Teach Your Team to Fish - A Damn Good Book

I have suffered a lot of business book "don’t reads", but recently came across an exceptional book that I would like to share. Laurie Beth Jones’ book Teach Your Team to Fish: Using Ancient Wisdom for Inspired Teamwork (Three Rivers Press, New York, 2002) is a must read.

Laurie Jones’ starts with the leadership foundation mantra of "none of us is as smart as all of us" and shares with the reader specifics ways and tools to build a high-functioning inclusive team. The book’s title drawn from the proverb of "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" is the books’ overarching theme.

Laurie Jones’ uses Jesus as a role model of exceptional leadership and uses his action to demonstrate specific lessons. For some Jesus’ life may not connect and the examples be seen as "over the top", but I assure that even the most secular atheist reader will be able to discern the applicable lessons.

The book’s engaging style of having almost fifty 2-3 page micro-chapters on different aspects of team building allows for readers to selective dip into areas of specific interest (i.e. turning criticism into construction, going small to go big, valuing diversity, being kind but not always nice, identifying coachable moments and choosing your battles). I have found that the micro-chapters quickly become two-page handouts for team meetings.

The end of each micro-chapters has a series of question that the reader can practically apply to their workplace. These questions "make it" and "keep it real". I have found many other business books great in theory, but no so great in practice. Laurie Jones’ Teach Your Team to Fish: Using Ancient Wisdom for Inspired Teamwork is great in both theory and practice and I highly recommend it to all those involved in team building.