Discover the books that are making waves and transforming lives. Our Bestsellers collection features the most impactful, reader-loved titles across leadership, personal growth, workplace transformation, and social change. These standout books have resonated with audiences around the world—delivering timeless wisdom, actionable strategies, and bold ideas that spark real change. Whether you’re new to Berrett-Koehler or looking for your next great read, this is the perfect place to start.
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Wall Street Journal bestselling author David Horsager provides a selection of incredible new tips and tricks for maintaining your business edge on a daily basis.
How do you get your work done and still maintain relationships and build trust? For most busy executives, it's an either/or choice -- either spend time with your people, or be an effective and productive leader who focuses entirely on the work. But David Horsager says you can do both.
The key is to do lots of little things on a daily basis that make you so effective that you have enough time to interact with your people and honor and build the relationships you have with them. In succinct, quick-read chapters Horsager offers thirty-five high impact productivity practices, each easily implemented and powerful on their own. Taken together, they form a solid wave of efficacy that will enable you to get more done, keep your energy up, and make sure that you're able to put people first-which Horsager insists must be always be one of your top priorities.
How do you get your work done and still maintain relationships and build trust? For most busy executives, it's an either/or choice -- either spend time with your people, or be an effective and productive leader who focuses entirely on the work. But David Horsager says you can do both.
The key is to do lots of little things on a daily basis that make you so effective that you have enough time to interact with your people and honor and build the relationships you have with them. In succinct, quick-read chapters Horsager offers thirty-five high impact productivity practices, each easily implemented and powerful on their own. Taken together, they form a solid wave of efficacy that will enable you to get more done, keep your energy up, and make sure that you're able to put people first-which Horsager insists must be always be one of your top priorities.
Now completely updated, Making Sustainability Work is the bible for applying real metrics and best practices to the often-nebulous realm of business sustainability. Mark Epstein and Adriana Rejc Buhovac provide concrete tools for measuring and increasing social and environmental impacts in a manner that businesses can understand and put to real use.
The ever-increasing complexity we face requires a new way to think and work. To effectively lead an organization, bestselling author Mark Miller says, you have to play chess, not checkers. He shows how this mentality enables you to marshal all your available resources, including every employee, to strategically address challenges and opportunities.
In his latest business fable, top leadership author Mark Miller tells the story of newly appointed CEO Blake Brown, who takes over a company distressed by poor performance and low morale. Nothing Blake learned from his previous job seems to help him deal with the bigger, more complex problems he now faces. The game has changed. As his new mentor points out, Blake is playing a simple game of checkers when he should be playing chess.
Miller uses this metaphor to show how leaders can encourage deep, strategic thinking throughout an organization and utilize the unique abilities of each employee (bishops move differently than knights). He explains how to apply the “chess not checkers” mentality in four critical areas: leadership development, employee engagement, organizational alignment, and execution. This is an appealing, accessible guide to helping all leaders think ahead, plan their moves, and avoid getting checkmated by circumstances or competitors.
In his latest business fable, top leadership author Mark Miller tells the story of newly appointed CEO Blake Brown, who takes over a company distressed by poor performance and low morale. Nothing Blake learned from his previous job seems to help him deal with the bigger, more complex problems he now faces. The game has changed. As his new mentor points out, Blake is playing a simple game of checkers when he should be playing chess.
Miller uses this metaphor to show how leaders can encourage deep, strategic thinking throughout an organization and utilize the unique abilities of each employee (bishops move differently than knights). He explains how to apply the “chess not checkers” mentality in four critical areas: leadership development, employee engagement, organizational alignment, and execution. This is an appealing, accessible guide to helping all leaders think ahead, plan their moves, and avoid getting checkmated by circumstances or competitors.
A step-by-step leadership framework for moving from passive DEI awareness to active advocacy, grounded in nearly two decades of consulting practice and hard-won personal experience.
Leaders often know inequity exists in their organizations but don't know how to act, or worry they'll get it wrong. This expanded second edition gives them a clear, non-judgmental path forward using the acclaimed Inclusive Leader Continuum, a four-stage model that meets readers wherever they are and maps specific actions for moving forward.
What's inside:
Who it's for: Leaders at any level, from first-time managers to senior executives, especially those who feel uncertain about where to start or how to show up more effectively.
What you’ll leave with: The language, frameworks, and confidence to stop sitting on the sidelines and start using your influence to build workplaces where everyone can thrive.
Leaders often know inequity exists in their organizations but don't know how to act, or worry they'll get it wrong. This expanded second edition gives them a clear, non-judgmental path forward using the acclaimed Inclusive Leader Continuum, a four-stage model that meets readers wherever they are and maps specific actions for moving forward.
