Customer Reviews

FYI: For Your Improvement, A Development and Coaching Guide (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The FYI book is published by the Lominger Limited, Inc, organization as part of their "Leadership Architect Suite". If you are purchasing here on Amazon, please ensure you get the latest 3rd edition. Basically the book outlines over 100 leadership competencies, career stallers, and performance dimensions, and specific information on each to help leaders improve performance.

The competencies section is filled with some insightful leadership aspects that often get left out of most leadership books including: Humor, Dealing with Ambiguity, Approachability, Composure, Caring About Direct Reports, Dealing with Paradox, Sizing up People, and others which are essentially the more difficult "EQ" elements of leadership. Along with these are more traditional concepts such as Business Acumen, Planning, Time Management, etc., and all told nearly 70 specific competencies are discussed in detail.

Each of the over 100 competency and other sections outlined begins with an examination and list of likely symptoms and behavioral results that may occur with an individual who is skilled, unskilled, or is overusing the skill. Each section then lays out some possible causes, and gives some remedies which are pretty detailed and actionable, and provides a comprehensive list of suggested readings for further study.

Not only is this information quite interesting to study from a personal development standpoint, but is quite effective at outlining information critical to building development plans for your associates. I have given this book out to my team, and business leaders for years, and consider it the best tool out there to help any leader coach their associates and help them improve their performance and effectiveness.

While the price of the book is high, the value is higher still if used consistently. If you are a leader of people in any organization who wants to improve your ability to develop your employees then this is a book you will use. Highly recommended.

This book is OK, but not great, and contains information you can find elsewhere. I bought the 3rd edition for about seven bucks....I'm glad I did not pay $70, as I would have been angry. This book is not that good.

You don't read this book cover to cover, from beginning to end...it's not written that way. The book is written as a "list," sort of a compendium of problems/solutions. Competencies are listed and when you find a competency you are weak at, this book tells you which OTHER competencies you need to fix the problem. Basically, you will be flipping through pages collecting answers.

The "solutions" that are given are by no means comprehensive. They are generalized and very short (usually one paragraph) because there are so many competencies listed in this book that not enough space can be dedicated to any one of them in any detail. Another challenge for me was that I did not find any ground-breaking material here; the solutions given are in books I have already read.

My suggestion is this: Once you discover a behavior that is undesirable (either through self-discovery or through a performance review at your job), buy one or more books on that subject and learn all the details you need to help you. This book will not give you those details! That said, if you are uninitiated to self-help books, this is a good place to start.

Overall, this book does not live up to its hype or its inflated price, so buy a cheap used copy.

For your improvement has been so helpful in my daily coaching and managing duties. I find that I use for many situations on a weekly basis. It has helped me pin point problems and decide on a strategy to develop my employees. There is so much information available to you for everyday coaching and feedback situations. It is just amazing how it covers the competencies that my company is measuring and so much more.

The book is excellent for professional that are looking for development. Something good about having this book is its usefulness throught different stage of the professional life where different challenges and behavorial factors are competing. Excellent resource for mastering managerial and team skills.

As a professional in the human resources/talent management field, it's part of my job to think about coaching, developing, and growing employees. But when it comes to giving performance feedback, either in an informal conversation or in a formal setting like annual performance reviews, I'm just as nervous as anyone else! FYI from Lominger is a great resource to aid in understanding work behavioral traits and to help develop employees.

This is an excellent tool for creating Performance Management goals. I recommend this book to anyone that would like to improve their own skills or for anyone that is responsible for generating Performance Management goals for other employees.

This book & reviews are obsolete. Get 4th ed. ISBN 0974589233

FYI: For Your Improvement, A Guide for Development and Coaching (4th edition)

Why would you buy the 3rd edition, now obsolete and out-of-print since 2003?

The book is well organized and gives good recipes to solve problems. I recommend it for people who wants to implement a people development system in a company or simply use it for a personal development plan. It lacks a software or template for self assessment to go straightforward for implementation.

".....This book of development tips was designed for any motivated person with a need - at any level (manager, executive, individual contributor or citizen), for problems at work or in one's personal life.....
THE 5,000 PLUS TIPS IN THIS BOOK WILL HELP ANYONE WHO RECOGNIZES SPECIFIC NEEDS and is motivated to do something about them.
If that's you, read on....."
[from the book of the introduction]

The competencies that are laid out in this book encompass nearly every aspect of character in a professional organization. I found that it helped me tremendously in pigeon holing some of the behaviors, both positive and negative, that we see in the work place every day - some of which are hard to describe without this guide. It helped me in identifying difficult behaviors when meeting with my business partners/ customers and, more importantly, enabled us to determine what development was needed. It even aided me in identifying towering strengths that can become derailers because of overuse. This guide has been worth its weight in gold.