Do you ever need to have “difficult conversations” with people or employees?

Maybe you are in leadership and need to talk to your directs, other individual contributors, or even people on the same level or senior to you?  Some of these conversations might be “delicate”.  Maybe the person isn’t performing, or you need to re-direct.  Even worse, the person maybe just toxic.

So where do you start?  How do you even open that conversation?  How should that conversation be constructed?  Let’s not forget that what you say and what is heard maybe two very different things.  You will be talking with your understanding, while the listener will be listening with their context and that means you might be starting from very different places.

This is where the book “Fierce Conversations” comes in, Susan Scott explains how to go into these conversations with your eyes wide open.  How to contruct them and a framework to work to.  And there are no “jam sandwich” techniques, which went out of fashion a long time ago.

Highly recommended and you will probably read it more than once. 

In the book “navigate to the lighthouse”, Kurt Davis has merged a sales book with a business book.  During Kurt’s time at Boku, he realised that to create a framework to sell large deals, lighthouse deals, it wasn’t just about selling, but also being active in the business to make sure that Boku was ready as a business to work with these companies. The book therefore reads how to create a territory plan, how to team sell across different geographies but also how to make sure the business was ready to take on these lighthouse clients. This might mean acquiring other businesses for example.

We’re all going to hell in a handbasket, or are we? In this book by Steven Pinker, he uses actual data to look at practical issues in the world, for example, we as a world are getting poorer, or we are not progressing as a human race, or there are more ways than they used to be etc.  Steven uses actual data to enlighten you on what is actually happening in the world. It’s worth saying that the data shows we have reduced violence in the world, we have not eliminated it.

If you give or receive feedback then this book is got you.  While the book is positioned as a book for receiving feedback, those techniques in reverse are useful for giving it.  After all, most of us in leadership have a boss.

Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen have written a book that walks you through the difference between coaching, evaluation and appreciation, the blockers and triggers the person feels when receiving them. After all there is something going on in everybody’s mind, how we feel today, our life experiences etc.  The book then goes onto offer solutions to silencing the voice in our heads when we receive the feedback and questions we can ask if we don’t like the feedback so we can get to the root cause.  Rather than as many of us do is we just get emotional. 

These systems will work for us in receiving the feedback as well as enabling us to be supportive in giving feedback.  It will be one of those books I will read many times. 

Deploy empathy – a practical guide to interviewing customers, Michele Hansen takes us through all of the ways we could be interviewing customers and she gives us a framework and examples.  This could be talking to customers about new features, if they would like to be a case study, customers that might not have upgraded from the free version, customers who may have cancelled, etc, etc.  Whatever way you need to speak to customers Michele has a process for you.  She also shares her years of experience and explains why you need to use certain words or certain question structures.  That is where the empathy comes in, in all cases you need to be empathetic and can see if you run calls like she suggests you will get the best from them, however the “difficulty” in the call maybe.  

I really enjoyed the book “holding the calm – the secret of resolving conflict and defusing tension”, while it is a business book, Hesha writes it in a way that makes the subject come alive.  The book is about resolving conflict and defusing tension”. In the book she shares her secrets of how to read a situation to solve problems, eliminate conflict, and restore harmony. 

But she also shares her experiences and case studies where she is resolving matters that are complex, political, emotional, sensitive to difficult personalities and with coming up with solutions when resolution seems intractable or unsolvable.  Many of the stories are funny, like the two business leaders that couldn’t agree on a company acquisition, one wanted $35 million and the other wouldn’t pay more than $30 million and she got them to settle. 

In the book “belonging to the brand – why community is the last great marketing strategy”, Mark explains how marketing today is broken.  People have had enough of the constant spam through cold calling, email marketing and advertising.  He also explains how even modern marketing techniques like SEO does not work for most companies.  So, what is a business to do?  That’s where Mark explains how forming groups and communities is something humans have done since prehistoric times.  Why?  Because for humans a community is psychological safety … and as long as a salesperson or a marketer does not try to sell you anything, we will be happy in the community like a pig in dirt.  Why? Because a pitch, puts us in flight or fight mode, always has, always will.

Mark backs this all up with examples and explanations about how you can build communities in your business, non-for-profit etc.

Cascades is a book that is all about starting a movement of even a revolution. Greg, was in Kyiv in Ukraine, during November 2004 to January 2005, which is when the Orange Revolution took place.  He also came connected with the "Otpor" movement in Serbia, who lead a movement to overthrow, Slobodan Milošević.  This lead Greg to be interested in movements, why they work and why they fail.  While attending Stanford University he decided to investigate movements further and came up with a mathematical formula. 

In the book Greg talks about how the world has shifted from hierarchies to networks and the implications of this.  Then he discuss the anatomy of a cascade, what does a revolution look like from the inside?  Then gets stuck into a discussion about movements, how do they start and why do they fail.  He finishes by talking about, what you can do to start your own moment,

You can create a movement by

Define – Vision of tomorrow, keystone change, resistance inventory and a genome of values

Plan – Spectrum of allies and pillars of support

Execute – Platforms and tactics and weaving the network

Transition – Surviving victory

Michael has written a book that covers business and how to sell and market.  It’s a very honest book, where he asks you searching questions about your ability and mindset.  As you must be in a positive frame of mind before you start on a journey of starting your own business.  Michael then takes us through process of getting close to customers and explains that sales and marketing is a process.

He finishes each chapter with suggested further reading.

Michael Solomon’s book “The new Chameleons – How to connect with consumers who defy categorization” is a book about how megatrends like mobile, the internet, social media and a post covid world has changed society and changed the way we do business.

So, are you what you buy? 

In the book, Michael, details what has changed to the consumer, why and how? He details that consumers on a quest to express their identity.  How categories and ICPs (ideal customer profiles) have changed and how that impacts customer journey maps.  Michael, then digs in on how customers be labelled or defined today, the difference between consumer linear and non-linear decision making and all aspects of social shopping; for example, recording purchases for our network to see and asking our networks for advice.  Then he asks the question, do our customers live in virtual worlds and how do brands turn this into an opportunity?  For example, co-creation, research and development (R&D) etc.

It’s a very detailed book on consumer buying today and how as brands we need to react. 

Those were the ten books I now want to highlight my books...

This is the second edition of the runaway bestseller "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers".  The original book was written in 2015 and published in 2016, but so much has changed, that I've created a second edition.

So what's different?  I've fully updated the text, I've added an additional 30%, I've also ask practitioners from companies that are using social and digital practically.  This is no future state, social is impacting you right now and your business must be reacting now to this change.

There is a forward by Mark Schaefer, with contributions from Cyberhawk, Telstra, Ringcentral Namos Consulting, Mercer, Ericsson, etc, etc.

The book is designed to be highly practical as as a CEO said of the first edition, "it's the first time I've been able to connect use of social media with revenue creation".

The first edition had 187 pages, this second edition has 306 pages. 

In my second book "Smarketing - How to achieve competitive advantage through blended sales and marketing", we walk you through how to merge and or get sales and marketing to work together.

If I was writing it today, we would probably call it RevOps (Revenue operations) as it meets the same objective of RevOps, which is to have a single revenue creation strategy, objectives and tactics.