Showing posts with label Teamwork. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teamwork. Show all posts

Sunday, 19 December 2021

Dirty Work

Finished December 16
Dirty Work: My Gruelling, Glorious, Life-Changing Summer in the Wilderness by Anna Maxymiw

This memoir of a summer spent as a worker at a remote fishing resort in Northern Ontario is an reflective and open piece on a time that changed the author's perspective on herself and on how she moved forward. Anna grew up in the city, unlike most of the other members on the crew at the fishing lodge and she was working on her Master of Arts, while most of them were engaged in studies to do with the environment or tourism. She had come to the resort the year before as a guest with her family and really enjoyed her time there, so she had some idea of the environment she was entering into and the nature of the work. 
It was however a move outside her comfort zone, pushing her into the company of a group of other young people, none of whom she knew, in close quarters for several weeks. There is no place for privacy, no access to the internet, and little down time. If she wasn't working, she was resting from the very physical work she was doing, too tired to do much. She found herself forming the first real female friendships she had, and engaging with young men in ways she wasn't used to. 
She gained a nickname she didn't love, a realization that she was stronger than she had thought, and a better sense of who she was as a person. 
There were good times and bad ones, and things were tense at times, but her memoir makes it clear that this was an experience she was glad she'd undertaken. 

Thursday, 9 September 2021

On the Line

Finished September 6
On the Line by Kari-Lynn Winters, illustrated by Scot Ritchie

On the surface this is a tale of a young hockey player finding his place, but it is so much more than that. The central character is Jackson Moore, a boy that lives in a small town where hockey is an important part of the community. Several members of his family have been players that have been great assets to their team, described as hockey heroes. Everyone seems to be looking for Jackson to follow in their footsteps, but he has doubts. Mostly he keeps his doubts to himself while wondering what will happen if he doesn't live up to these expectations. 
As he joins his first hockey team, the coach and the players are excited to have him on the team, but his actual performance as a hockey player underwhelms them. There is an upcoming tournament called Winterfest that they are looking forward to playing in, but one requirement is regulation equipment. Of course, though it isn't stated explicitly here, hockey equipment and its costs are one of the major barriers to children joining the game. 
As Jackson tries to make traditional game plans to stay on his feet and impress his team members, he finds the need to rethink and make a different type of game plan entirely to ensure that his team gets to play at all. This part of the story is told in pictures, not words and isn't clear until the big reveal. 
The book ends with a page on team stewardship and its importance to the overall team spirit and cohesion. 
The illustrations add important elements to the story, showing diversity in the community and on the team, and the level of ingenuity the kids and their parents had used to come up with workarounds on equipment. Without the illustrations, this book wouldn't say as much as it does. 

Tuesday, 6 June 2017

Best Pirate

Finished May 31
Best Pirate written by Kari-Lynn Winters and illustrated by Dean Griffiths

This picture book, to be released at the end of the summer, continues with the characters introduced by Winters and Griffiths in the earlier Bad Pirate and Good Pirate books.
In this story, there are two pirate ships converging on Crossbones Island, both after treasure supposed hidden there. We first see the dog pirates, led by Barnacle Garrick. Augusta is Barnacle's daughter, and he aims to see her learn from one of his best crew members, Scully. Augusta tries very hard, but when an accident incapacitates Scully, she is determined to mend matters by going alone to the island to find the treasure.
In her search for the treasure, she finds that she isn't alone in her search. Scuppers, the son of the cat pirate ship's Captain Fishmonger, is also on the hunt for doubloons. When they end up in a fix together, Augusta tries to put the skills she learned to work, and find an innovative way out. With teamwork, they both make it to safety, and with treasure in hand return to their ships.
There is lots of lovely pirate language, and the end papers help define a lot of these for enchanted readers. The illustrations are wonderful, showing emotions and lovely details. The dogs are a variety of breeds, easily identifiable, and the cats range in type while still being entirely cats. And I love that the story shows how working together pays off.
Both author and illustrator are Canadian and known internationally for their great work. I'd already read and loved Kari-Lynn's Hungry for Math poetry book, and loved Dean's illustrations in the children's novel The Stowaways. It's great to see them come together in this series.
Thanks to Pajama Press for providing me with a pre-publication copy.

Monday, 6 May 2013

Nine Minutes on Monday

Finished May 5
Nine Minutes on Monday: the quick and easy way to go from manager to leader by James Robbins

This book lays out an interesting method to increase your leadership skills. Because leadership is, in essence, focused on people, so is this book. It lays out a system that you look at weekly, Robbins suggests Monday morning. Each of your nine minutes is focused on one of nine aspects of how you relate to your direct reports. Robbins warns against trying to do too much too soon, an easy trap to fall into when you go to a good conference or workshop or read an inspiring book like this one. While he lays out nine areas, each with a question to ask yourself once a week, he encourages the reader to start with the basic four and work on those before adding more. He also shows through a couple of case studies how each question doesn't have to be addressed every week, but should respond to your individual circumstances. As the subtitle suggests, the process is easy and doesn't take a lot of time. He also addresses those with staff working remotely. Added to the book is a website with follow-up tools and resources that will assist at putting this plan into action.
I finished this Sunday, perfect timing to get me started for Monday morning.

Sunday, 21 April 2013

Help the Helper

Finished April 21
Help the Helper: building a culture of extreme teamwork by Kevin Pritchard and John Eliot

The authors of this book are Kevin Pritchard, the GM for the Indian Pacers, who has managed other basketball teams and played for five NBA teams, and John Eliot, a university professor and consultant to pro atheletes and athletic coaches, as well as a consultant to a variety of businesses and medical centers. Because of their background a lot of the experiences here, and the examples illustrating those experiences are from the sports world, specifically the basketball world. As I am not a watcher of sports in general or basketball in particular, I found some of this hard to follow.
Despite that, this book was very interesting in how it talked about teamwork. Every chapter did have at least one business example as well, as followup instructions on implementation within the reader's circumstances.
The first chapter explains the Help the Helper philosophy, the second is about creating at atmosphere of unselfishness within your team, the third is about hiring for what is best for the team rather than individual excellence, the fourth about moving away from the carrot and stick method of motivation to a motivation based on spirit, the fifth about managing the energy of the team as opposed to the people individually, the sixth about avoiding distracting communication, the seventh about real toughness involving resiliency and authenticity, the eighth about a 3D approach to measuring: observing, listening, and statistics, not relying on numbers as the driver, and finally, the ninth about being an unleader, a leader who carries the load so the team can do what they are out there to do, who looks for ways to make the team's work the team's work and not a task assigned by the leader.
I liked the idea of looking to the sources of success for your team, finding out what drives the team, and then finding team members who are good at those things, and then working to develop and enhance those skills in all team members. Lots of great ideas here to make teams work as real teams not just a bunch of people who work in the same place.