This Book
This is an excellent read for anyone who enjoys multi-tasking but still feels like they aren’t attaining their goals as fast as they would like to. Focusing on multiple things at one time doesn’t necessarily mean more productivity. To achieve effectiveness, we need to narrow our focus and take things one at a time. The ONE Thing suggests pausing before starting a new project and asking yourself what can be prioritized. This will ultimately make things easier and help you avoid focusing on things that are unnecessary distractions.
Our Favorite Part
Early in the book, Keller outlines six popular beliefs that most people think are the “right way,” but that might be hindering their success: everything matters equally, multitasking is good, success requires a disciplined life, willpower is always on will-call, a balanced life is required, and big is bad. Each belief is thoroughly addressed and shown to be not be as helpful as people think. To achieve success, according to the author, it’s about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right. Finding true success requires less discipline than you think.
Have you found success by focusing on one thing at a time? Be sure to follow Cydcor on LinkedIn for even more tips on finding success.
We are Cydcor, the recognized leader in outsourced sales services. From our humble beginnings as an independent sales company based in Canada to garnering a reputation as the global leader in outsourced sales, Cydcor has come a long way. We’ve done this by having exceptional sales professionals and providing our clients with proven sales and marketing strategies that get results.
About Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., did decades of research on gifted children and adults and discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. A mindset is either fixed or growth-oriented; if you have a fixed mindset, you believe you have certain innate talents or weaknesses that can’t be changed. On the other hand, if you have a growth mindset, you believe that abilities can be developed through learning and hard work.
Mindset shows how to use a growth mindset to foster great accomplishments in yourself and in your direct reports.
Why Cydcor Recommends This Book
It gives you the opportunity to explore your own mindset: Do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? It also gives you the tools to adopt a growth mindset and avoid the trap of a “false growth mindset.”
Mindset can also help you understand that you’re not necessarily born with certain talents, but they can be learned. Do you think you’re naturally bad at math? Maybe you’ve been told that so many times you believe it. The truth is that it’s possible to learn and excel at any task if you take the time to develop your skills.
A growth mindset can also help you love what you do, increase your sense of success and fulfillment, and even improve your relationships with other people, whether those individuals are your colleagues, your friends, or your family.
Our Favorite Part
In this new edition of Mindset, Dweck introduces the “false growth mindset” and guides people toward adopting a deeper, truer growth mindset. Cydcor encourages its employees to adopt a growth mindset and break out of self-limiting thought patterns.
This is a great read for managers and mentors because it expands the mindset concept beyond the individual to corporate culture and other groups. This crucial update will help supervisors to motivate those they lead, and to transform their lives at work and at home.
Mindset is well organized and easy to read. It’s serious but provides practical information on how to cultivate a growth mindset.
Our team members are continually reminded to improve their professional development and keep growing. Learn how you can join the Cydcor team on CareerBuilder!
We are Cydcor, the recognized leader in outsourced sales services. From our humble beginnings as an independent sales company based in Canada to garnering a reputation as the global leader in outsourced sales, Cydcor has come a long way. We’ve done this by having exceptional sales professionals and providing our clients with proven sales and marketing strategies that get results.
About Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead by Karen and Henry Kimsey-House
Karen and Henry Kimsey-House, authors of Co-Active Coaching: Changing Business, Transforming Lives, bring their co-active model to leadership development. Their five-dimensional approach recognizes that leadership needs to be fluid and flexible, and that current top-down, one-dimensional models are outdated.
The Kimsey-House duo coined the term “co-active” to describe three elements interacting together: According to the book, “co” represents the relational and receptive aspects of leadership; “active” represents the action-oriented aspects; and the hyphen shows the connection between those aspects.
Why Cydcor Recommends This Book
In just 128 pages, Co-Active Leadership packs a lot of great content into an easy-to-read format. The authors list five leadership dimensions, describing each one and how it relates to the co-active model. They also give tips on how aspiring leaders can best use the various leadership styles to accomplish their goals.
This book not only guides readers into becoming transformational leaders from the inside out, it helps them to understand how the co-active model of leadership is a perfect fit for today’s collaboration-oriented and egalitarian work environment.
Our Favorite Part
Co-Active Leadership’s primary premise is that anyone can be a leader. Cydcor also believes that everyone has the capacity to lead. This book encourages readers to think about their actions throughout the day and recognize that almost all of them are manifestations of one of the five dimensions of leadership—the Leader Within, the Leader Behind, the Leader in Front, the Leader Beside, and the Leader in the Field.
Each of the dimensions is defined and illustrated in its own chapter so readers can gain a full understanding of their preferred leadership style and what they can do to grow in their own capacity for multi-dimensional leadership.
