[.ca] The 12 Bad Habits That Hold Good People Back: Overcoming ... (ISBN 0385498500)

Rich contents on behavior characteristic but...:
Very well written psychology book on human behavior that you can commonly find in your organization. Not much jargons but in plain simple english. It not only describes the twelve behavior patterns that holding good people back, but also does suggest how to fix and manage them. To depict the 12 hebavior patterns, the authors cleverly use different simple scenarios and business cases to address the orgins of the problem & pattern. They explain why the behavior patterns may limit your career advancement and how should break the behaviour patterns. I personally found that some patterns breaking approach could be helpful but some don't and lack of practical details. The authors seem to suggest most of the cases that the root of these behaviour patterns are arised out of childhood development. Well, I am not sure this is completely correct but you can certainly find more explanation in Part II of the book. The 12 bad habits that hold good people back are listed below: 1. Never feeling good enough 2. Seeing the world in black & white 3. Doing too much, pushing too hard 4. Avoiding conflict at any cost 5. Running roughshod over the opposition 6. Rebel looking for a cause 7. Always swinging for the fence 8. When the fear is in the driver's seat 9. Emotionally tone-deaf 10. When no job is good enough 11. Lacking a sense of boundaries 12. Losing the path To make readers easy to understand and remember these 12 behavior patterns, the authors also name these bad habits as the following easy terms: 1. Acrophobe Feeling in their heart of hearts that they don't deserve to be where they have been placed. 2. Meritocrat Seeing the world black & white, with answers that are right or wrong, all weighed on a perfectly fair scale and judged accordingly, on their merits alone. 3. Hero Constantly trying to do too much and pushing too hard on both themselves and other people. 4. Peacekeeper Going out of the way to avoid conflict, because of uncertainty about how it will end up. 5. Bulldozer Talking and acting tough, bullying people, taking no prisoners, and leveling anyone and anything that gets in the way. 6. Rebel To defy authority and everything associated with authority, including societal tradition, company custom, and good taste. 7. Home run hitter Expecting & demanding extraordinary and immediate success. 8. Pessimist-Worrier Seeing the negative and almost nothing but the negative; and worrying about it to excess. 9. Mr. Spocks Having a hard time recognizing and understanding fear, love, anger, jealousy, greed, compassion, and other emotions in themselves or in others. 10. Coulda-been These people have very little tolerance for hard work and little patience, not because they're lazy, but because doing the work to get to the top means that they're not already there. When they seem to be saying is "No job is good enough," but what they actually feel inside is "I'm not good enough for any job." 11. Loose Lips The person who lacks an appropriate sense of boundaries doesn't understand that some subjects belong in the office and some belong only in certain corners of the office and definitely not outside. 12. Dig Deeper Feeling they have lost their sense of direction, or a sense of enthusiasm that has dimished or disappeared for reasons that are not immediately clear. If you want to know more details, you can find very rich information from Part II of the book. It includes not just a description of the core psychological issue for each behavior pattern, but tools you can use to access yourself in each area, and execrises that you can do to strengthen those weaker psychological "muscles." Overall, this is a pretty interesting book you may want to put in your own collection.

A book every manager needs to read:
At one time,managers (and the lawyers who represent management,like myself)could be content with one way to handle poor performers---write them up and then fire them.No more,with employees as a company's greatest asset.This book deals with the ones that always drive you nuts---90% of the time they are great employees,but the other 10% of the time they are terrible and harm the organization.The book looks at 12 types,ranging from the emotionally tone deaf(who always seem to end up as key people in information services) to the tank,who gets the hard jobs done but causes intolerable collateral damage.The authors give you practical,implement tomorrow advice on how to turn these employees around,making them more valuable to the company and---just as importantly---helping then realize their full potential.I gave these books to clients as a New Years gift,and the response from almost all was,"where has this been all my professional life."

Personal PowerýActivate!:
If you want to achieve your goals and activate your sales like never before, you need to break through your bad habits (...). This book helped me do that! The barriers that I had put in front of myself crumbled like so much rubble at my feet and now I am charging ahead, surpassing my goals and wowing everybody around me. I've streamlined my whole organization, begun to see every human interaction as an opportunity for me to win, and become a customer-focused consulting machine. This kind of success once seemed impossible, but it was really just a matter of turning a few bad habits around. Thanks Jim & Tim!

Complexity and perscipacity:
I use the words complexity and perspicacity to discuss this book because the nature of the material the authors write about--the human mind and its behavior--is necessarily complex, while the authors display a very acute sense of those complexities. If you are a well-read, emotionally literate, self-aware person, this book contains many ideas and tools you can use to "get ahead" in business. Its scope, however, is not limited to the business world. One would think that Bridget Jones et al would do well to use the ideas presented in this book. At heart the book is not so much about the behaviors that hold you back in the business world, but, rather it is about the behaviors that hold you back, period. The business world just contextualizes the nature of the consulting practice the authors have and the audience to whom they write (typically business students and executives).

If you are fired or in a career rut, read this:
Some books are Godsent for those who are perplexed and truly want to know the answers to their problems. This is one of them. If you have been recently fired or are in a career rut, and don't completely understand why, then buy this book and read it cover to cover. The odds are VERY high you have more than one of the 12 bad habits which is killing your career. As always, it takes some humility to admit your own flaws and correct them. This book provides solid basis for starting the path to your own career enlightenment.