The Leap Team loves a good book or two or ten. If you peeked at our book purchases, you’ll see the diversity of our interests. We figured our newsletter readers would like to see what we have been reading and using in our work with our clients. Enjoy the first-ever (and hopefully more frequent), Team Leap Book Club selections. Reading a book is a good thing to do and with the ability to read, listen and sometimes even watch a book or story on stage or on a screen, it is time to make your next selection. Here are some of ours…

Books reviewed in this issue of our newsletter:

• Who Moved my Cheese?
• The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues
• No Pain, No Gaines
• The Employee Experience
• The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard
• Atomic Habits

By Dr. Spencer Johnson
Publisher: Vermilion
ISBN-10: 0091816971

By Chuck McPherson ~ We all experience change in our lives. It can be distressing or rewarding, depending on our approach. “Who Moved My Cheese?” is a classic parable that demonstrates in practical terms how to better handle change and avoid pitfalls by practicing a few key principles: anticipate and prepare for change, overcome fears, envision success, and enjoy change. By depicting simple, memorable characters and scenarios, the parable gives you a framework for responding to change successfully.

Teams going through change could benefit from the easy lessons this book has to offer and guiding principles can be key discussion points for the team to work with as they go through change or prepare to go through change.

By Patrick Lencioni
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
ISBN-10:1119209591

By Tracy Emmerich ~ This is an easy and fun book to read!  The first half of the book is based on a character (Jeff Shanley) who leaves the high-tech business behind to learn and eventually take over his uncle’s construction business (based on a fictional company in Napa!).  Jeff has business smarts but knows nothing about construction.  Jeff has been working with his uncle learning the ropes for about two months when his uncle informs him that due to health reasons, he must step away from the family business. He assures Jeff that he has faith in him to run the business.  Oh, and by the way, the company just landed two large projects, they don’t have the staffing, and cash flow is short because of delays and problems on one of their projects.

The book follows Jeff and his executive team in the way they process issues they have faced, including high turnover and project delays. The team determines that successful employees all have the same “virtues” that make them strong team players (Hungry, Humble, and Smart about people). They evaluate current employees to clarify who on their team has all of these virtues; if they don’t have these virtues, can they be taught? If not, they show how to help them find a job that does not require being a team player.  They also make it clear that the company embraces these virtues and if someone does not have these or is unwilling to improve on these virtues, then they will not like working for this company because it is who they are; it is their culture.

The second half of the book gives examples and suggestions on how to apply the team player virtues when hiring and evaluating current employees, how to develop an employee who is lacking in one or more virtues but most important, embedding the model into an organization’s culture.

If the culture of your organization aligns with the three virtues identified in the book – humility, hungry, and smart and you are looking to build or enhance your team with this type of team member, the book gives examples of interview questions and outlines how to evaluate and develop your team players to build the desired culture you want for your organization.

By Chip Gaines
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN-10: 0785237914

By Susana Morales ~ I love meeting new people and learning from them. When I go to a network event, which we all know has been a long time since that has happened, I meet people and ask about their stories. I believe networking is about building relationships that stand the test of time which is why I picked up Chip Gaines’ book on networking, No Pain, No Gaines. My interpretation of the book is that he talks about finding your purpose and charting your own path in search of your authentic self. And once you know who you are, you can create your network. A strong network, as defined by him, is a set of relationships that stand by you in the good times and especially in the bad times. There are many nuggets of cool information in the book; I chose a few that resonate with me to share with you:

• Success is not just about working hard it is more about what you are working towards.
• There will be seasons that are scary but none scarier than not living life on your own terms.
• Don’t be a comfortable connector and only hang out with the people who are exactly like you. Be a radical connector, be fearless, and be okay with the possible awkwardness of letting new people into your circle.
• Have a strong circle/network.
• The currency we should be offering one another should be vulnerability and understanding not, “What can you do for me?”
• Don’t let fear limit your potential and ask yourself what great things would come to you if fear wasn’t part of the equation.

How do you start building a strong network? Funny thing about creating your network, it’s advice which I think we all know. If you are the most driven in your network, you need a new network. If you are the strongest leader in your network, you need a new network. If you are the smartest in your network, you need a new network. You need to surround yourself with people who will challenge you to reach your full potential all of the time and every time.

By Tracy Maylett, EdD & Matthew Wride, JD
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
ISBN-10: 1119294184

Introduction
By Tracy Long ~ Attracting and retaining great talent has always been an issue, but even more so with the recent challenges of a post-COVID recession and trends like the “Great Resignation.” It’s not enough to have competitive pay and benefits when there are so many companies vying for a small talent pool. Organizations looking for a competitive advantage would do well to embrace the research and insights from The Employee Experience.

“A well-designed Employee Experience is about creating a better future, rather than focusing obsessively on keeping employees from becoming dissatisfied through perks, employee bonuses, and the like.”

Building upon their success with MAGIC: Five Keys to Unlock the Power of Employee Engagement, Tracy Maylett and Matthew Wride guide us through three critical components of the Employee Experience (EX):

• Expectation Alignment
• The Three Contracts
• Trust

Expectation Alignment
Disengagement (and turnover) results from unclear or unmet expectations and, according to Maylett and Wride, this misalignment increases over time unless the gap between what an employee has been promised and what the employee thinks has been promised has been identified and aligned.

“In the absence of clearly defined expectations, we find or create expectations to fill the void.”

The book explores the symptoms and causes of expectation alignment dysfunction and offers five proven preventative measures and a framework to improve the misalignment.

The Three Contracts
Contracts are the implicit and explicit expectations between relationships. The Employee Experience takes this further by diving into the subcontracts of the Brand Contract, the Transactional Contract and the Psychological Contract and looks at warning signs that the contract is in jeopardy.

Simply stated, the brand contract is your public face and is made up of all the implied promises of your brand messaging. This message helps attract candidates. The transactional contract is an explicit agreement about the terms of the relationship which can be written or verbal. The psychological contract underscores the unstated expectations and beliefs in a relationship and has the most potential to affect the EX. In the absence of clear messaging and alignment in the first two contracts, employees assume the psychological contract rules. When it is violated, employees disengage.

Trust
According to Maylett and Wride, when a “Moment of Truth” happens (something that tests the validity of the contracts) employees will learn whether their employer/supervisor keeps their promises or not. The reward for increased trust is agility; a prized quality in any organization.

This book provides clear, real-world organizational stories and research to highlight the lessons which makes it very relatable and easy to read. In working with managers, I find that unclear or misaligned expectations are the root of many employee relations issues. This book provides managers with tools to understand the connection between expectation alignment and employee engagement, to identify and correct violations of the three contracts, and to build trust so that employees have a meaningful experience, which in turn, creates high-performing, loyal, mission driven employees. I highly recommend it for all managers.