• Quiet Leadership

  • Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work
  • By: David Rock
  • Narrated by: Pete Larkin
  • Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (448 ratings)

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Quiet Leadership  By  cover art

Quiet Leadership

By: David Rock
Narrated by: Pete Larkin
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Publisher's summary

Improving the performance of your employees involves one of the hardest challenges in the known universe: changing the way they think. In constant demand as a coach, speaker, and consultant to companies around the world, David Rock has proven that the secret to leading people (and living and working with them) is found in the space between their ears. "If people are being paid to think," he writes, "isn't it time the business world found out what the thing doing the work, the brain, is all about?" Supported by the latest groundbreaking research, Quiet Leadership provides a brain-based approach that will help busy leaders, executives, and managers improve their own and their colleagues' performance. Rock offers a practical, six-step guide to making permanent workplace performance change by unleashing higher productivity, new levels of morale, and greater job satisfaction.

©2006 David Rock (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers

What listeners say about Quiet Leadership

Average customer ratings
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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Very good ideas, a little bit repetitive!

Any additional comments?

Before this, I read "Your Brain at Work" by David Rock and loved it. It had a hand full of ideas but were very well presented along the book. They ideas seemed to flow across the book and evolve.

In Quite Leadership you also find only a hand full of ideas (very good ones I might add) but they just get repeated over and over again and don't seem to evolve too much. These ideas are just put in different contexts but in the end come out the same way.

So I can only give the book itself 3 stars because of this. But mind you, those 3 stars are very valuable, making the book worthwhile in my opinion.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

revolutionary

Accomplish more by speaking less. Which questions will switch on the speaker's own capacity to understand and find a practical solution? By asking about their thinking you help them get out of the harried victim mode into a more transcendent clarity vision.

It is quite involved and entails getting used to a special terminology. Applying it in life is even more challenging, because you will sound very much differently from what you usually are. But even a little application of David Rock's 6 steps seems to help me approach all relationships and human interactions in a much more effective way. It shows how to actually contribute to positive and natural solutions.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A Must Read for Anyone in Leadership

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I could not put this book down! It has some profound insights that will greatly help me in dealing with my employees and kids. You have to read it if you are in leadership or are aspiring to.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Quiet Leadership?

The analysis of the how people think

What does Pete Larkin bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Great audio effects that captivate you.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Slow and repetitive

This book got off to a super slow start and never picked up the pace. I truly struggled to finish it. Very repetitive.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

I expected more...

Full disclosure: I didn't finish the book, I gave up about half-way through. Also, if I were to disregard the dry narration, I would rate it a strong 3 for content.

The CREATE model presented in this book looks interesting, but it's as if it's (too me) mostly common sense put into in a fairly overly complex package. I found myself losing interest in what was being said time and time again because of it. The first couple of chapters on neuroscience also doesn't add anything new or interesting for me.

The narration is dry and reminds me of an emotionally disconnected talk radio host. It's well articulated and calm, but it also doesn't capture the subject matter in an appealing way. Somewhat better when listening and 1,5 times the normal speed, but not enough to keep going.

I'm willing to bet that this is a much better book in a non-audio format, both because of the somewhat complex structure and the narration issues.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

How to motivate already awesome employees

David Rock has some good insight on how to "motivate" people. This book explains how to help great employees improve on their thinking, not how to help a manager deal with a difficult situation or bad employees. It's interesting but not what I was looking for. Asking questions rather than telling people what to do sounds likea good strategy if you feel comfortable with that employee and can rely on good responses. In my experience, once the situation has reached critical point, the employee will be defensive without you even asking the first question for permission or placement. They're just too stubborn, closed off, and entitled to see your good intentions. I believe this is where the book fails. But if you just want ideas on motivation, to help bring out more talent out of already talented people, assuming you're a great motivational speaker and you remember all the steps discussed in this book, assuming your conversation will not get offtrack or spiral into meaningless tangents, then it's great. But life is rarely this predictable.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Very interesting!

I read the author's Brain at Work book and was impressed so I read Quiet Leadership and was equally impressed. Some of his suggestions I was already aware of. However, what impressed me is that he set up a process that is easy to follow; enough anecdotes and examples to see how it works for individuals and teams. I recommend both books.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fun and informative. great examples.

good examples. great infornation. word choice could be better. overall good read. recommended read.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Some good nuggets

Some applicable stuff, other ideas felt forced. Odd without the graphical activities to try out because of audio format only.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

All the Nopes in Nopeville

This book has some good things about helping people by you as the leader allowing them to think for themselves. Yet, it also has lots of ableist viewpoints like if we exercised we wouldn’t need antidepressants

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