CoachVille Book Club – The Bellwether Effect

Starting Monday, July 8th we’ll jump into the “The Bellwether Effect” by Dr. Lance Secretan. In this book, Dr. Secretan first proposes a theory that explains how and why leaders are attracted to and seduced by trendy ideas and the process by which these ideas then become mainstream. He calls the originators of these trends “bellwethers”, hence the book’s title.

CoachVille Book Club discussions are free for all CoachVille Members (TEAM CoachVille). They take place on Mondays from 7-8 PM ET via Maestro Conference.

Click here to log in (or become a CoachVille member) and become a member of the CoachVille Book Club community. Once you’ve joined the Book Club community, you can get your own call-in credentials for the series. You will also find your invitation to join the Facebook group, which is especially good for those who want to participate but can’t join the calls live.

In every conversation, we explore ideas from the book and how we can use them to play life bigger and coach life better.

IMPORTANT! You do not need to read the entire book to get value from and contribute to the community. Even if you read a few pages you can jump right into the conversation! The Bellwether Effect is available on Amazon as a hardcover book or in Kindle form, or for those in Canada, can be purchased directly from The Secretan Center. www.secretan.com

The Bellwether Effect:

In “The Bellwether Effect” Dr. Secretan first proposes a theory that explains how and why leaders are attracted to and seduced by trendy ideas and the process by which these ideas then become mainstream. He calls the originators of these trends “bellwethers”, hence the book’s title. He then goes on to describe eight examples of counterproductive business practices, among them, fear-based management, motivation, separateness and silos, employee engagement surveys, performance appraisals, salary grades and pay scales, mission, vision, and values statements, and the use of war as a metaphor for business. In each case, Dr. Secretan proposes a novel and inspiring alternative that could lead to transformation and an inspiring culture.

Schedule

Mondays at 7 pm ET

• July 8: Book Introductions & Forward
• July 15: Session 1 – Chapter 1 The Bellwether Effect and Chapter 2 From Fear to Love
• July 22: Session 2 – Chapter 3 From Motivation to Inspiration and Chapter 4 From Separateness to Oneness
• July 29: Session 3 – Chapter 5 From Engagement to Inspiration and Chapter 6 From Performance Appraisals to Constructive Check-Ins
• August 5: Session 4 – Chapter 7 From Salary Grades to Added-Value Compensation and Chapter 8 From Mission Statements to One Dream
• August 12: Session 5 – Chapter 9 From War to Peace and Afterward Why Is It So Hard to Change. This session is a special wrap-up session as the author, Dr. Lance Secretan will join us for the final call for a Q&A and authors insights.
  

Book Overview

As a world authority on corporate culture and leadership, Dr. Lance Secretan always asks this question: “What proportion of the population do you think would give up their day jobs if they had a free choice?” Shockingly, the answer is always 80% or more and this is confirmed in many research studies. Having spent his life teaching leaders to create inspiring workplaces, he was stunned at the consistency of this negative response, and so, he set about researching why this was so.

The answer, he discovered, is that we do many things in modern organizations that demoralize people and cause them to tune out and distrust organizations and their leaders.

Lance Secretan defines “the bellwether effect” as, “copying the business practices of those who influence group behavior”. He traces the history of these practices, who initiated them, why they did so, and why others copied them—often, with disastrous results.
In this meticulously researched work, he reports on the evidence showing how counterproductive these business practices are, and recommends radical, modern and inspiring ways to change course.

Business practices that are uninspiring lead to low morale and poor performance. The opposite is also true: business practices that are inspiring lead to high performance, creating a virtuous cycle.

Next book: To be announced

Your Book Club Hosts…

Coach Erin Brimmer

Coach Erin is an artist, designer, and life coach with an unbridled wanderlust that fuels her travels around the globe in search of beauty. (And boy does our earth deliver beauty in spades!)

Create beauty. Go wild. Shine your light. Trust your inner compass. Choose to bless the world. And above all else, love — always love.

Coach Erin earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia and honed her marketing chops during a decade long stint at Microsoft. She learned the art of coaching at the CoachVille Center for Coaching Mastery, and through Martha Beck’s Wayfinder Life Coach Training.

Coach Dave Buck, MCC

Coach Dave is an MBA, Master Certified Coach and the CEO of CoachVille the original global online community for Coaches with over 36,000 members in over 70 Countries. He is also a founding member of the Transformational Leadership Council with Jack Canfield.

Coach Dave is a leading visionary voice of professional coaching. He collaborated with Thomas Leonard – the “Founding Father” of Professional Life-Business Coaching – to found CoachVille in 2000. A 2008 independent global survey of 10,000 professional coaches named Coach Dave the 7^th most influential person in the history of professional coaching.