REVIEW: Charlie Gilkey — Team Habits (BOOK)

“If you’re not a mix of constructively frustrated and inspired to fix the broken printers that you, your team, and your organization struggle with every day, please put this book down. It won’t be for you. If you’re a leader or manager and have checked out on making things better for your team, please put down any sense of entitlement and privilege about being in your position, too, as you’re no longer earning them,” writes Charlie Gilkey in his new book, Team Habits: How Small Actions Lead to Extraordinary Results. “If your team’s consensus is that you’re not ready to engage with your team habits, great! You can all stay focused on what matters more to you, understanding that your inevitable conversations about team habits are venting sessions more than problem-solving conversations…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: https://www.charliegilkey.com/

Team habits are how a team or organization breathes. The breathing is happening whether you notice it or not. Simply by being there and being a part of the team or organization, you’re involved in this breathing process. As your team’s work tempo changes, your team’s habits will be stressed or relieved. As your team’s composition or goals change, your team’s habits may need to shift.”

The aforementioned passages highlight Charlie Gilkey’s simultaneous ease with the material, and his ability to communicate with clarity, humor, and a sense of personalization. You’re not being told dense conceptual methods by a removed, flinty, bonafide expert. You feel like you’re having a conversation. You feel like you’re crushing a beer with a professional person who knows you, who cares about you. In less competent hands, Gilkey’s willingness to go out on a limb and make the prose breathe could overwhelm the facts.

But here, it only boosts the communication of said facts with gusto. Gilkey in many ways represents the modern, professional boss — or ‘leader’, if you want to sound a little bit more ostentatious. He’s firm at setting boundaries, and teaching the reader how to, whilst acknowledging that everyone from the top down is integral to the wheel of industry turning. It’s a good combo, regardless of pragmatics in an increasingly remote, corporate echelon-reassigned age. The personal often blends and bleeds into the professional, and vice versa. It’s necessary to create analogies that aren’t just systematic representations, but things one can relate to in an everyday sense — outside the office.

BUY THE BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Team-Habits-Actions-Extraordinary-Results/dp/0306828332

“You’ve probably been through the process of replacing old personal habits with new ones,” Gilkey writes, in aforementioned vein. “Maybe you decided to take up running, cut sugar out of your diet, start a meditation practice, or replace your evening social media scroll with reading a book. You probably experienced how easy it is to fall back on the inertia of old habits and how conscientiously you need to drill in your new habits through intentional repetition and consistency. You might also have attempted to change your individual work habits to better support you…You want to make habit changes in your personal work schedule but feel trapped working the way team culture dictates.”

Colin Jordan