Everyone who knows me or has been following me for a while knows I have two big dogs that I love to take for walks multiple times a day. It’s great for me to be away from the screens and surround myself with nature. This really is one of my favourite things to do! One of the best parts is including my favourite books while doing it.
Unlocking Productivity and Entertainment: The Power of Audiobooks when Multitasking
A couple of years ago, one of my friends was listening to an audiobook while skiing. At first, I was like “how do you listen to a book when you’re doing something else?”? This was way after audiobooks were a thing. I had heard people were listening to books while driving long distances etc. but it never appealed to me as something I would do. I love reading and learning but I just didn’t feel like sitting still and reading with a book in my hands. The first couple of times I only listened to something while folding laundry, it seemed to be a low focussed task that I could easily listen to something and still felt I could follow along. I enjoyed this so much that I bought myself some headphones and I started listening to books while walking my dogs. Since then I have listened to many books, often about business development and human interactions/relationships. The best part of audiobooks is that they are so easily accessible and easy to re-read them! I would have a hard time picking up a book and reading it again, but to play it again seems to be ok.
My Top Picks for Must-Listen Audiobooks:
My top 4 favourite books:
- Tracktion from Gino Wickman
- Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni
- Dare to Lead from Brene Brown
- Radical Candor from Kim Scott
Tracktion
This book was recommended to me by my first business coach. His favourite (and mine too) was the recommended structure of meetings to get “tracktion” in your business and with your team. It’s amazing how much more you get done when you follow this consistently. Due to various reasons at one point, we fell off the meeting bandwagon and we totally fell apart as a team. After rereading Tracktion, I realized what went wrong and I reimplemented our meeting structure again. One of my senior team members mentioned this is what we used to do and I had totally forgotten. Another benefit, the team knows what to expect and therefore shows up and shows up prepared! I think every business owner knows when their business flows. Tracktion feels great!
Dead by Meeting
You have to read this book to fully understand its meaning. Surprisingly, the conclusion is not to have fewer meetings but more! To me, this is a great addition to the book above. Everyone knows that meetings aren’t always great and not everyone is engaged. If you make meetings efficient, structured, productive and relevant they are so useful. For a team to work together, you need to communicate but not just to communicate, it has to be productive. Dead by meeting helped me build confidence that as a leader I have to meet with everyone in my team regularly and to make sure team meetings are increasing our tracktion.
Dare to Lead
Some authors you just can’t get around and I feel like Brene Brown is one of those. I think everyone, business leaders or not, should read her books. Seriously, it should be incorporated into our kids’ education if you ask me. The way Brene talks, explains and teaches how to communicate and how our emotions work, is something that was eye-opening to me. Coming from an introverted, Dutch farm family, where emotions are stuffed away, this book helped me tremendously. Leading a business is emotional, doing people’s finances is emotional, and managing people is emotional. Don’t hide your emotions, it’s part of who you are, it’s what makes you unique! But you do need to manage them…
Radical Candor
This book was brought to my attention during a coaching course I took over a year ago. What I love about this book is that it’s so honest. It explains that we all move around in 4 quadrants (see below) whether we like it or not. This book really helps to create awareness about our own behaviour as leaders and how it impacts the people around us. In order to learn from our mistakes it’s important to create an environment where everyone is comfortable receiving and providing feedback. Where there can be compassionate candor up and down the organization. One of my biggest struggles as a leader is the limited feedback I receive. You don’t know what you don’t know.
Many people still see a business owner as the person who knows it all or who knows best, and I think I can say that most business owners feel the exact opposite! We don’t know everything and building a team around you that feels comfortable to tell you when you make the wrong decision or when you do something that actually annoys the team or that something isn’t working the way you planned, is so important! Without this, you will never get the flow or tracktion that’s required to be successful.
What Would You Choose to Read?
My team knows all these favourite books of mine as I reference them a lot during our team meetings. I highly encourage them to read them too. If you ever want to chat about one of these books, feel free to reach out! I love talking about these topics.
