Top Executive Coaching with Tony Mayo

Flow:
The Psychology of Optimal Experience
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Ph.D.

Excellent description, Doctor, where’s the prescription?

Professor Csikszentmihalyi has done a great service by distilling his decades of research into happiness and satisfaction into a well constructed single volume. He writes with wit, insight, and character. He vast learning is often evident but never overbearing.

The book ultimately fails, however, for it invests all of its considerable power in describing Flow and convincing the reader to seek this optimal experience but does too little to

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STARTUP
A Silicon Valley Adventure
by Jerry Kaplan

The following is an excerpt from: STARTUP by Jerry Kaplan

…I first learned the truth about scientific progress from my Ph.D. dissertation advisor at the University of Pennsylvania.

A shy Indian man with a shiny, balding head and an occasional stutter, Dr. Joshi was widely known for his brilliant work in artificial intelligence. Our weekly meetings to help me find a thesis topic were more like therapy sessions than academic discussions. Most of the time he would

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Fiction, like religion, takes us to a strange world to which we nevertheless feel a connection.

–Herman Melville

To enter another person’s world, to see things as they see them, to allow for different reactions to similar circumstances is to connect with people in a powerful way. Such empathy, compassion, and insight are essential for succeeding as a leader, salesperson, or an executive coach and to living a fulfilling life.

Reading the stories of people in circumstances different from your own is entertaining exercise that develops this important skill. Good novels novels offer intimate and immersive experiences of worlds most business people never encounter, yet the practice they offer with escaping our own narrow versions of reality can help us to be more receptive to the various worlds of the people we manage and sell to every day. [For more on individual worlds, see The Santiago Theory of cognition.]

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Influence:
The Psychology of Persuasion
by Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.

Influence is written as a guidebook for the savvy consumer. The author’s conversational style and frequent sharing of personal experiences will certainly recommend it to that audience. My interest in the work is probably closer to that of the typical reader: as a persuasion professional I am looking for specific ideas to increase my effectiveness. My attention has been richly rewarded.

Professor Cialdini organizes decades of research and experience into six easily comprehended categories of influence techniques. Relevant examples from marketing and sales are used to

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My mother, my wife, my sister, and Oprah recommended Ellen Foster to me. Ellen Foster is a very young, very mistreated Southern girl who tells her story in simple, compelling language. She takes us energetically into her world and lets us see adult behavior through her worldly but never cynical eyes. Her saga is funny, clever, and heart-rending. But most of all, it is a true human experience.

I read Ellen Foster in between reading

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