In LeaderSHOP Volume 3: Workplace, Career, and Life Advice From Today’s Top Thought Leaders, Rodger Dean Duncan provides an abundance of practical advice that is timely as well as timeless

This is the third volume in a series of anthologies of several dozen interviews of thought leaders that Duncan conducted. Only a few of them would—in my opinion—qualify as celebrity authors (e.g Doug Conant, Chet Elton, Adrian Gostick, Joe Michelli, and  Laura Schlessinger).

However, as Duncan’s interview style clearly indicates, all of them have valuable advice to share about coping with the challenges of various kinds in a business world that is much more volatile, more uncertain, more complicated, and more ambiguous today than it was at any prior time that I can remember.

Duncan has a unique talent for obtaining advice from respondents, each of whom is uniquely well-qualified to provide it. His questions (especially follow-up questions) are relevant, strategic, and evocative.

As in the two previous volumes in the series, the material is again organized within several sections: Meaning and Purpose, Mental Maps, Workplace Practices, Behaviors, Trust & Teamwork, Feedback & Accountability, Communication, Career Management, and Personal Balance. There are four separate components (interviews or commentaries) in each section.

Duncan is a major contributor (chapters 1, 3, 9, 15, 25, 27, and 29). For example, he was informally interviewed years ago by Jim Lehrer, his editor at PBS. For example, he tells how early in his career he was coached on interviewing skills by his editor Jim Lehrer (later of PBS television fame). That conversation reveals much about how Duncan now approaches interviews: more conversational in nature and with a slower pace.

Here is a representative selection of subjects addressed:

o Doug Conant shares his thoughts about the importance of having a purpose-driven life.

o David Nielson recommends a path to achieve personal growth and professional development.

o David Covey examines seven specific traps that can hamper success.

o Susan Fowler explains why assumptions about motivation need to be rigorously evaluated.

o Duncan suggests how to take complexity out of simplicity.
 NOTE: He obviously agrees with Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. who cherished simplicity on “the other side of complexity.”

o Joe Michelli discusses valuable lessons to be learned from Airbnb.
NOTE: I highly recommend all of Michelli’s books including his latest, The Airbnb Way.

o  Scott Miller explains how to select the right tools for each task to achieve success.

o John Eades shares his thoughts about how love and discipline are a key to high-impact leadership.

o  Arthur Brooks explains how “better disagreement” can strengthen relationships.

o Brett Blumenthal offers a “bite-sized approach” to personal improvement.

With all due respect to the value of advice from these and other sources, however, the term “self-help” remains an imperative. It remains for each person to embrace it and then apply it. That is why Rodger Dean Duncan concludes each chapter with a “Personal Actions Application” section. The questions correlate with key points in the given chapter but also can facilitate, indeed expedite application of whatever is most relevant to the reader’s own needs, interests, objectives, concerns, etc.

The most effective leaders learn how to help themselves and this knowledge guides and informs their efforts to help others. For those who have direct reports entrusted to their care, each volume in the LeaderSHOP series really is a “must read.”