What's inside:
- Four stages of inclusive leadership: unaware, aware, active, and advocate, each with hallmarks, real-world stories, and practical strategies
- Tools including the inner circle inventory, the iceberg identity framework, and a free online inclusive leader assessment
- A new chapter on identity, privilege, and what holds leaders back, written as a “call-in” rather than a call-out
- Chapter discussion guides designed for individual reflection and team learning
Who it's for: Leaders at any level, from first-time managers to senior executives, especially those who feel uncertain about where to start or how to show up more effectively.
What you’ll leave with: The language, frameworks, and confidence to stop sitting on the sidelines and start using your influence to build workplaces where everyone can thrive.
Edited by legendary business author Ken Blanchard and featuring contributions by authors like Simon Sinek, Brené Brown, Stephen M. R. Covey, and Marshall Goldsmith, this collection offers expert advice on how to implement an increasingly popular and highly effective approach to leadership.
Servant leadership is the secret behind the success of some of the world's leading organizations. Succinctly put, serving leaders lead by serving their people, not by exalting themselves.
Through the stories and reflections of leading businesspeople, bestselling authors, and spiritual leaders, this collection offers tools for implementing this proven but radical leadership model. The book is organized into three sections:
-What is Servant Leadership? describes different aspects of servant leadership
-Models of Servant Leadership focuses on people who have been identified as classic servant leaders
-Putting Servant Leadership to Work features firsthand accounts of how servant leadership has been implemented in various organizations and the difference it has made in both results and human satisfaction.
Servant leadership is the secret behind the success of some of the world's leading organizations. Succinctly put, serving leaders lead by serving their people, not by exalting themselves.
Through the stories and reflections of leading businesspeople, bestselling authors, and spiritual leaders, this collection offers tools for implementing this proven but radical leadership model. The book is organized into three sections:
-What is Servant Leadership? describes different aspects of servant leadership
-Models of Servant Leadership focuses on people who have been identified as classic servant leaders
-Putting Servant Leadership to Work features firsthand accounts of how servant leadership has been implemented in various organizations and the difference it has made in both results and human satisfaction.
Bestselling author Jennifer Kahnweiler (Quiet Influence and The Introverted Leader-over 20,000 copies sold each) offers a five-step process that will help introverts and extroverts understand and appreciate each other and work together to achieve more than they ever could on their own.
Mick and Keith. Jobs and Woz. FDR and Eleanor. Gilbert and Sullivan. History is filled with examples of successful introvert-extrovert partnerships. But how can two people who sometimes seem to be from different planets not just work together but make extraordinary products, create great works of art, and even change history?
Jennifer Kahnweiler says the key is to remember that these relationships are most successful when opposites stop emphasizing their differences and use approaches that move them towards results. She provides a five-step process that helps introverts and extroverts understand each other's “cultures,” use their inevitable conflicts to spur creativity, find the right roles within their partnership, enjoy each other's company, and adapt and adjust their roles when working with clients. These partnerships require constant maintenance-opposites don't attract, they have to work at it. But when they succeed they produce exponential results. Blending the two points of view allows both partners to see and act on things neither partner would have separately.
Mick and Keith. Jobs and Woz. FDR and Eleanor. Gilbert and Sullivan. History is filled with examples of successful introvert-extrovert partnerships. But how can two people who sometimes seem to be from different planets not just work together but make extraordinary products, create great works of art, and even change history?
Jennifer Kahnweiler says the key is to remember that these relationships are most successful when opposites stop emphasizing their differences and use approaches that move them towards results. She provides a five-step process that helps introverts and extroverts understand each other's “cultures,” use their inevitable conflicts to spur creativity, find the right roles within their partnership, enjoy each other's company, and adapt and adjust their roles when working with clients. These partnerships require constant maintenance-opposites don't attract, they have to work at it. But when they succeed they produce exponential results. Blending the two points of view allows both partners to see and act on things neither partner would have separately.
Hire and Keep the Best People is filled with proven, practical knowledge and offers effective steps you can take today to find, select, hire, orient, train, and retain the best people for your business.
A powerful pocket guide for practitioners that distills all of the research and materials found in Otto Scharmer's seminal texts Theory U and Leading from the Emerging Future.
Theory U has evolved into a movement in both academic and organizational development programs on a global scale, yet all of the available literature on the subject can only be found in pricier and lengthier (400+ pages) works - putting it beyond the reach of many. Here, for the first time, the movement's key founder presents the core premise and application of Theory U in a competitively priced paperback that runs just 168 pages. The new developments into a short handbook that focuses on three essential components; the core principles of Theory U, the give movements that makes the process of Theory U, and social applications. The work presents the basic principles of Theory U and its usage in a compact format to be used as a simple introductory work to the field of presencing.
