Book reviews

Books to help managers succeed in their daily duties

The need for mentorship is greater than ever before. However, informal mentoring has not kept up with the challenges in business. In his latest book on mentoring, Niël Steinmann, suggests a structured and intentional approach to mentoring, called crucial mentoring conversations.

He explains:“Our success in life is dictated by the quality of relationships we can build and maintain. Parents, teachers and leaders from any career, professional, or educational setting are now challenged to successfully navigate mentoring relationships.”

The book is rich with advice and explores the various conversations crucial for mentoring relationships.

It will help you hold deeper and more honest conversations that create new levels of self-awareness and opportunities for those you mentor to transform situations and relationships around them.

It presents the mentor with practical tools to facilitate this awareness and learning in ways that enrich, challenge, inspire and enable mentees to learn about themselves and their world.

When you mentor intentionally, opportunities for crucial conversations present themselves all the time from finding purpose to navigating career challenges, performance feedback, developing strengths and how to manage productive relationships and networks both personally and professionally.

About the author

Niël Steinmann is a specialist business consultant and registered industrial psychologist. In 1999 he founded People's Dynamic Development, a management consultancy that utilises African analogies to develop people and organisations to significantly increase their performance capacity. Steinmann is the author of Fundamentals for effective mentoring: Raising giant killers.