Videos
- Influencing Your Inner Movie – the Thinker and the Caveman
- Get on the Road – For a Change
- Best DNA – The Front Door Story
- The Best Companies to Work for
- Creating Passion for Change
- Using Best DNA & Positive Change for Your Personal Brand
Articles
- An Old Sea Dog Can Learn New Tricks – The Positive Change Questions, by Bob Faw
- Staying Positive in Negative Times - The Positive Change Questions, by Bob Faw
- Best DNA Energizes Your Personal Brand, by Bob Faw
Whitepapers
- Improvisational Leadership: Greater Buy-in and Morale on the Fly
- Principles of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) in Graphic Form
- Working from Strength
- Increase your Influence by using the DISC language
Handouts
- Energize Handout
- Strategic Alignment of Leadership Development – Workbook
- Strategic Alignment of Leadership Development – Handout
- Best DNA Guide
- Make Training Stick
- Language of Influence
- Being Change Ready
- Passion for Change
- Positive Change Handout
- Creating Resilience in Stressful Times
- Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast
- Leadership University Description
What Inspires Us
Michael’s Top Five
Today, I’m inspired by way more than 5 things. The ones at the top of my list are these:
- Helping people uncover and work from their personal strengths
- A coaching model and process that produces measurable results
- How to measure the benefits of an organizational change process
- How thinking can be made more efficient and effective (and actually reduce conflict)
- Mindmapping
Shortly we’ll have links to all of these and many other resources for organizational change agents.
Strengths Marcus Buckingham’s work, most especially his book Go Put your Strengths to Work (also see our white paper Working from Strength)
Coaching I have worked with Marshall Goldsmith and used his coaching model at the Tuck School at Dartmouth. His web site is a fantastic resource: see especially his article titled “Leadership is a Contact Sport.”
Measuring results Mahan Khalsa’s book Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play has great insight into the how to help clients estimate the cost of problems and the benefits of change. Both are crucial given the importance of producing measurable results.
Thinking The Six Thinking Hats and other books about thinking from Edward De Bono are very helpful. Not only can their use increase creativity, they can also reduce conflict and speed the decision-making process.
Mindmapping This topic could fall under thinking or vision or personal productivity, but it is important enough to have its own category in the top 10. Tony Buzan’s books are a great place to start if you don’t already use this productivity tool. You might start with Using Both Sides of your Brain.
Bob’s Top Five
Change that also Motivates and Builds Confidence One of the most powerful tools in my professional and personal toolkit is Appreciative Inquiry. Asking about what works. It’s a much faster way to improve, and to gain buy in for improvement. And wildly enough, it feels great for everyone involved. I love it! Another amazing tool is Feedforward. I find this to be more powerful and effective than feedback 90% of the time. Fast for growth, good for morale.
Learning How to Make a BIG difference There are many ways to try to solve problems. This one is faster, more exciting and far more effective for almost all challenges. Positive Deviance uses uncommon sense in to create stellar results. It’s “best practices” on steroids.
World Class Learning and Deep Understanding Meet the brightest minds in the world today. If you are someone who loves to understand the world we live in, and haven’t yet been to Ted.com, GO! It’s fantastic. They also hold conferences for these types of brilliant people to come present their break-through ideas.
Practical Brain Science I love understanding why I do what I do — and how to do it better!. Recent discoveries in the field of Brain Science explain effective and ineffective methods of influencing people. I particularly like Brain Rules by John Medina. Get the hardcover book because it comes with his humorous and enlightening DVD! A must have if you teach, inspire or help people.
Powerful Visual Presentation Given that 75% of the sensory circuits in the brain are dedicated to processing visual information, we need to communicate using visual images more than with words. Death by PowerPoint is not necessary. Gar Reynolds book Presentation Zen can keep you from killing your audience with bullets. Dan Roam’s book The Back of the Napkin explain how simple images can help us uncover solutions more easily.
