Review: Learning the Shortcut to Better Team Communication

Thanks to Pierre DeBois, who recently wrote a great review of Shortcut: Getting Through to People Who Slow You Down.

You can visit Pierre on Twitter @zimanaanalytics. Here’s a segment of the review, but go to the site to read the whole thing:

Despite the short length, I think Tolle picked a good subject for the ebook format.  The personae are broad enough to make you think without being too stereotypical or casting a blind eye to your own failings. And the book’s list-like organization will help you decide whether the suggestions fit your situation.

You’ll have to weigh how the material in Shortcut fits for other situations, like dealing with people with disabilities or structuring teams.  If you do not feel you “read” people well, you may also want to augment Tolle’s exercises with books about body language. Overall, however, Tolle offers advice that does not try to oversell or inflate a perception.

Why Brian Tolle Wrote “Shortcut”

Shortcut: Getting Through to People Who Slow You Down is a new book published by Brian Tolle, a partner at the Re-Wired Group who focuses on leadership personalities in organizations striving for innovation.

Tolle is a partner at The Re-Wired Group, a business development consultancy that uses Demand-Side Innovation to drive the creation and commercialization of new products, services, brands and businesses. His work focuses on designing strategies to secure employee buy-in to organizational change as well as influencing consumer behavior through Re-Wired’s Jobs-to-be Done framework. He has an undergraduate degree in psychology from The Catholic University of America and a graduate degree in organization development from Loyola University Chicago.

We asked him to tell us why he wrote the book and what it does for the people who read it:

Brian Tolle: In my coaching work with high driver leader types, it is painfully obvious the frustration they experience when they can’t get through to the people who they depend on for business execution. They speak of being in meetings, being as direct and specific as possible in laying out the strategy and game plan, only to see their managers with blank or confused looks on their faces. These leaders will joke that they must be speaking a secret, foreign language that no one else recognizes, so extreme is the miscommunication.

When I hear these stories, it is obvious to me that much of the issue lies in the clash of different styles, unbeknownst to either party. It’s the same frustration we feel when we travel to a foreign country and we don’t speak the local language – hand gestures only go so far, and sometimes those are completely at odds, culturally. We will only truly get through to the other person once I or they learn the other’s language. The same goes for the high driver leader types. But until I can break down the communication breakdown for them in these terms, they have no frame of reference to understand what is going on and what they can do to improve the situation.

So I wrote “Shortcut” with a high driver leader type expressly in mind – a short, to the point, and practical handbook they can read on a short flight and start applying immediately.

We encourage you to obtain a copy of the book, and to join the Shorcut Facebook page for timely discussions about leadership personality and personality management in organizations.