Associations Books

Having been directly involved in selling as well as training others to sell and market professional services (accounting and consulting) for over twenty years, I can say that Flannery's book is far and away the best and only guide to the art you will ever need.

Rather than wax on about its concise format, practical and effective tools, techniques and insights, I'll just say this: ignore this guide at your peril. What if your competitors have read it and you haven't?

This book should be required reading in law school and tested for on the bar exam.

Well done Mr. Flannery.

"In this wonderful book, Bill Flannery, who changed the legal marketplace forever, does what he's been doing so effectively throughout his extraordinary career--he teaches lawyers how to sell. How can you build your firm's business without it?"
Richard S. Levick, Esq., President and CEO, Levick Strategic Communications

"A must-read for all lawyers seeking to establish enduring client relationships that are both financially and professionally rewarding. In this book, Bill Flannery distills much of the wisdom he imparts in his renowned, high-voltage training workshops into an easy-to-follow action plan that can help every lawyer enhance his or her business development capabilities and confidence. The book also provides meaningful direction to firms about setting marketing and business priorities and creating a client-focused business development culture in their organizations."
Wendy L. Bernero, Chief Marketing Officer, Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison

"Soul music had James Brown, the 'Godfather of Soul.' Law firms have Bill Flannery, a true pioneer in business development for our industry. The Field Guide provides a comprehensive road map for business development strategy. Like the best soul sound, the Field Guide's straightforward prose will resonate with your lawyers."
Kathleen H. Hilton, Director of Client Services, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP

"Bill Flannery's business development techniques and strategies have transformed the way in which the people in our firm think of business development and client service. Even our most recalcitrant critics of business development activities have been converted. Bill's techniques have become such an integral part of the way we provide service and communicate with clients and potential clients that we have turned his name into a verb, as in 'Let's Flannerize the known world.' His Lawyer's Field Guide should be on every lawyer's desk."
Keith B. Simmons, Bass, Berry & Sims PLC

"Not only helps every lawyer overcome their business development fears, but also lays out an effective systematic approach that will help them grow their practice and deepen their professional satisfaction. A skill and confidence builder."
Ronald M. Shapiro, Attorney, and co-author of Bullies, Tyrants, and Impossible People

"A concise and practical guide for relationship and business development that transcends any professional group. I recommend this guide as required reading for all business managers and professionals."
Vince Lambiase, former CEO of Winchell's Donuts, EZCorp, and founder of VA Lambiase & Company

"Bill Flannery has effectively captured the essence of the 'art of the deal.' It's compelling, coordinated, connected and communicates the message with punch. It's an essential tool for every lawyer."
Pike Powers, Fulbright & Jaworski LLP

"Essential reading for any lawyer interested in winning and retaining clients over the long term. Bill Flannery is the undisputed leader in the field of helping lawyers improve their business development capabilities, and this book deftly combines field-tested, practical advice with deep insight about the nature of the relationship between lawyer and client that he has developed over several decades. Destined to become the standard by which all other books on this topic will be judged."
Logan Chandler, Partner, The Strategic Offsites Group, Boston, Massachusetts

"Bill Flannery's business development methodology has helped our lawyers turn listening and client service skills into business development prowess. Bill's Field Guide walks you through his method step by step and holds nothing back."
Jane S. Roberts, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP

It is no wonder that the author has enjoyed such a high level of professional respect.Ms.Abbotts clarity and wisdom will benefit all readers.This is a little jewel.

Ida Abbott's new book addresses one of the toughest issues facing law firms today. She makes a clear case for mentoring and its benefits. Beyond that, she outlines the pros and cons of various approaches to mentoring. Mentoring structures often falter because the firms don't know how to create and preserve productive mentoring relationships. This practical and organized manual makes that task easier.

The book gives responsibility to both mentor and mentee. This relatively new idea allows a young attorney to seek different mentors for different needs. Ms. Abbot also stresses the importance of keeping such relationships voluntary.

As a consultant, I found her analysis of the challenges facing women and minorities extremely valuable. She faces these complex issues head-on and gives practical advice based on her experience as an attorney.

My field is communication training, so I was delighted to find a recommended core training curriculum. She details the "soft" skills necessary to help attorneys to manage, delegate and give performance feedback to their junior associates.

Leadership Capacity For Lasting School Improvement by Linda Lambert (Professor Emeritus and Founder of the Center for Educational Leadership at California State University - Heyward), brings together real-life experiences and the experience-based wisdom of educators around the world to present and illustrate the five major prerequisites for high leadership capacity, as well as offering in-depth advice on the complex task of leading an education institution. Individual chapters directly address the changing role of the principle, parents as leaders, district leadership, major participation patterns and more, in this excellent and highly informative resource ideal for anyone charged with a role of leadership responsibility in the corridors of academia.

This book is written for practising school leaders. It offers guidance in fine tuning whole-school cultural change, a topic that practitioners have handled intuitively and singularly for ages.

