Book Giveaway: Dealing with Tough Stuff

How do you deal with the tough stuff? Career changes, business ups and downs? We’ve been there. We deal with the tough stuff thanks to a wonderful book – which we are giving away (along with two other fantastic books), to three lucky Alumni. Maybe that’s you?

Five years ago, I walked into my good friend’s salon for a haircut. With both of us owning businesses, talk turned to work. Karen mentioned she had bought an outstanding book that was really helping her improve the quality of her work conversations.

Listen to this story on our podcast, ”The Churchill Education Experience”

The book was called, “Dealing with the Tough Stuff: How to Achieve Results from Key Conversations”.

The authors are Darren Hill, Alison Hill and Dr Sean Richardson.

I bought the book.

I read the book.

And I immediately knew why Karen had spoken so highly of Dealing with the Tough Stuff.

Written by two psychologists and a behavioural scientist, you might think it would be all jargon and theory. It’s not. It’s full of practical strategies and examples that can be easily implemented in Australian workplaces.

It makes me laugh, it makes me nod, and it makes me feel like I have an expert on the shelf ready to lend a hand whenever a tricky conversation presents itself.

We have been sharing this book with our graduates. Universally, everyone comes back with the same response: this book is made for the real world. And it is an absolute relief to have it at hand. Hard conversations may still be hard but there is hope for how to do them better.

In a reminder of how small the world can be, Randall and I met Alison and Darren Hill … and they have become some of our best mates. And we had the chance to work with Sean and have his support through some of our toughest times.

Alison, Darren and Sean are all outstanding people. They are cheerleaders and deeply committed to seeing others thrive in their careers and lives. It is that spirit we can see deeply woven into their book.

And they’ve done it again;

In the last few weeks, Alison & Darren (who incidentally are the geniuses behind the award winning company, Pragmatic Thinking which specialises in helping company leaders to lead better, change behaviour and shift culture ) have worked their magic again to release their latest book – “Work from Anywhere: the Essential Guide to Becoming a World-Class Hybrid Team”.

It is a book that could not have come at a better time, when teams continue to forge through sudden lockdowns and working from anywhere has become a regular part of many people’s lives. The question is how? How do we work well as a team when we have all been scattered to our homes and coming into the office will never be the same again?

Using a balance of practical experience and the skills of their profession, Alison and Darren present strategies for connecting as a team, embedding accountability and overcoming the challenges around communication and collaboration.

You need to read this book.

We love this new book so much that we have decided it is time to give away a copy to a Churchill Alumni who is navigating the challenges of having a hybrid team – working from home & in the office – just like Churchill has become.

And in celebration of this new release, we decided to give away to another Alumni a copy of their other book – “Dealing With The Tough Stuff”.

While we were diving into our favourite books from Pragmatic Thinking, we couldn’t pass by Alison’s book “Stand Out: A Real World Guide to Get Clear, Find Purpose and Become the Boss of Busy.” Like so many women, when I read this book I was wearing busy as a badge of honour – and slowly breaking in the process.

As Ali shared so honestly in the opening to this book, she too knows what it is to have too much – the overload of busy leaving its mark in all of its worst ways. Ali navigated practical strategies to move from a busy life to a stand out life, full of purpose and clarity.

She has a highly successful podcast series “A Stand Out Life” – full of rich conversations with interesting people who share their challenges and lessons in choosing to pursue a stand out life. Alison even lured me into the podcast studio and you can hear our conversation on the podcast here: