They Just Don't Get It!: Changing Resistance Into Understanding

Every time I share this book with a client the reaction is...."Wow I get it". However, the challenge come in when they say..."but they don't get it". This fun light parable requires people to slow down and understand a framework for changing resitance into understanding. When they get that the impact is transforamtional. It also reminds us that life is to short to take everything seriously. "They Just Don't Get It" outlines Keys that can create dramatic change in your personal and professional lives. These keys are simple yes but mastery can be a lifelong process. This story sends a message of positive change for all. If you recieve the message share it and live it.

This book is fun to read! More fun than you expect from a business book. Leslie Yerkes and Randy Martin present their theme in an appealing and original way. The book has a wonderful sense of humor, good flow, fresh characters, and is a completely enjoyable read cover to cover. How can you resist a book that includes an acknowledgement to Walt Kelly's Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Improving communication and changing resistance into understanding are critically important soft skills. The Get It! keys are right on target: taking responsibility, practicing humility, beginning with questions, remaining open, and believing they can. This smart and clever book should be read by all managers and team leaders.

Here's another one of those books with few words, large type, lots of illustrations, and a whole lot of white space. For those who read "serious" books with full page after full page of text, this may look like a throw-away. They said the same thing about "Who Moved My Cheese" and....best seller! My forecast is that many people will buy this book like an expensive greeting card to send a message to people who don't get it. Even at a price of twenty bucks (remember inexpensive books?), this book will be purchased in bulk and distributed to all those employees who need to make some ever so subtle shifts in their behavior...if they want to survive in the corporate jungle. The story, as easy to read as a fairy tale, begins with the main character being irritated because other people don't get it. Ever feel that way? Ever NOT feel that way? As the reader is lured through page after page, the tables turn and Main Character has been had by the moral. Sometimes other people don't get it because YOU don't get it! Zap! Right between the eyes when you weren't even looking. The book was well-constructed to set you up and then whack the message right at you. After you get it, the authors share some normal text explanations of what it all means. They take the fable into management-speak or consultant-speak-your choice-to give the reader the explanation of what they just got. Again, however, the pages are barely filled with ink, so the book is anything but intimidating. Sound bites. Object lessons. Small, non-threatening. Cute title. Recipe for success. As a Certified Management Consultant striving to help clients get it, I gained some valuable lessons from this book. I'll think more about the messages of this book next time I interact with people who need to get it. I'd bet you will, too.

This is a short, fun to read book (with great illustrations!) that gives practical and thought provoking advise on how to deal with conflict and resistance. Not only useful in a business environment, this can easily be applied to personal relationships. Highly recommended!

Leslie Yerkes, author of my favorite book about fun at work, Fun Works, branches out in her new book written with Randy Martin to consider the everyday problem of a manager's having their initiative, (i.e. explanation, etc.) resisted and misunderstood by co-workers. She smartly unpacks this to reveal that the largest part of the solution is discovered via the manager's insight into his or her own propensity to misunderstand and resist change. In this brief and engaging book, Yerkes and Martin offer a breezy fictional narrative to exemplify the problem and next extract a sensible and practical method for transforming how one constructively approaches misunderstanding and resistance. Ms. Yerkes makes an excellent case for giving her commonsense approach and its five keys a test in the workplace. They Just Don't Get It turned out to be thought provoking; (and, was especially so through a second reading). Even if this book only serves the purpose of reminding managers that employees are every bit as capable as managers are, its appearance will be timely in the current atmosphere of: obsession with productivity, workplace insecurity, and domineering supervisors. Recommended...