The intellectual modelling that underwrites Lambert's book are the Leadership Capacity Matrices For the readers of my vintage, it is good to see useful variants of Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Theory of Leadership model. Instead of plotting task behaviour against relationship behaviour that Hersey and Blanchard used, Lambert has used degrees of participation and the degree of leadership skill on the axes.

Seeking Quadrant 4.
Clearly quadrant 4 is the outcome that school leaders seek- High on participation and high leadership skill. The pointers are:
1. Principal, teachers, parents and students as skilful leaders.
2. Shared vision resulting in program coherence.
3. Inquiry-based use of data to inform decisions and practice.
4. Broad involvement, collaboration, and collective responsibility reflected in roles and actions.
5. Reflective practice that leads consistently to innovation.
6. High or steadily improving student achievement.

The role of the school leader can often be a lonely task and there is a dearth of material which actually guides school leaders through aspects of change that articulate, finesse and embed intentions.

For me this is a timely and practical book.

The ASCD's January 2002 Members' Book is a valuable contribution to the school leadership and management literature.

The author, Carl Glickman, has an international following because of his work on school renewal and this text gives readers the tools for bringing about renewal through instructional leadership.

In "Leadership for learning," Carl Glickman has reworked the clinical supervision material that is so useful to school leaders, particularly in the United States, who are directly responsible for the formal supervision of classroom teachers' standards. This text will be particularly useful to beginning principals (hence the 5 star rating) but there is still a lot in the book for experienced principals too.

I though that four approaches developed by Glickman were useful and table 4.2 ("Interpersonal approaches, outcomes, and levels of choice," p.44) was an excellent overview of the parameters of the four approaches. The developmental nature of the four approaches can be seen in Figure 6.1:

Directive control- Emergency, infrequent cases
Directive-informational- Beginning of greater teacher choice
Collaborative- Collegial reflection
Non-directive- Masterful teacher, infrequent cases.

Figure 6.1 Moving towards teacher control on on the leader behavior continuum.

From my own experience, I don't think that the number of masterful teachers is infrequent. And, teachers needing directive control don't stay in this category for long because parent complaints and principal supervision will move them on or move them out. However, it is our job to see that masterful teachers are helped in continuing to do a great job for the kids. The four types of supervisory approaches do not represent a normal distribution but a distribution that is skewed to the right. That is, the majority of teachers across states will fit into the collabrative and non-directive categories.

The book is a timely reminder about the importance of driving school change from the teacher-student interface. It is a valuable addition to all school leaders' professional libraries.

The follow-up book to Developmental Supervision, Carl Glickman's Leadership For Learning: How To Help Teachers Succeed is an excellent and accessible guide packed with practical advice and fascinating insights for educators at all levels, preschool through university. Chapters address such issues as criteria for objectively assessing teacher competence, and methodologies for working closely with teachers. One of the helpful appendix is filled with useful peer coaching forms. With its coverage of structures for classroom assistance, formats for teacher and classroom observation, and approaches to directive, collaborative, and nondirective work with teachers, Leadership For Learning is a first-rate book for educational leadership, supervisors, policy implementers, and school board members.

I used this book for my graduate class and it is teacher friendly with wonderful suggestions to help intergrate the school staff and parents(community) into becoming a literate community to have a successful school. I also help the reading professional set up the program.

This is an excellent book. I am currently taking a graduate level course with the authors of this book and they really tell it like it is in the schools. They provide you with the information a future reading specialist needs to know in an easy to read and understand format. I highly recommend this book.

This is a great follow-up to the Process-Experiential book "Facilitating Emotional Change". Well written, and user-friendly, this manual helps to make this approach usable. A therapy book that isn't too theory oriented, which is refreshing.

I would highly recommend it.

This book is a great first read for anyone interested in emotion-focused therapy or experiential therapies in general. It could also be a good read for more intermediate to advanced therapists newer to this area of therapy. It gives some good background on humanistic approaches to therapy and how this approach fits into the larger therapy landscape. The book does a good job of giving just enough theory to tie together the very practical and accessible style in which it is written. Highly recommended. There are suggestions for many further readings at the end of each chapter, which is a useful resource for those looking to delve deeper.

I bought your new book and read it this evening...thanks...I took the position as media supervisor of 42 schools in August ..the collections were in such sad shape, the average age of nonfiction was 1992.
Long story short, I have worked hard this year using virtual library collections and online database to bring equity of resources to the students and teachers...and at our media meeting in May, we talked about on-going weeding and inventory as an important part collection development and in ocnnecting kids with the right information.
In trying to guide them as they go into the new year I found that I had questions of my own...and I was so surprised to see that the very book I needed was written by two of the people who really know this business from ground up!
I am going to order it for all of our specialists and give it to them at the August meeting.
Again, thanks...this HUGE job of mine...suddenly got a little smaller.

LESS IS MORE: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO WEEDING SCHOOL LIBRARY COLLECTIONS is for professional school librarians seeking a specific routine for weeding. All the basics are here; from getting started and understanding philosophy to breaking down weeding criteria by Dewey Numbers and using automation tools. School librarians - particularly newcomers to the profession - will find it filled with tips.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Williamson and Eakes did a masterful job of making complex information both simple and interesting, without being the least bit simplistic. Having studied and used neuroscience research for 22 years, I know how much more could be said. They extracted just the essentials AND put in good analogies and comparisons. Then they added doable exercises to help readers achieve their goals. They're working for me.