Theory U has evolved into a movement in both academic and organizational development programs on a global scale, yet all of the available literature on the subject can only be found in pricier and lengthier (400+ pages) works - putting it beyond the reach of many. Here, for the first time, the movement's key founder presents the core premise and application of Theory U in a competitively priced paperback that runs just 168 pages. The new developments into a short handbook that focuses on three essential components; the core principles of Theory U, the give movements that makes the process of Theory U, and social applications. The work presents the basic principles of Theory U and its usage in a compact format to be used as a simple introductory work to the field of presencing.
The twentieth-anniversary edition of the book that helped launch the anticorporate movement examines how much corporate control has grown and the new challenges for those who work for a more economically equitable society.
When Corporations Rule the World has become a modern classic. Korten's warnings about the growing global power of multinational corporations seem prophetic today. The book has become a bible of the anticorporate movement.
Korten illuminates how the convergence of ideological, political, and technological forces has led to an ever-greater concentration of economic and political power in a handful of corporations and financial institutions, separating their interests from the human interest and leaving the market system blind to all but its own short-term financial gains. He documents the devastating human and environmental consequences of the successful efforts of corporations to reconstruct values and institutions everywhere to serve narrow financial ends. He explains why human survival depends on a community-based, life-centered alternative beyond the outmoded strictures of communism and capitalism and suggests specific steps to achieve it.
This twentieth-anniversary edition includes a new prologue and a new epilogue. The new prologue reflects on events since 1995 that relate to the expansion of corporate power, such as the growth of the global anticorporate movement, the global war on terror that began after 9/11, the financial crash of 2008, and more. The epilogue provides a look ahead at what is required for a future free of corporate domination.
When Corporations Rule the World has become a modern classic. Korten's warnings about the growing global power of multinational corporations seem prophetic today. The book has become a bible of the anticorporate movement.
Korten illuminates how the convergence of ideological, political, and technological forces has led to an ever-greater concentration of economic and political power in a handful of corporations and financial institutions, separating their interests from the human interest and leaving the market system blind to all but its own short-term financial gains. He documents the devastating human and environmental consequences of the successful efforts of corporations to reconstruct values and institutions everywhere to serve narrow financial ends. He explains why human survival depends on a community-based, life-centered alternative beyond the outmoded strictures of communism and capitalism and suggests specific steps to achieve it.
This twentieth-anniversary edition includes a new prologue and a new epilogue. The new prologue reflects on events since 1995 that relate to the expansion of corporate power, such as the growth of the global anticorporate movement, the global war on terror that began after 9/11, the financial crash of 2008, and more. The epilogue provides a look ahead at what is required for a future free of corporate domination.
When it comes to leading, there is a critical difference between communicating as a boss and communicating as a bully. Celebrated communicator Dianna Booher explains why a leader's success depends on knowing how to communicate strategically with audiences in an organization at their level of interest and relevancy.
“People don't leave an organization; they leave a boss” has become a truism in the workplace for good reason. The most common issue is that employees who get promoted from supervisor to manager or from manager to senior executive don't have adequate leadership communication skills for the job. As a result, they are stuck in micromanagement mode.
This book addresses this micromanagement problem by providing principles to help professionals think, coach, converse, speak, write, and meet strategically to deliver results. Booher guides readers through the transition from being a tactical thinker conducting day-to-day administrative work to being a strategic thinker dealing with critical problem analysis, generating innovative ideas, and aiming at a targeted solution. While strategic thinking is the first step to standing out, if you are unable to communicate your strategic thinking, you will remain stuck. Booher's research-based practice of strategic communication gives managers the training they desperately need as they move into leadership positions.
The ability to translate their knowledge, experience, and judgment for different groups and different levels in an organization transforms leaders from ordinary to extraordinary.
“People don't leave an organization; they leave a boss” has become a truism in the workplace for good reason. The most common issue is that employees who get promoted from supervisor to manager or from manager to senior executive don't have adequate leadership communication skills for the job. As a result, they are stuck in micromanagement mode.
This book addresses this micromanagement problem by providing principles to help professionals think, coach, converse, speak, write, and meet strategically to deliver results. Booher guides readers through the transition from being a tactical thinker conducting day-to-day administrative work to being a strategic thinker dealing with critical problem analysis, generating innovative ideas, and aiming at a targeted solution. While strategic thinking is the first step to standing out, if you are unable to communicate your strategic thinking, you will remain stuck. Booher's research-based practice of strategic communication gives managers the training they desperately need as they move into leadership positions.
