Today we’re exploring the power of books in helping our careers and personal development. In this task, we encourage you to watch a book recommendation by @ajay184f during TestBash Careers. After watching the video, we invite you to share a book that has had a significant impact on your career. Let’s discover the transformative power of books!
Choose a Book: After watching the video, select a book that resonates with you. It can be any book on any topic that you believe has helped you in your career growth. Consider books that have provided valuable insights, practical strategies, or inspiring stories.
Share the Book: Write a post in reply to this post sharing the book’s title, author, and a brief overview of its contents. Explain why you believe the book has been valuable in your career. Highlight specific concepts, strategies, or perspectives from the book that have had a positive impact on your professional journey.
Engage with the Community: Take the time to read and engage with other participants’ book recommendations and insights. Comment on their posts, ask questions, and share your own thoughts and experiences. This is an opportunity to learn from each other and discover new books!
Why complete this task?
Expand your knowledge: By watching the book review video, you gain insights into “Executive Presence” by Sylvia Ann Hewlett. This understanding of the book’s key concepts and strategies can enhance your leadership skills and professional presence.
Share insights and experiences: Writing a post to recommend your chosen book enables you to articulate how it has been valuable in your career. By highlighting specific concepts, strategies, or perspectives, you can offer valuable insights to the community and inspire others to explore the book as well.
Discover new books: Engaging with the community provides an opportunity to discover new books and recommendations from fellow community members. By actively participating in discussions, you can broaden your reading list and explore diverse perspectives, expanding your knowledge even further.
For me it’s the book: Multipliers, How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman.
This book was truly eye opening to me as a new leader. It helped me to challenge others to grow rather than just write someone off if they weren’t performing well. There are a ton of other great lessons as well that are applicable to managers and individual contributors.
The following books were very helpful for me:
Leading Quality: How Great Leaders Deliver High Quality Software and Accelerate Growth - Book by Owais Peer and Ronald Cummings - John
THE EXPERT TEST MANAGER- Guide to the ISTQB Expert Level Certification- [Rex Black][James L. Rommens] [Leo Van Der Aalst]
I am currently starting to read - Navigating the Labyrinth: An Executive Guide to Data Management Paperback – by [Laura Sebastian-Coleman]
The book that has changed the way I work and study is Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hershey. It’s written by a woman with a PhD that discusses how grind culture dehumanizes us.
I have a chronic illness and respecting my physical limitations and learning that I still have value as a professional and a human has been extremely important post-diagnosis.
A book that I read early in my career, and one that can have benefits to many types of occupations, regardless of experience level, is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. While it has the more direct parallels with Sales, it still is extremely useful for navigating many of our interpersonal relationships that just so happen to occur at work. The main take-aways from this book are 6 habits that you should try and implement that are proven to put you in a more favorable light with your co-workers. They are:
Six ways to Make People Like You
Become genuinely interested in other people.
Smile.
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
Be a good listener. …
Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
#6 is probably my most-used strategy to try and make friends. There are also many other tips within this book that address things like leadership strategies, creating collaborative spaces with those that may not initially see your point of view, and how to meter out criticism in a way that doesn’t offend. It has been a highly useful and influential book in my life, and is most definitely a great read!
I’m not sure I could support anyone “deserving” to be in charge based on how they look/speak
I’m so glad that I checked and found this book was written in 2014 - some incredibly outdated points made around communication and appearance - just off the summary by Ajay this is not a book I’d be rushing to pick up
“Being youthful” “over prepare” “don’t wear too much makeup”
I’m giving a lightning talk tomorrow to a room full of strangers for the first time ever, one thing I am not doing is “over preparing” and I plan to wear as much make up as I want
The helpful points in this summary to me have ended up lost in the mix of the outdated ones