We are who we think we are. We can purposely change who we are by changing how we see ourselves.

These are not novel or even new concepts; many have demonstrated and said much the same for many years. The book Liberating Greatness is founded upon these two concepts. What the authors, Hal Williamson an engineer, attorney and creator of the nationally celebrated "Pathways to Greatness" seminars and his wife Sharon Eakes, a personal and executive coach and health care professional, provide is a understanding of how our brains work and a process by which any person can change themselves by changing how they think and see themselves.

Liberating Greatness begins with the very compelling and intimate story of how author Hal Williamson overcame his own struggles to discover himself and to release his own individual greatness. He not only experienced life, he learned from it.

The authors then describe, in very understandable language and examples, some of the latest findings in neuroscience on how our brains work. This section is very interesting to those that want to know how and why we think and do the things we do.

As the book transitions from theory to application we gain many insights into general human, and our own specific, behavior. I for one will never forget the personal aha! I experienced when our brain's RAS (reticular alerting system) was revealed and described. That one insight made so many things clearer to me.

In a conversational, story telling writing style the authors reveal a process, based upon current brain neuroscience, by which an individual can `rewire' their brain and set their mind on what and who they want to be.

These concepts work. Not only do the authors reveal their own stories and successes with the methods they describe the experiences of numerous others that have changed their minds and lives with these concepts.
I can personally attest to the power of the process. The simple tools shared within this book have positively affected my life, my marriage, my family, my career and my self-image.

So if you really want to change, whether that is to stop some negative behavior, rid yourself of an addiction, improve your relationships, get control of your body and health or to pursue your wildest dreams, all you need to do is change your mind. Because in the final analysis we are who we think we are.

I can suggest no better place to learn how to change, to think differently, then at a "Pathways to Greatness" seminar or in the pages of this exceptional book, Liberating Greatness.

This book is the next best thing to a parent manuel. I have known Kaela Austin for half of my life. She had been Our family counsler, my mother and I went to a handful of seminars she has done. When i became a parent and my son hit the ever so fun 2nd year of his life i looked for help. When i seen Kaela she handed me this book and i also took some classes. It was for me and my son a life saver. We had to take down from the past our way of communication and start over. The book is a great tool and should be a standard must read for every mother, farther or anyone that deals with kids of all ages. The best time to start is before you have your bundle of joy. Make it a life style and you will cut out so many bumps in the road.

How many of us were shown a lot of respect by our parents? How many of us had parents who truly listened to our needs and feelings? How many of us never learned how to talk to children, but instead felt we needed to either promote or correct children all day long? How many of us need to show respect and to learn to communicate on an emotional level with our spouse?

I can't believe I'm the first person to review this book, it will be a best seller!!!

The Colorado Plateau is world famous for its geological formations, but mainly for the deep canyons and dramatic sandstone shapes into which it erodes: the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley spires, Utah arches and slot canyons. All of this results from the Colorado Plateau being the best preserved slice of sedimentary rock on Earth. But sedimentary rock also means that the Colorado Plateau is rich with smaller rock formations, with a drama within the scenic drama, a record of life evolving out of single-celled organisms into half a billion years of trilobites, forests, dinosaurs, and humans. Indeed, we owe much of the grandeur of the Grand Canyon to eons of sea creatures whose shells and quiet toil built its rock. "Life in Stone" refocuses our experience of the Colorado Plateau onto this drama of life, showing how famous landscapes tell different chapters of life's story. Monument Valley, for example, hides amphibian bones from when it was a river floodplain some 300 million years ago. This might just be a more meaningful vision of Monument Valley than the movie-induced vision of the US cavalry riding to the rescue, or a merely aesthetic vision of a pretty sunset. But this book is quite pretty with photos and maps and illustrations and charts to help us envision how the landscape changed through time, what life lived upon it, and what their fossils look like now. It helps us recognize dinosaur footprints, with which the Colorado Plateau is rich. Christa Sadler, as a respected river and hiking guide, has spent more time immersed in these landscapes than most academic geologists, so these landscapes and geological eras are far from classroom abstractions for her, and this book helps bring them to life for the rest of us.

Christa Sadler does a superb job in this well illustraded book published by the Grand Canyon Association. She covers 1.8 billion years of fossil history on the Colorado Plateau; as well as what the geologic record shows the region to have been like during this history.

I recently attended a lecture by Ms. Sadler at the Carl Hayden Visitor Center in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (put on by the Glen Canyon Natural History Association) where she presented this history in a slide presentation and a fossil exhibit. Her enthusiasm and knowledge on the topic is evident with every word she said and motion she made on stage.

After reading this book, I finally had a complete understanding of the vast history of life in this region, as well as how the fossils record was preserved and the geology of the land that preserved them.

I highly recommend this wonderful book. I great companion to this book would be "Carving Grand Canyon" by Wayne Ranney.

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A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.