Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work Paperback – October 16, 2007

This book was written for anyone committed to improving performance - either of self or of others. It's for leaders, executives, managers, HR people, and for coaches. Its focus is Improving Thinking - something you might agree would be a great benefit to all those other people in the world who could use a little improvement - David's a champion of the discovery process- where a coach could help his client discover what he's been been dying to tell him.Personally, I'm a coach and a blurter - if I see something, I blurt it out, following Thomas Leonard's proficiency - "Shares what is there!" But David Rock makes a very good case for less overt coaching. There's very little which replaces the joy and exhilaration of discovery! And David wants me to keep my mouth shut and guide my client to his own delight, rather than indulge my own!A major contribution of the book - 6 Steps to Transforming Performance. If you're a weary connoisseur of 5. 6, 7, and 8 step processes, these are good, they make sense, and they're worth chewing on, and understanding.Neat one-liners pepper the book: my favorite is P=p-I, where P is Performance, p is potential, and I is Interference - i.e. where your interference keeps your potential from equalling your performance!This is a thoughtful book and an authoritative one. The author has a detailed idea of how leadership should optimally work, has practiced and has taught this process to many.Buy it if you have performance issues, or know others who do!Craig Jennings, Business Coach

Good coaching is simply helping people with their thinking, according to the author. I agree. David Rock explains principles of effective coaching and its powerful impact on and in the brains of people we coach, and his explanations have helped me learn new approaches to use in my professional work as a corporate coach.Two faults with the book: First, the title "Quiet Leadership" misses the potential audience of coaches (as professional coaches don't lead you but rather help you discover possible paths from which you choose your way forward), and the emphasis on QUIET may be unappealing to the often bold and noisy leaders who would most benefit from learning how to lead while coaching to better performance. Second, at times it seems the author is trying to impress me with how smart he is, and the "war stories" get in the way of getting to the meat of the techniques to use.Still, I found great value in the book and highly recommend it to coaches and aspiring coaches, along with works by John Whitmore, Alan Fine, W. Timothy Gallwey. This book will help you learn better coaching questions to ask, help you better understand what goes on within your client's/coachee's mind and brain when you coach well, and get better at noticing your client's/coachee's reactions to your coaching efforts. I'm a better coach from having read and applied things David Rock presents.

In the interest of full disclosure, I just finished a training seminar taught through David Rock's agency because I first read the book. The seminar, in fact, changed my view of the book. That is because The Art of Quiet Leadership is quite dense. In some respects, it speaks to two different readers. One reader is the "in the trenches" leader who is looking for methods that will yield powerful results but be easy to apply. In speaking to this reader, acronyms and easy models create applicability. The problem, however, is that some concepts did not fit neatly into categories. And then some categories had some sub-cagtegories which overlapped with yet other categories. To wit, I finished the course and I still can't state with clarity what these 6 steps are. The other reader audience is comprised of those who seek sound theory pegged to more scientific vetting. The mention of brain science correlates to the methods but doesn't necessarily prove their efficacy. Nonetheless, the concepts and approaches, regardless of category or blind studies, are extraordinarily powerful. The reality is that most people in positions of leadership did not study leadership theory nor do they have the time and patience to figure out how to apply it in complex, real-world situations. This book does provide the tools to keep leaders focused on vision and getting people to come along in a respectful way. If you are looking to walk away with one simple shift in perspective, this may not be the book for you. If you want a manual for very effective use in the field, this should be on your bookshelf and well-annotated.

I think everyone in a leadership position should read this book.

This is a book for anyone who is looking to lead a team of highly skilled people!

I LOVE this book. I’m only 35 pages in but anticipate I’ll be able to read, front to back, in a weekend. The book is written in a thoughtful and engaging way.

I liked this book because it is very actionable. David provides a sequence of six steps, and substeps within those steps. You do not need to read the entire book to start getting value from it. And, each of his steps passes the commonsense test.I got a tremendous amount of value from his very first recommendation -- "let them do the thinking". This was something I was doing wrong for a very long time... every time I thought for someone, I diminished their ownership. The rest of the book is just as good, including the rather grandly named "Dance of Insight".The initial chapters on the functioning of the brain are a tough slog. I wish that he had put them in appendixes. But make no mistake, this is a solid book.