A Book And A Movie

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: A Good Read and a Must See

Competencies: motivation, achievement, empowering others

Who benefits: There is something here for just about anyone

Consultant Usage: good background information for coaches, counselors, and trainers

What’s it about? How is your day going?  Need a little fun and educational pick-me-up?  If you have 11 minutes I guarantee you a smile and chuckle with Daniel Pink’s animated video Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us.  If you are at all interested in a straight-forward explanation of what really motivates us at home and in the workplace, it is so simple just click on the link and sit back and enjoy.  He does a great job of starting with what we already know and adding some things we probably didn’t know.  And if you are watching at work, you still have four minutes left on your break.

Writing about motivation, here is what I am guessing is a good read.  It is just out, I haven’t had the opportunity to get my hands on a copy yet, but I will put it at the top of my summer reading list for a reason I will explain below.  

It’s the latest by the Brothers Brafman.  They of Sway fame.  These guys are good writers.  The short form title of the book is Click.  (They apparently like short titles like Brazilian soccer players like to go by a one word name.)

Click is about how we connect with others.  Or how we click with the situation we are in.  It is about those magic moments when we have peak experiences, when we are in the zone.  The book explores why “…we click in certain situations and with certain people, but not with others? Can this kind of magical connection be consciously encouraged?  Is there a way to create such peak experiences?”

I am way past curious to understand more about the details of how “clicks” happen.  I have had many good “clicks”, wondered why a couple more “clicks” didn’t happen and knew from the moment I met them that some people were not and never would be “clicks.”

I have been in situations where everything just seemed to come together almost seamlessly.  And I have been in situations where no matter what we did we ended up spinning our wheels.  Why is this so and can we knowingly do anything to improve the probabilities of “clicking”?  The book suggests we can.

My best friend and I met in an awkward and potentially conflicting business situation in 1986 and yet we clicked and are still going strong.

My closest friends can recount the story of how I met and became engaged to a woman in a single day.  And she spoke no English and I spoke no Portuguese.  And yes we married a few months later.

So I have a real personal interest in getting to know why these things happen. 

Catch you later.

[tags]drive, click, sway, daniel pink, ori brafaman, rom brafman, motivation, achievement, empowering others, building strategic relationships, collaboration, engenders trust, managing relationships, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.