Check out this book and let us know what you think. Share with us on Twitter and follow us @Cydcor.
We are Cydcor, the recognized leader in outsourced sales services. From our humble beginnings as an independent sales company based in Canada to garnering a reputation as the global leader in outsourced sales, Cydcor has come a long way. We’ve done this by having exceptional sales professionals and providing our clients with proven sales and marketing strategies that get results.
About Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
How do you become an expert in something? Many people believe true expertise relies on innate talent, but in Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, authors Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool dispel that myth with compelling research. Instead, they postulate that the potential for excellence exists within most of us. We simply have to nurture and grow that expertise.
Why Cydcor Recommends This Book
Cydcor believes in a “work hard, play hard” culture, and this book perfectly demonstrates the stellar results possible if you put in the work. Ericsson and Pool discuss the “10,000 hour rule,” or the idea that anyone who puts in enough “deliberate practice” can become an expert on any given subject.
The 10,000 hour rule is not a new topic – it’s one that has been brought up by writer Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. Ericsson and Pool’s book stresses that this kind of deliberate practice, especially if aided by an expert, can help people master simpler tasks and situations and ultimately gain a better understanding of the subject or craft as a whole.
Cydcor’s Favorite Part
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise not only encourages readers to put in the necessary hours to become masters of their field, but it also emphasizes the importance of setting stretch goals. Cydcor encourages its employees to constantly be learning, growing, and improving—and that makes having a vision for the future imperative.
On top of being chock-full of practical advice (with studies and evidence to support), the book is also well written and easy to digest, making it a must-have for anyone who wants to be a better learner.
Check out this book and let us know what you think! Share with us on Cydcor’s Twitter and follow us @Cydcor.
We are Cydcor, the recognized leader in outsourced sales services. From our humble beginnings as an independent sales company based in Canada to garnering a reputation as the global leader in outsourced sales, Cydcor has come a long way. We’ve done this by having exceptional sales professionals and providing our clients with proven sales and marketing strategies that get results.
About Strength Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow
Nearly a decade ago, researchers at Gallup concluded a 30-year study of leadership strengths. Over the course of the project, researchers examined over 1 million work teams, supervised over 20,000 interviews with leaders, and spoke with over 10,000 followers about who the most important leaders in their lives were.
Strength Based Leadership is the interpretation of that information by best-selling author Tom Rath and prominent leadership consultant Barry Conchie. In the book, Rath and Conchie identify strategies that will allow you to find and develop the strengths to improve your ability to lead.
Why Cydcor Recommends This Book
The authors thoughtfully interpret the data Gallup assembled over decades, using their insights to craft a guide that teaches readers to discover and develop leadership abilities.
Some experts might suggest imitating the leadership style of someone famous, but Gallup’s research proves that approach simply doesn’t work for long. Instead, readers are encouraged to be themselves and engage these three key findings from Gallup’s research in a personal and authentic way:
1. The most effective leaders are always investing in strengths.
2. The most effective leaders surround themselves with the right people and then maximize their team.
3. The most effective leaders understand their followers’ needs.
Cydcor recommends this book because it helps guide readers toward becoming a successful leader in a way that builds on their own unique strengths.
Our Favorite Part
Our favorite part of Strength-Based Leadership is that it provides a practical approach to building leadership skills. The Gallup researchers identified 34 leadership strengths. For each one of those strengths they suggest two or three ways to use them at work and in your personal life.
The authors connect the results of the Gallup study with strategies used by real-world leaders. They provide real-world examples to teach readers to continually develop their strength-based leadership skills. These lessons also improve organization and management skills.
Interviews with Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach for America; Simon Cooper, President of the Ritz-Carlton; and Brad Anderson, Chief Executive Office of Best Buy, provide practical insights into the leadership process that readers can apply to their professional development.
So, check out this book and let us know what you think. Share with us on Twitter and follow us @Cydcor.
We are Cydcor, the recognized leader in outsourced sales services. From our humble beginnings as an independent sales company based in Canada to garnering a reputation as the global leader in outsourced sales, Cydcor has come a long way. We’ve done this by having exceptional sales professionals and providing our clients with proven sales and marketing strategies that get results.
About Getting There: A Book of Mentors by Gillian Zoe Segal
What makes a good mentor? In Getting There: A Book of Mentors, Gillian Zoe Segal interviews thirty leaders in their fields to provide tips and tricks on how they were able to make it to the top. These potential role models describe hurdles they had to overcome in life, setbacks they had to handle, and the lessons they learned even in their lowest moments. The mentors give practical career advice as well as wisdom they’ve acquired over the years. Getting There is the perfect read for anyone attentively focused on their future or facing challenges in getting to the next level in their career. Finding success is never easy, but a great mentor can make the path toward achievement easier to navigate.
