Author: Sarah Cook
Publisher: Gower
Format: A4 looseleaf manual, photocopiable
Price: £125
ISBN: 0566083507
Sarah Cook's first volume of 50-odd questionnaire tools has sold well for Gower, and the publication of a second volume is perhaps inevitable. There are a further 50 instruments here which will be of much use to management development trainers and those involved with team and organisational learning.
The materials comprise seven categories - coaching and mentoring, communications, customer care, leadership and management development, personal effectiveness, organisational awareness, and teamworking - but each of the tools can be used independently and there is a helpful grid which relates the tools to the categories.
The instruments are intended mainly as an aid for self-reflection and diagnosis. They employ relatively straightforward and familiar formats including checklists, paired comparisons, open questions, rankings, and self-scoring sheets. To this extent, the results are usually relative to the user's self-perceptions, rather than absolute in terms of any external reference point. Indeed, the author makes the point that "there are no right or wrong answers".
The main advantage of resources such as this is that they save the time of creating them yourself. Each instrument is available for immediate photocopying and use. Many users will already have similar instruments for themselves, but this manual offers additional choice and fills in several gaps.
For example, I'm particularly interested in exposing the sub-conscious flows and trends at work within an organisation - and how they usually differ from the mission statement and professed values. Sarah offers a Values instrument which uses a standard technique for users to identify their core values, but then adds a couple of activities which enable these values to be compared and ranked. As an ardent builder of my professional Toolkit, having additional ideas to hand gives me greater confidence.
Inevitably with such resources I am always left with a sense of "well, diagnosis was the easy bit, now what am I going to do to change the situation". As trainers and developers, our work is often about creating change and movement. Self-assessment can be a learning process in itself, but many situations will require further work. Each instrument is accompanied by a couple of pointers to follow-up books or videos. I would have preferred to see more such resources or hyperlinks included to make the whole pack truly comprehensive in its function.
Tim Pickles,
Founder, TrainingZONE
