Co-authors, Shane Garland and Grant Donovan PhD, met when they were working for Qantas. In Coffee Conversations, both Shane and Grant provide insights from their lived experiences, into leadership and the power of forming cultures centred around employees and treating them well. Their philosophy is simple and assists leaders to create a “Coffee Conversation” approach with their teams in order to understand what is really going on, to the point where they suggest throwing out performance appraisals and “punitive performance management processes”.

Ordering directly from the authors, all of our members received a signed copy of the book which was an added bonus! My copy reads “Treat people well! Grant Donovan”.

It may sound almost too simple. You may think that the title and the blurb are enough to understand the concept and you are ready to solve all of the problems without reading the 121 pages. Some of the key advice that I highlighted throughout this book (yes, I highlight and keep all of my leadership books…except two that really didn’t connect for me and you can find out which ones as you read through my posts) are:

• Set the meeting yourself. Don’t ask your PA or secretary to arrange it. Make it your priority.
• Invest in improving the business acumen of all of our employees.
• The manager’s main customer is the front line worker.
• Staff can solve their own problems. They need you to create a culture that empowers them and to remove road blocks.
• Two strongly recurring themes in their Perception Mapping diagnostic surveys are – work team members hate working with poor performers and they hate managers who don’t do what they say they will do. “The reality is, most people go to work each day wanting to do their best only to be stymied by poor management, demotivated co-workers and low performance cultural systems.”
• Have tough conversations well.

In short, this is an excellent book that serves to empower managers, leaders and employees throughout the business. I would recommend this book for anyone struggling with employee performance management, wanting to improve engagement or productivity and especially for those in management or leadership who may not have had any training in leading people.