My favorite books that create highly motivated, self-sufficient teams who want to attain amazing results

This book was one of a few “game changers” in my career. In fact, we used this book to “gung ho!” our entire company of managers/leaders.

The premise of the book is how to create worthwhile work through the balance of cash and congratulations. It is a heartwarming and compelling story about a new manager of a factory that had poor results throughout except for one department that always met/exceeded their goals.

The new manager is taught by the department head the reasons why this department had so much success through 3 concepts: 1. The spirit of the squirrel 2. The way of the beaver 3. The gift of the goose. 

I was blessed to have met this author at a local Chamber of Commerce event that he spoke at.

His story about his book was emotionally moving to me so much so that we “hired” him to come in and speak with our leadership team for an afternoon. When we put 100% into our relationships and expect nothing in return, magic begins to happen. This works no matter how challenging the current state of your relationship is. The quality of our relationships is what really matters in our lives and this book frames this concept like no other.

This book took our customer service performance in our company to levels we had never seen before. All of our leaders read this book and then the magic began.

The premise is that satisfied customers just are not good enough. They need to be “raving fans’ of us meaning, they actually become advocates of your business! This led to sales and traffic that exceeded our peers in all measurable ways while truly making our work more fun than we ever thought.

This book is powerful and moving. As leaders, we must never “pass the buck” and blame others. We need to step up, take accountability, especially when things don’t go as planned as they invariably will at times.

In this book, these principles are put to the test in the most challenging environment known to man: wartime. Jocko and Leif describe in heart-pounding details why this approach had to be taken in some of the most extreme, life-and-death situations. They explain why it is important to learn why our superiors (bosses) sometimes question us or want/need more clarity and for us not to take it personally or always consider it “micromanaging”.

In their cases, it came down to a matter of life or death being on the battlefield in Iraq in the early and mid 2000s. As leaders, we truly need to “own it” no matter how “extreme” our individual situations may be.

As we live and go throughout our daily lives, we will invariably be interacting with people from all walks of life.

We know that we all are carrying burdens, stresses, and challenges so…why not do our best to “make someone’s day?” Howard does an amazing job of describing just how simple this can be done in a variety of ways, depending on where we are, what we are doing, and who we are with/interacting with. It requires little or no work on our part to “make someone’s day”.

And as a leader, it will be impactful to your followers by setting the example in heart-filled, sincere, and caring ways. We never know what others are going through in the moment we are interacting with them. This book gives us all the perspective we need to help train us to make that interaction so compelling that the other person will at minimum think and possibly even say to us “You made my day!”