From Tension to Transformation: A Leader's Guide to Generative Change by Janet M. Harvey

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley with an opportunity to review the book.

I have little doubt that Janet Harvey is an effective executive coach, and most of the book is her personal anecdotes from those one-on-one experiences helping someone see how their personality traits, biases, etc. are contributing to team dysfunction. She has the confidence of a formerly high-performance athlete and an introspection -- truly comfortable in her own skin-- that is rare. She attempts to distill her nuggets of wisdom and trademarked curriculum into a book and while I appreciated some of the pearls, I found it just didn't flow well.

The author drops a bombshell halfway through the book, revealing her own difficult life-changing epiphany that could have been the basis for a different kind of book articulating her comeback story. While being fired from her job, an executive in the company tells her "I would never hire you for an operational leadership position because people can't stand to work for you" (loc. 1200). She explains in a few pages her introspective journey and commitment to change that led her to her style today-- to build teams and focus on collaborative projects. This is a remarkable item almost buried in the book.

I appreciated her comments on tension the most. I'm a middle manager, working in an office where I'm sometimes a buffer between staff and managers higher up. While the ground-level staff who carry the bulk of the actual work may have decades of longevity, the average tenure of managers is only 2-3 years. It is an environment where change is always expected, and tension can be there; staff live in a tension of embracing a change or waiting it out.

"If you take away nothing else from this book, I hope you take away...the value of pause" (loc. 2473).

I found the reminder helpful to slow down and be mindful, to sit with the tension, and take time to identify the source and possible solution. Sitting in your own tension to identify those items where you need to change yourself. To find personal "sovereignty," which is describing the peak of emotional health. There's also a significant amount about psychological safety, where you create an environment where team members feel truly safe to speak out and voice their concerns.

In summary:

Problem/conflict -> tension -> moment to pause and be curious -> listen -> identify the problem -> move on to the creative solution, the "generative change."

Perhaps the next closest book that I have reviewed to this one is Robert Sutton's Good Boss, Bad Boss which I recommend highly. A better editor probably could have repackaged this in a more readable format. The diagrams and graphics are helpful, but there seemed to be so much back-forth reference to previous concepts that it was difficult to follow. For example, her key acronym for "generative change" is ACAAR and the individual components are explained over several paragraphs instead of just up front writing it as an acrostic. She begins with "R" (for results) first, explains them in an a different order than the acronym, and never really makes it memorable.

Part of this book's problem may be a language problem. While the books is written for all "leaders," today's executive MBA curriculums are so jargon-heavy it is difficult to translate to the middle manager or team leader. When an author trademarks her own concepts, it's slightly off-putting to me. She writes a lot about helping leaders find "their authentic selves," but given the misogyny she's witnessed in her career and basic math, I can only imagine that some of her clients' authentic selves are narcissistic; she does not talk much about dealing with that level of toxicity.

"(As a leader, your job is to shape a world where people love their life's work. That's it" (loc. 1776).

I appreciated this admonition, but also found it a bit much. Your identity shouldn't be in your job or your company, or else you'll find it dissatisfying. The tasks and asks of a company are myriad and you'll be tasked with things that are not "your life's work." She refers to the recent massive turnover in the workforce as millions of people have moved to new jobs multiple times in recent years. I think some of that is based on disenchantment of taking a job at XYZ company expecting it to be their "life's work," and it quickly rings hollow. Yor company is not your family, your friends, or your church. Your company may fail just the same as you may move for a loved one who gets sick or for a spouse who finds something really meaningful herself. I prefer Sutton's admonition to bosses-- to leaders-- to begin a new employee's career with an exit interview, helping the new hires set goals for themselves so they will have achieved them by the time they move on to the next role or next company.

In all, I give this book 2.5 stars out of 5. The author has shown she's a good coach delivering her curriculum in person, but a better editor could make a good book out of it.

Well, the book and concepts are useful,
But…

Damn, was it hard to read. Especially, considering the fact that the author uses tons of terms that they assigned meaning to or just pulled from other fields.
Also, throughout the whole book I felt like I’m missing context a lot