I've set myself a goal to read one self-development book per month. To make sure I truly reflect on what I'm reading I'm going to extract the wisdom from the best business and personal development books and share it with you.

This time, I've been reading Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

”I love that my clients tell me about their love lives”

This came from a coaching client of mine who says she doesn't like to promote herself. Yet she is never short of work due to word of mouth recommendations. So how does someone who doesn't like self-promotion get referrals? And how are her clients love lives relevant?

I've set myself a goal to read one self-development book per month. To make sure I really reflect on what I'm reading I'm going to extract the wisdom from the best business and personal development books and share it with you. This month I’ve been reading Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions by Neel Burton

This month I’ve been reading Alive at Work: The Neuroscience of Helping Your People Love What They Do by Daniel M Cable. The book largely focuses on a part of the brain called the ‘seeking system’. Our seeking system is the part of the brain that creates the impulse to explore our world and learn about our environment. But what has this got to do with feeling alive at work?

This month I’ve been reading Get The Truth. Getting someone to tell the truth is an essential skill that most people would love to have but very few people possess. Former CIA agents and professional interrogators Philip Houston, Mike Floyd, and Susan Carnicero are among the world's best at detecting deceptive behaviour. Not only can they convince people to share things they don’t want to tell but often the subjects of their interrogations thank them for the opportunity afterwards!!!

It took less than 5 minutes for my tweet to be rubbished by a male associate of mine. My idea wasn’t perfect but it obviously had merit, so why point out small and irrelevant downsides when the overall suggestion was helpful? Why had this guy been so mean about it?  A few days later I listened to a fantastic podcast about the linguistic rituals men and women use in the workplace. It made me think. Perhaps my Twitter friend hadn't been so mean after all!

Relationships, public speaking, performing a song for Simon Cowell. All things you should put as much of yourself as you can into. A lion's den, a pair of hotpants 2 sizes too small and difficult conversations-all things you absolutely take yourself out of. I don’t mean don’t have difficult conversations but, as far as possible, we should take ourselves out of them.