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Mary Ellen’s Book Picks
A voracious reader and student of all things inspirational and personal, professional, and leadership development-oriented, I have several favorite books I happily recommend and share.
These titles are available through our Amazon reseller program.
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Now, Discover Your Strengths Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton Some of us spend a lifetime trying to improve our shortcomings. Apparently, there is not only an easier solution, but a much more powerful one. “The real tragedy of life is not that each of us doesn’t have enough strengths, it’s that we fail to use the ones we have.” That’s what these authors decided based on the mountains of research they did with Gallup (yup, the poll people). Now, Discover Your Strengths is a terrific how-to book on identifying and developing our unique talents and strengths and a code on the inside jacket lets you discover your own using their online survey. |
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Taming Your Gremlin Rick Carson Since gremlin-taming is such a crucial part of making change I typically recommend this book to all my individual coaching clients. And what are gremlins, you may be asking? They’re those nasty voices we all have in our head…our inner critics. They love to have us struggle and suffer; they disempower us. They are all about maintaining the status quo and survival. They will stop us from changing because they don’t like change. How helpful are they? Well, they’re not. That’s why gremlin-taming (maybe even total eviction) is so important. |
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The Speed of Trust Stephen M. R. Covey Wow! This was my absolute favorite book for 2007. It had a profound impact on my levels of self-trust and showed up time and again in my coaching conversations with executives and entrepreneurs. It dovetails nicely with dad Stephen R. Covey’s ideas and breaks down the idea of trust into bite-sized chunks and exercises. |
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The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen R. Covey This is a classic. It is a “must” read for all executives, entrepreneurs, and everyone else in between. Sure, Covey uses lots of big words when a couple short ones would do, and he certainly enjoys creating fancy names for his ideas, but this little piece of brilliance is truly “it” for those who want to master personal effectiveness. |
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The E-Myth Michael Gerber I’ve read this book at least five times. Really. It’s that good. |
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The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work John Gottman This was my favorite book of 2006, and it’s one I assign to all my couples and often use it with my team–coaching clients too. The principles easily translate to all relationship types. Gottman is not only very smart, he’s also very funny, and it shines through in this book. He’s the guy who can tell within three minutes of observing a couple if they’ll still be married in three years. People read this book and then say, “Oh, so that’s why that happened.” It gives great insight into what makes for successful relationships and what you can do to make yours work. Loved this so much we chose it as the first book featured by the International ORSC Book Club. |
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Attracting Perfect Customers: The Power of Strategic Synchronicity Stacey Hall and Jan Brogniez Let’s face it. Who among us does not want to work with “perfect customers?” Not only are the authors offering the reader this possibility, they contend that it can be done without aggressive, labor-intensive strategies. I’m there. I’ve personally used the ideas in this book a ton, and so have my entrepreneurial clients. It’s a lovely book for making the whole “growing your business” thing feel natural and within reach. |
Virtual Book Club
I co-chair the ORSC International Book Club, a virtual book club that meets monthly to discuss books relevant to Organizational & Relationship Systems Coaching. You can contact me for details.