The ability to translate their knowledge, experience, and judgment for different groups and different levels in an organization transforms leaders from ordinary to extraordinary.
For a lucky few, light conversation at parties and social events is a breeze. For the rest of us, there is Carol Fleming (bestselling author of It's the Way You Say It), who breaks even the shortest bit of small talk into an understandable process that anyone can master.
Much of your personal success hinges on the effectiveness of your personal communication skills. Whether or not new doors are opened to you may depend on how well you can meet one of life's most frustrating social challenges--starting and developing conversations with strangers, aka "small talk." Small talk is usually considered to be a light, pleasant, and safe verbal exchange, which allows people the time and association to get a sense of each other. It consists of introductions, exchange of personal information and interests when meeting new people and searching for a topic of mutual interest. According to Carol Fleming, conversationalist-extraordinaire, the business of small talk means:
-Bringing people together
-Facilitating understanding
-Finding friendships, building trust and maintaining relationships
-Developing your business
-Exposing you to different points of view
This book teaches you the concrete skills of social behavior, and promises to increase your understanding of what small talk is and what it does, while revealing the rituals and strategies for developing conversation. You may not think you have the "gift of gab," but Carol Fleming will convince you that you can master the fine art of small talk in all your business and social encounters.
Much of your personal success hinges on the effectiveness of your personal communication skills. Whether or not new doors are opened to you may depend on how well you can meet one of life's most frustrating social challenges--starting and developing conversations with strangers, aka "small talk." Small talk is usually considered to be a light, pleasant, and safe verbal exchange, which allows people the time and association to get a sense of each other. It consists of introductions, exchange of personal information and interests when meeting new people and searching for a topic of mutual interest. According to Carol Fleming, conversationalist-extraordinaire, the business of small talk means:
-Bringing people together
-Facilitating understanding
-Finding friendships, building trust and maintaining relationships
-Developing your business
-Exposing you to different points of view
This book teaches you the concrete skills of social behavior, and promises to increase your understanding of what small talk is and what it does, while revealing the rituals and strategies for developing conversation. You may not think you have the "gift of gab," but Carol Fleming will convince you that you can master the fine art of small talk in all your business and social encounters.
Frequent keynote speaker and bestselling author of The Magic of Conflict (over 100,000 copies sold) and Journey to Center (over 20,000 copies sold) presents his radically simple centering technique as an effective antidote to our endemic “busy-ness.”
Adapted from Brian Tracy's international time-management bestseller, Eat That Frog!, this book will give today's stressed-out and overwhelmed students the tools for lifelong success.
Students at all levels struggle with how to manage their time. In high school they often find they need this skill for the first time, as they juggle classes, extracurricular activities (which are all but mandatory if you want to go to college), jobs, internships, family responsibilities, and more. In college they have more freedom and less structure, which makes time management even more critical.
Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog! has helped millions around the world get more done in less time. Now this life-changing global bestseller has been adapted to the specific needs of students. Tracy offers readers tips, tools, and techniques for structuring time, setting goals, staying on task (even when you're not interested), dealing with stress, and developing the skills to achieve far more than you ever thought possible. This is the book that parents and teachers have long been wishing Brian Tracy would write.
Students at all levels struggle with how to manage their time. In high school they often find they need this skill for the first time, as they juggle classes, extracurricular activities (which are all but mandatory if you want to go to college), jobs, internships, family responsibilities, and more. In college they have more freedom and less structure, which makes time management even more critical.
Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog! has helped millions around the world get more done in less time. Now this life-changing global bestseller has been adapted to the specific needs of students. Tracy offers readers tips, tools, and techniques for structuring time, setting goals, staying on task (even when you're not interested), dealing with stress, and developing the skills to achieve far more than you ever thought possible. This is the book that parents and teachers have long been wishing Brian Tracy would write.
Based on the New York Times bestseller The Body Is Not an Apology, this is an action guide to help readers practice the art of radical self-love both for themselves and to transform our society.
Readers of The Body Is Not an Apology have been clamoring for guidance on how to do the work of radical self-love. After crowdsourcing her community, Sonya Renee Taylor found her readers wanted more concrete ideas on how to apply this work in a larger social and structural context. Your Body Is Not an Apology is the action guide that gives them just that-tools and structured frameworks they can apply immediately to start changing the world. Taylor guides readers with concrete ideas and, as always, practical applications that move us beyond theory and into doing and being radical self-love change agents in the world. This workbook, along with the new edition of the book, will put people in action in their organizations, in politics, in their doctor's offices, and at their jobs.