Cydcor decided to review this book after discovering an excellent Forbes.com article on door-to-door selling as the first step to billions.
Why Cydcor Reviews Recommends This Book:
Segal interviews people from many different fields: art, politics, science, and business. Each mentor walks the reader through their journey of making it big, explaining that the path isn’t always easy. Failures happen and difficulties arise, but it’s not impossible to outlast these complications. Almost all of the mentors in this book have experienced a moment that let them transcend these challenges.
This isn’t a book filled with research or studies. Instead, it offers narratives that put an emphasis on being human, and how that allows people to face anything. The advice the book Getting There offers is top quality, from real people who started out ordinary and became extraordinary. Although these people may all be from different fields, the advice is still sound and applicable for anyone looking to make something of themselves. It’s truly a great and inspirational read.
Our Favorite Part
Of all the different mentors interviewed in the book, John Paul DeJoria (co-owner of Patron Spirits and Paul Mitchell US), Sara Blakely (owner of @SPANX), , and worldwide recognized artist Jeff Koons have the most insights applicable to the business and sales industries. All three began their careers as door-to-door salespeople, and that experience made an impact that affected them permanently. Like the rest of the book, these chapters feel like an intimate one-on-one talk where wisdom is easily absorbed. The struggles these mentors faced can help shed light on many of the challenges everyone faces while trying to build a successful professional life.
What do you look for in a mentor? Tell us about the qualities you value when searching for a role model. Share a photo on Instagram and follow us @Cydcor
We are Cydcor, the recognized leader in outsourced sales services. From our humble beginnings as an independent sales company based in Canada to garnering a reputation as the global leader in outsourced sales, Cydcor has come a long way. We’ve done this by having exceptional sales professionals and providing our clients with proven sales and marketing strategies that get results.
Learn more about what's going on at the Cydcor office by liking Cydcor on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CydcorLLC
About Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip and Dan Heath
The Heath brothers’ latest book is focused on better decision-making, introduced through a four-step process to ensure we make the right call. Written in an approachable and readable style, Decisive explores how people make decisions, from including a rock star’s decision making system that works to a CEO’s disastrous decision and what they learned from it. Research has revealed that most decisions are made through a variety of biases and irrationalities. From being too confident, to finding information to justify our rationale, our brains are constantly working against us to make the best decision possible. Simply understanding these flaws isn’t the solution; there needs to be a different way to go about it.
Decisive is the Heath brothers’ most powerful and meaningful book yet, offering new strategies and practical tools to make better choices. It’s key to be aware that making the right decision, at the right moment, can make all the difference.
Why Cydcor Reviews recommends this to future leaders:
Decisive is a valuable tool to making objective decisions that will lead to success. The Heaths do an excellent job of presenting a process that works for making decisions, while proving their system with a wide variety of examples. They begin by discussing how the normal decision-making process proceeds in 4 steps, each of which has a "villain" that can negatively impact it. Along the way, readers learn the answers to critical questions, such as: How can we stop the cycle of agonizing over our decisions? How can we ensure that we don’t overlook precious opportunities to change our course? The Heath brothers explain how to navigate the land mines laid by our irrational brains and improve our chances of good outcomes.
Be sure to check out Cydcor's latest videos on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Cydcor
Our favorite part:
The first part of this book discusses obstacles to good decision-making, and the second part of the book is focused on overcoming them. The book is easy to pick-up, and to understand their system to making better decisions. This is the perfect read for any business professional struggling to make decisions, or knows an important decision is going to be made in the future. The Heaths spend the conclusion of the book detailing a process to make better decisions, which they call the WRAP process: widen your options, reality test your assumptions, attain some distance, and prepare to be wrong. This simple system could be the key to avoiding disastrous decision-making.
Cydcor encourages ongoing education and professional development. It’s one of our core values.
Once we’re out of school we often abandon it altogether. And that’s too bad. Because if you want to get noticed at work you need to keep cracking the books—or tablet, smartphone, or headphones—whichever device works for you.
We’ve made personal developmental whole lot easier for you this fall by providing a reading business-focused reading list. There are lots of interesting ideas here that will improve your approach to work and your experiences in life. We’re looking at the big picture and that includes the whole person.
If you don’t like to read alone consider creating a book club at work for those eager to work on their skills too. Invite your coworkers, team members, mentors, bosses, supervisor, manager, and assistants to join the club. Try to arrange a meeting in person before work for coffee and conversation—when everyone is bright eyed.
Now it’s time to start studying. Check out this list:
To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink
Pink teaches skills that will improve your sales technique and empower you to get others to take action. Develop a better understanding of negotiation, persuasion, and how to pitch.
