| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 19/06/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 64 |
| Copyright: Other |
Turn a new page on your career
Self-help manuals could help agents to gain assurance, a key factor in job progression. Jane Archer reports
AGENTS struggling to find an edge over their competitors might do well to dip into a self-help book to find inspiration.Self-help books are the volumes taking up increasing amounts of floor space in high-street book stores.
They are easy to spot, with catchy titles such as, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff at Work: Simple Ways to Minimise Stress and Conflict while Bringing out the Best in Yourself and Others, or Breakthrough: Your Guide to Handling Career Opportunities and Changes.
Sense and Nonsense in the Office might strike a chord with some readers, especially as it talks about the dire state of much management thought; there is also the strikingly simple Transform Yourself! which theorises on the need for hugging and stroking at work – purely metaphorically, of course.
It is all gung-ho and motivational stuff, especially as most of the titles insist on excessive use of capital letters and exclamation marks to get the blood really racing.
But whether they actually help you solve work-related problems by making you a better, more confident person, give you a leg up the career ladder or simply help you to do your job better, is another question.
C&M Recruitment joint managing director John Maloney said: “There is a lot of good self-help literature out there that can add value to your life.”
Maloney, who describes Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People as his ‘bible’, said: “It is easy to ridicule these books as very American but US commercial culture has been successful. The books tend to be full of jargon. The thing is to take the bits from them that can work for you.”
Maloney said the central theme of all self-help books is the need for confidence.
“Their message is that your attitude is important to what you get out of life,” he added.
“Dale Carnegie taught me to have a positive mental attitude and that helped me to move from being an engineer at Ford to being successful in sales.”
Between Ford and C&M Recruitment, Maloney worked at Dale Carnegie Training offices in London, where he saw people fearful of talking in public become confident speakers after a 12-week course.
“Dale is good at helping people to achieve confidence,” said Maloney. How to Win Friends would be useful to anyone who has to communicate in their job, including travel agents.
To underline the point he added: “Imagine two agents in close proximity selling the same product. What makes A better than B? The fact that its staff are better communicators, well presented and knowledgeable. They will get the business.”
The number of self-help books on the shelves is baffling, ranging from fat volumes to a 30min series published by Kogan Page.
The Kogan Page books, designed literally to be read in half an hour, cover every subject imaginable, including how to have a successful job interview, dealing with difficult customers, how to deal with difficult colleagues and how to write a good CV.
Kogan Page publishing director Pauline Goodwin admitted cynics might say the company is trading on people’s insecurities but prefers to see it as meeting a need in a changing society.
“There are increasing numbers of women returning to work who need their confidence boosted. Also, I think people want to know how to behave and present themselves,” she said.
While Carnegie is still favourite, Maloney admits having a large number of sales and personal development books at C&M Recruitment which he dips into from time to time.
“I don’t force staff to read them but they are welcome to borrow a book at anytime,” he said.
Reading ahead: self-help manuals can improve communication skills
Confidence boost: agents are advised to take a closer look at self-help guides