Coffee Conversations: The Simple Leadership Secret of High Performance Workplaces - Paperback

by Shane Garland (Author), Grant Donovan Phd (Author)

Coffee Conversations Ever struggled with poor performing staff and wanted to know the secret of high performance work cultures? Simple, throw out performance appraisals and other punitive performance management processes and introduce Coffee Conversations. It's a no-brainer. A relaxed, casual conversation over a cup of coffee fixes all performance issues and the return on investment is spectacular. That's right, eliminate complex and demotivating control systems, start treating people well, engage them in the decisions that affect their work and empower them to self-manage their own outcomes and the simple secret of high performance will appear. Based on 25 years of practical experience and research by Shane Garland and Dr Grant Donovan, Coffee Conversations explores how high performance work cultures form spontaneously when leaders take time each day to relax with their staff, sip a coffee and discuss better ways of running the business. Unambiguously, managers who do their people work first and their paperwork second, produce the best performance outcomes and the greatest places to work. Coffee Conversations is a storybook of practical examples and supportive data that questions why any organisation would waste precious time and money on expensive and complex leadership training programs, when regular coffee conversations will deliver a trusting work culture and guaranteed performance success. While many leadership books are either full of academic theory, large strategic ideas or curriculum based, directive leadership education, Coffee Conversations is full of short, practical stories from the iconic Australian companies, Qantas and Woolworths, and a myriad of international experiences that will leave you inspired.

Author Biography

SHANE GARLAND worked with Qantas for 20 years. Starting out in a clerical position at Melbourne airport before working his way up the organizational ladder to become the General Manager at Sydney Airport, with 2700 staff and 400 aircraft movements a day. After leaving Qantas, he took a sabbatical before beginning a five-year journey as the National Operations Manager for the Woolworths' distribution centres where he was responsible for more than 6000 people working in 30 different centres around Australia. Shane was always encouraged by the CEO's of these two iconic Australian companies to learn by continually trying new ideas. And what he learnt most was to make the employees the centre of everything. He found that if he treated them well then, they in turn, would treat the customers well and be motivated to do a great job. He also learnt how much front line workers appreciate leadership that includes everybody's input to achieving the company's performance objectives. Shane wrote this book with Grant to help the thousands of supervisors and managers out there who struggle under the weight of bureaucracy, without senior management support and are looking for a simple way to help their teams perform. For Shane, regular Coffee Conversations are the secret. GRANT DONOVAN is doctoral graduate from the University of Western Australia who specializes in culture change and the development of leaders for high level organisational performance. He is a frequent presenter at International Management Conferences and has led many management tours to the best performing work sites in Europe and North America. Grant works extensively as a corporate coach throughout Australia, the United States and Eastern Asia and is currently the Managing Partner at Perception Mapping, a human behaviour research company employed globally to help organisations diagnose the thoughts and actions of both their staff and customers. Grant has conducted "Manager to Coach," "High Performance Culture Change" and "Opportunity Leadership" education programs in Australia, China, Singapore, Indonesia and the United States for more than 14,000 managers from over 500 companies. Grant met Shane in 1994 when Shane was the Airport manager for Qantas in Perth, Australia. Together and separately they have achieved extraordinary success improving organisational performances using the Coffee Conversations method.