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Comeback 2.0: Up Close and Personal is the coffee table book published to document the 2009 season of Lance Armstrong in photos. I wasn’t planning on picking this book up as I can think of much better things to spend my money on, but it was on the shelf at my local library. While there’s not a lot of reading in this book, the pictures are drop dead gorgeous! My favourite is the shot in the giant redwoods during the Tour of California. I have to make it down there one day. This book is packed with action shots of all the major tours Lance raced in as well as behind the scenes shots with his family and the Astana team.

I’m not a photo journal type of person, so this book doesn’t really appeal to me, but it was worth carrying home from the library.

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Tim Sanders has written an excellent book on the nitty gritty part of networking. Unlike other networking books, Love is the Killer App explains three required differentiators: Knowledge, Connections, and Compassion.

The section on Knowledge is all about finding a way to add value to as many people as you can. In here, Tim gives you detailed steps on how to read, highlight, and annotate you books. He even covers how to choose what to read. He then covers how to put this information into a conversation.

The section on Connections is all about finding a node on your network can help this person solve their pain. He’s very clear that it’s not about throwing two people together to see what sticks but instead it’s a thought out, focussed connection between two people that can clearly benefit from each other.

The section on Compassion is interesting. Tim explains how to communicate emotions in todays workplace. He even recommends ignoring your own feelings of embarrassment and just taking a chance. There’s lots of material on how to communicate compassion using body language as well as verbal communication. I still have problems with this section of the book, but it’s just my reserved nature.

Whenever I heard about Love is the Killer App, the title would send up red flags in my head. I just couldn’t get past it. Finally, I stumbled across it in the library and thought “What the heck?”. It turned out to be a quick read and after reading it, it’s the perfect title! This is a book that I would recommend buying and will pick up as soon as I have some spare cash.

Take a look at my reading list and recommend something to for me to read!

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Chapter 7 of The Leadership Challenge is titled Search For Opportunities. Search for opportunities is the fifth commitment of Leadership.

Search For Opportunities is the introductory chapter in the section devoted to challenging the process. Kouzes and Posner compare leadership in a company to being a venturer. They describe how challenge and adversity cultivate leadership.

The authors describe how leaders should treat every job as an adventure. By coming to work everyday as if it was your first day on the job, you start to question why procedures have been put into place.

By seeking meaningful challenges, leaders bring out the best work in themselves. Motivation is stronger when your work has meaning to you.

Leaders should also find and create meaningful challenges for others. Again, everyone does their best work when challenged, and motivation is even stronger when that challenge is meaningful to the person.

Everyone wants to have fun at work, and we all work better when we’re having fun. Leaders should promote a fun environment.

Questioning the status quo is a difficult skill for many people. Leaders are encouraged to question routines and processes and eliminate the ones that don’t make sense.

Another tough practice is to renew your teams. Whenever money gets tight in a company, the first thing to get cut is training. Yet without training, teams get disconnected and stagnant. New ideas and new practices take longer to develop.

Creating an open-source approach to searching for opportunities means allowing anyone interested to take part in creation and innovation in the organization. New ideas are not just created by a few hand-selected people.

Visit my past articles on The Leadership Challenge:
How to Lead.
Envision the Future.
Enlist Others.

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