Leadership: The Multiplier Effect, reviewed

By @SimonCocking review of Leadership: The Multiplier Effect, available from Amazon here.

As 9-5 morphs into 24/7, it brings mounting pressures and new rules. Your life is full-on, relentless and exhausting and worse still, it’s zipping by in a blur. It’s easy to end up careering from one crisis to another, buzzed up on sugar and coffee, existing from one holiday to the next.

Good emotions spread far wider than we realise. A good leader who is inspired and inspiring will spread good feelings throughout his team. But it won’t stop there. They, in turn, will pass good feelings on to their colleagues, clients and customers, who will pass on positive emotions in turn. The multiplier effect is the organic set of positive emotions which flow out in ripples from good leadership. This book shows how to lead well by being the secret ingredient in your team’s everyday happiness – just by making them feel good and empowering them to pass it on.

Leadership: The Multiplier Effect is crammed with the latest thinking on leadership, strengths, positive psychology, purpose, employee engagement, coaching, emotional intelligence and ‘life’, supplemented with anecdotes, pithy quotes and asides that help bring the content to life.

And to save you time, the book’s central message is this: Your job as a leader is NOT to inspire people. Your job as a leader is to BE INSPIRED.

There is a lot to like in this book, the intent is solid, and the aim is to create better leaders, help us to do so, and for those we have to lead. There are many useful tips in here, that may help you in this journey, and also make the workplace a better place for everyone else who has to share it with you. There is a lot of humour and bonhomie throughout the book too.

And yet, and yet. We like a joke and a laugh as much as the next person, but sometimes it can actually get in the way of your message too. Introducing chapters by telling you how you are actually up to the really good bit now, fell slightly on it’s face for us. After a while the relentless wry asides, and knowing, nudge nudge wink wink references began to feel unnecessary, overindulgent and getting in the way of the value the book potentially had to offer. We get the impression the author(s) might be great people to meet down the pub, but your boss trying to be your mate, through their humorous and funny cameos might be more entertaining to themselves than anyone else.

This book might be just what you’re looking for. There are wise insights and ideas within it, it could have just done with turning down the laughter track a little perhaps.

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