Testimonials
Many business-based books provide insight and motivation around two or three key concepts. “Your Invisible Toolbox” rises to the next level, delivering 100 tangible and actionable skills that millennials, gen x’ers and baby boomers can and should utilize regularly in the workplace. The book is loaded with numerous real life examples that are easy to relate to and provide support to the tools provided. This is a very useful and fun book that can serve as a roadmap to successfully navigating the modern business environment.
Jeff Rommel, Senior Vice President, Nationwide Insurance
I have had the pleasure of working directly with the Tero International team for many years. As expected, this book provides valuable insights, wisdom and advice to those who are committed to being successful in the workplace and in life. While the focus of the book is on improving the social and interpersonal skills of millennials, the guidance provided is equally applicable to Boomers, Gen X and Gen Z.
Jay Byers, Chief Executive Officer, Greater Des Moines Partnership
Imagine being able to receive 100 text messages over the space of a few months, where each one provided terrific advice on how to better you career at work and life at home. This book provides just that sort of opportunity. Crosbie and Rinner have completely researched and interlaced numerous practical examples of how personal growth and achievement can be realized in the world of majority millennials in the workplace. An especially insightful section on leadership challenges all of us to be leaders in all facets of our lives, even if that means never having "direct reports" Read this book in one sitting, or savor each of the 100 life lessons separately. An ideal companion while waiting in line at Starbucks.
Dr. Christopher E. Nelson, President and CEO, Kemin Industries
Tools help us accomplish tasks with more efficiency, and toolboxes are used to carry the most important tools you will need for any job. Ro Crosbie and Deborah Rinner have created the ultimate toolbox to enhance critical skills necessary for success and significance.
Ro and Deborah have put together the consummate volume of adaptable strategies to make work and life better for millennials. I also believe people of all ages will benefit from Your Invisible Toolbox. The toolbox as described by Deb and Ro may be invisible – the strategies put into action will not go unseen.
Called by multiple names - soft skills, employability skills, 21st Century Skills - they are the critical skills necessary to along with the hard skills, digital fluency, creativity and innovation that modern work and life demand. And Ro and Deb put it all together in one place- Your Invisible Toolbox – simple to understand, adaptable and ready to work if you want to enhance your life.
This really is a toolbox that can be used in multiple ways to enhance critical skills for success and significance. I’ll be purchasing a copy for the two millennial young adults in our family with strong encouragement for them to use it intentionally – just as I will be using it to enhance my own leadership and pathway to significance. I’ll also be providing a copy to every millennial I hire because these are the skills we need highly developed in each of our team members.
Our work at The Robert D. and Billie Ray Center at Drake University is focused on civility, ethical leadership and character development. We work across the country to provide strategies and tools to bring both performance and moral character competencies to life – from early childhood to the corporate and community environment. Your Invisible Toolbox describes important character competency strategies in easy to understand ways that anyone can incorporate to elevate their work and life. Simply put, if you choose to use it, this toolbox is a game changer.
Candidly, I can go on and on. There is so much to say about this book. I love how it is laid out. I love how you could use it as a cover to cover read or a quick stop toolkit to hone up on a necessary skill set you want to enhance.
The table of contents alone could be a great reflective tool. Millennials, like most of us, don’t take the time or do a good job of personal reflection. Take a scan of the table of contents, identify something you want to improve, read that piece, and the GET TO WORK putting into proactive practice.
It is simply amazing!
In a very real sense, Rowena Crosbie and Deborah Rinner are like sculptors of the Renaissance who are producing great works of art: but their finished products are not static marble figures to be displayed in museums to impress visitors, but rather dynamic interactive millennial generation professionals to impact their clients and collaborators.
In their new volume The Invisible Toolbox, ""Ro" and ""Deb" have distilled 25 years of enormously successful professional training at Tero International, the "go-to" institute in Central Iowa for turning out polished performers, from Miss America contestants to entry level agricultural extension specialists and future corporate boardroom occupants.
With 100 compelling stories, each sharing an insight into more effective interpersonal interaction, The Invisible Toolbox is based on the bottom line proposition that 85% of career success depends on soft skills. Whether coaching on making eye to eye contact, business etiquette or effective public speaking, the authors provide take-away two or three word bottom-line lessons and insights that are designed to put the finishing touches on an entire generation of newly minted young professionals.
Each of the 100 stories, from Number 1 " It Was One of Those Days," to "Are You Who You Say You Are?" which concludes at Number 100, has such an engaging title that addressing the table of contents is akin to being offered a piece of candy from a box of spectacularly tempting chocolates: You don't know where to start, but you feel assured that whichever you pick, it will be delicious. And the one thing that is certain is that it will leave you wanting more. They are so Irresistible: you can't ingest just one.
Indeed, the stories are so succinct and the bottom line take-away aphorisms so pithy, that each could be printed on a card, some what like the classy notes left on your pillow at a boutique hotel. It could provide a one-a-day lesson with a two or three word bottom line, that would only take five to 10 minutes to ingest and be easy to remember and practice the following day, but impart an invisible "tool" that will last a life time.
Given my 32 year career at the US State Department, including an assignment at the National Security Council of the White House, I naturally gravitated to stories like Number 31 "The White House Crashers" and Number 52 "The Every Day Diplomat" in the section entitled "Tools for Working Globally." I came away wishing that The Invisible Toolbox had been available at the Foreign Service Institute when I went through my own entry-level training for a diplomatic career.
Ambassador Kenneth M. Quinn (ret.), President, The World Food Prize (ret.)
A guidebook for millennials that helps them navigate a shifting business landscape.
Debut authors Crosbie and Rinner spent a quarter-century as professional trainers at Tero International, an institute famous for grooming top performers. They decoct that entire experience into 100 basic lessons, divided into sections handling social interaction, self-presentation, globalism, leadership, and personal growth. The handbook illustrates some lessons through stories, and all of them are fairly brief—a few pages in length—and end with a neat synopsis and a single line of instruction. The authors have deliberately directed their counsel to millennials, who they believe are uniquely situated to effect seismic transformation and also uniquely vulnerable to the breakneck pace of technologically induced change. Crosbie and Rinner focus on what they call “invisible tools,” the skill set used to achieve successful social interactions. They contend that these abilities, more than any technical skills, are the true ingredients of lasting professional advancement. Many of the lessons specifically target the collective alienation caused by technological hyperconnectedness. To counter this, the authors encourage millennials to remember names, pen personal notes, listen attentively, and confidently court strangers. Other lessons are meant to examine biases, encouraging the embrace of diversity, a proper respect of cultural differences, and a searching examination of one’s assumptions and stereotypes. Additionally, one of the themes of the book is the value of self-awareness. The guide encourages a considerable amount of self-examination, including due diligence regarding self-representation on social media accounts. While the advice is mostly common sense, that doesn’t diminish its value for the intended audience. One genuine challenge for millennials is how to cultivate meaningful relationships in a new world that encourages the shallowest kind of networking, and the authors are particularly strong in this area. Also, the entire work is written in a familiar, unpretentious style that’s clear, direct, and well-organized. If millennials don’t buy this book, parents should purchase it for them.
A storehouse of timely advice well-suited to the intended audience.
Kirkus Book Review