LEADER BOARD introduces its readers to a host of modern team-building tools and practices, all molded by author Omar L. Harris into a step-by-step process that is ready for any boss or leader to put to use. The book is divided into two main sections: a fictional story of a boss building a new team, and a “discussion” section that breaks down how to apply all the methods brought up in the story. This format gives the reader an easy way into the author’s language, and it humanizes the concepts that are often so difficult to learn because of the sheer dullness of business-speak.
The humanizing of these ideas, besides being essential to the format of this book, is also the author’s big idea about team-building. The boss in the story is fallible, and he learns from his mistakes as much as or more than anyone who works below him. In the discussion, Harris often touches on the importance of building trust between a boss and his/her employees, and he states bluntly that the days of hierarchical offices are over. There are moments of tone-deafness in the story, with mentions of the boss’s wife’s “honey-do” list and one female employee “blushing” when attention is called to an idea of hers. This could turn off younger readers who would otherwise be on-board with Harris’s ideas, but if they keep reading they’ll find that this is one fault in an overall forward-minded text that asks its readers to think critically and empathetically about other people.
Besides focusing on individuals and letting us get to know the characters as Harris insists leaders must get to know everyone on their team, Harris also manages to make creating a business team feel like one big online quiz – which everyone loves, whether they’ll admit it or not. In the discussion section, he’s made sure to include links to all the exercises and quizzes his characters do in his story, so that you too can find out what your leadership style is, or what questions you might want to ask in an interview to find out if it’s a good fit in terms of behavior. It makes it feel not just accessible, but as if it only makes sense to start using these tools right this minute.
LEADER BOARD is a business text with a human touch, and one that makes it feel incredibly appealing to take action in your own work and life.
~Madeline Dennis-Yates for IndieReader