Top Executive Coaching with Tony Mayo

I recommend The Holotropic Mind to two audiences: the scientifically minded willing to follow solid research wherever it goes and the New Age enthusiast willing to explore a radical theory which seeks to explain a wide range of occult phenomenon, from pre-birth memories to ESP to life-after-death.

Dr. Grof is skilled psychiatrist and researcher with solid academic credentials in the US and Europe. He was one of the first to experiment with Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 3% [?]

Share it!

There have been more than 110 goal setting experiments conducted in the laboratory and in organizations in just the last twelve years. Ninety percent of these studies obtained positive results for goal setting. This makes goal setting one of the most dependable and robust techniques in all the motivational literature. … A recent study of high and low productivity … found that goal setting and deadlines were the single most frequently mentioned causes of … high productivity. [page 6]

Goal Setting: A Motivational Technique That Works!

Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham

See also Managing Yourself with Specific Measurable Results, on this blog.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Share it!

He thought–while his hand moved rapidly–what a power there was in words; later, to those who heard them, but first for the one that found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have never discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought first takes shape into words.

–Gail Wynand in
The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand, 1943

Popularity: 2% [?]

Share it!

Breathing Space:
Living and Working at a Comfortable Pace
in a Sped-Up Society
by Jeff Davidson

“Our contribution to the progress of the world must, therefore, consist in setting our own house in order.”
–Mahatma Gandhi

I use a lot of books in the executive training I offer, some of them well-known bestsellers like Flow [Click here to see Tony's review.], but there is only one book that I advise my clients to read: Breathing Space. Jeff Davidson has filled each page of Breathing Space with insight, practicality, and specific advice. To get your hands back on the controls of your modern life, no book is better.

Life in today’s world is busy, full, and rife with distractions. Satisfaction can easily slip away without special efforts to create an environment and habits that support our own goals and priorities. Fail to do so and your life will–as Jeff Davidson amply demonstrates–be thoroughly colonized by advertisers, entertainers, and co-workers. It has often been said, and is even more true today, that if you are not Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 3% [?]

Share it!

The bottom line is that being accountable to ourselves is not enough. We clearly need others, preferably outside of our organization, to hold us accountable and to help us accelerate our learning. We need others to help us fight the continual battles against our own human nature and our tendency to do what we want to do, rather than what we need to do. We need others to Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 14% [?]

Share it!

Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

I certainly would not have begun, much less finished, this book if the author and subject had not become so important. It is disjointed and rambling, parts memoir and parts abstract essay, and needed a firm edit to clarify its message. Separate from all that, however, is Barack Obama’s keen insight into race, belonging, and living a meaningful life. Listening to such a brilliant and compassionate person is time well spent. Also evident is his intuitive recognition of the power of conversation to create a world and a future, a foundation distinction for executive coaching. My favorite examples:

p. 287 That’s what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions people carried within them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 3% [?]

Share it!