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
Duhigg is a New York Times business reporter who investigates scientific research revealing why we have habits and how we can change them. He brings a deep understanding to the study of human nature and personal transformation. Read Cydcor's review of this title here.
The 21.5 Unbreakable Laws of Selling by Jeffery Gitomer
Selling is easy but it takes hard work to be good at it. Gitomer values optimism in his approach to sales. He’ll teach you to craft a positive attitude that wins people over.
Life is What You Make It by Peter Buffet
Warren Buffett’s son, Peter, is an Emmy-winning songwriter and musician. He may have grown up around great wealth but it was never promised to him. He writes about his life journey and the core beliefs about choosing to do good in your work life and in your personal life.
Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier
The authors have some great insight in new strategies for approaching work with a better, faster, easier way to succeed: doing the work and avoid the distractions. It’s a great read for people with an entrepreneurial spirit who want to accomplish great things in their organizations, but also have dreamt of being able to do it on their own.
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk
You need a social media expert like Vaynerchuk to learn how to connect with today’s customers. Your social media message has to be engaging and correctly prepared for specific social media platforms. This book will teach you how tell a good story that wins customers.
Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan
Explore the positive power of meditation and learn how to train your attention, develop self-awareness, and form new paths that lead toward wisdom and success. Chade-Meng Tan was one of Google’s first engineers. Not your typical meditation advocate.
The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker
Drucker teaches us that an executive has the ability to get the right things done. Learn the importance of innovation, entrepreneurship, and management for the thoughtful executive. It may have been written in the 1960s but its message still rings true.
Cydcor also has a website dedicated to the latest business book reviews. Check out cydcorreviews.com for more recommendations on business books for personal development.
About Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values by Fred Kofman
Consciousness plays a large role in organizational business. Building a conscious business means finding your passion and expressing your essential values through work, according to author Fred Kofman. A conscious business also continually builds a viable way to pursue happiness for many of its employees. It calls for solid performances through its community and the dignity of each shareholder. Conscious Business is the definitive resource for achieving what really matters in the workplace and beyond.
Why Cydcor Reviews recommends this to future leaders:
The most difficult parts about starting or running a business is the amount of overtime work needed, the stressful deadlines, and the thought of being overworked without a secure future. The real challenges that make or break an entrepreneur’s success require dealing with their own integrity, priorities, and conflicts with others people. Conscious Business analyzes those challenges and offers many different tools and strategies of how we can manage them and come out ahead having built a stronger foundation and a stronger company. This book is grounded in the harsh challenges of reality in business, such as understanding that failure is never an option and success is not always achieved. It’s a great starting point for business professionals to realize it takes a lot to make it on top, but it’s definitely not impossible.
Our favorite part:
Conscious Business contains many techniques to improve organizational greatness. The book’s chapters present techniques on building unconditional responsibility, succeeding with integrity, improving communication and speaking the truth, be accountable with commitments, and how to be the ultimate source of leadership. This book creates a tool set for organizational learning that can be applied to any day-to-day business culture. It’s a quick read with worthwhile knowledge to take away.
About StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
Most people like to focus on fixing their weaknesses instead of making the most out of their strengths. To help people uncover their talents, the research-based management-consulting group Gallup introduced the first version of its StrengthsFinder online assessment in 2001. StrengthsFinder helped millions find out where they truly stood out. Its sequel, StrengthsFinder 2.0, unveils a new and improved version of the popular assessment. Although it can be read once to learn a few new things, it’s a great guidebook to continually refer to for career growth. The book is full of strategies for applying a person’s strengths professionally and personally. StrengthsFinder 2.0 is an approach by scientists to provide readers with a tool to identify their strengths--or more precisely, their talents. Author Tom Rath leads readers into their journey of becoming the best they can be.
Why Cydcor Reviews recommends this to future leaders:
If StrengthsFinder 2.0 will do anything for a reader, it’s pinpointing the things that a person does well and the skills they can continue to grow. The combination of dissecting these talents and the development of a plan of action works relatively well. An interesting point that Rath makes is that talent multiplied by investment will equal more strength. This means that investing in the things that we do well will make us better professionals. But finding out these strengths is not the end of the journey. It’s up to the reader to further develop other areas that may need improvement. This is an easy recommendation for any future leader who wants to use the things they know about themselves to discover what other qualities lie beneath.
Our favorite part:
When it comes to books that require you to take a test to determine the best way to read it, the test always needs to be worthwhile to take. The online test that StrengthsFinder 2.0 provides can open readers’ eyes and helps them start their improvement. The book will help you find your strengths and the best way you can apply them. Although the test is essential to reading the book, which may not appeal to some readers, it can still open up doors to understanding the way you work and give you ideas on ways to apply your strengths. It can help managers, business professionals, and future leaders tenfold.