Readers of The Body Is Not an Apology have been clamoring for guidance on how to do the work of radical self-love. After crowdsourcing her community, Sonya Renee Taylor found her readers wanted more concrete ideas on how to apply this work in a larger social and structural context. Your Body Is Not an Apology is the action guide that gives them just that-tools and structured frameworks they can apply immediately to start changing the world. Taylor guides readers with concrete ideas and, as always, practical applications that move us beyond theory and into doing and being radical self-love change agents in the world. This workbook, along with the new edition of the book, will put people in action in their organizations, in politics, in their doctor's offices, and at their jobs.
Kick fear-based living to the curb and discover exactly how to manifest the life of your dreams!
Drawing on two decades of experience working with high achievers, motivational expert Delatorro McNeal teaches people how to achieve their dreams for a fuller life. He shares seven steps for excellence alongside key lessons on how to widen your experiences and perspectives and deepen your relationships, impact, and fulfillment. As a lifelong biker, McNeal uses a motorcycle metaphor to describe the differences between living life by shifting into a higher gear versus being on cruise control. He outlines how to:
• Lean into changes you seek
• Put your kickstand up and turn excuses into declarations
• Fuel yourself with faith over fear
• Navigate the flow of your emotions
• Maintain your engine for a smoother long-term ride
• Embrace the potholes you'll encounter along your journey
• Shift through the four gears of life and business
This book will help you stop procrastinating, throw out your excuses, achieve your goals at an accelerated rate, and prepare for the ride of your life.
Drawing on two decades of experience working with high achievers, motivational expert Delatorro McNeal teaches people how to achieve their dreams for a fuller life. He shares seven steps for excellence alongside key lessons on how to widen your experiences and perspectives and deepen your relationships, impact, and fulfillment. As a lifelong biker, McNeal uses a motorcycle metaphor to describe the differences between living life by shifting into a higher gear versus being on cruise control. He outlines how to:
• Lean into changes you seek
• Put your kickstand up and turn excuses into declarations
• Fuel yourself with faith over fear
• Navigate the flow of your emotions
• Maintain your engine for a smoother long-term ride
• Embrace the potholes you'll encounter along your journey
• Shift through the four gears of life and business
This book will help you stop procrastinating, throw out your excuses, achieve your goals at an accelerated rate, and prepare for the ride of your life.
Leadership is about creating new realities. In this new edition, leaders will learn how to use the power of synchronicity to manifest new realities into their organizations and unlock wisdom and creativity.
Bestselling authors adrienne maree brown and Sonya Renee Taylor create an unforgettable and transformational experience of journaling your way into your most authentic self.
This journal will help you claim permission to live your purpose. Based on the bestselling philosophies of radical self-love, emergent strategy, and pleasure activism, this journal gives you permission to love yourself deeply as you are.
Journaling to these prompts will help you surrender to your body's needs instead of forcing yourself into cramped disciplines. It will encourage you to become awed by the natural beauty of your divine self instead of being rampantly self-critical. It will aid you in embracing your shadows and accepting responsibility for your impact all while liberating you to just be.
This structured journal provides six key practices, with prompts for each practice that center on curiosity, surrender, grace, and satisfaction.
This journal will help you claim permission to live your purpose. Based on the bestselling philosophies of radical self-love, emergent strategy, and pleasure activism, this journal gives you permission to love yourself deeply as you are.
Journaling to these prompts will help you surrender to your body's needs instead of forcing yourself into cramped disciplines. It will encourage you to become awed by the natural beauty of your divine self instead of being rampantly self-critical. It will aid you in embracing your shadows and accepting responsibility for your impact all while liberating you to just be.
This structured journal provides six key practices, with prompts for each practice that center on curiosity, surrender, grace, and satisfaction.
The third edition of this bestseller (over 275,000 copies sold) builds on the tested formula that helps organizations recognize the value of complaints using updated examples and concepts in the age of COVID-19.
The first edition of A Complaint Is a Gift introduced the revolutionary notion that customer complaints are not annoyances to be dodged, denied, or buried but are instead valuable pieces of feedback-not to mention your best bargain in market research. Complaints provide a feedback mechanism that can help organizations rapidly and inexpensively strengthen products, service style, and market focus. Most importantly, complaints that are well received create customer loyalty.
This new edition condenses the tried and true eight-step formula into a tighter, more efficient three-step formula. From her work with clients, the author has updated industry-specific complaint examples and added in new concepts, such as a process that enables employees to handle complaints with increased emotional resilience-something that is sorely needed since dealing with increasingly difficult customers is a common occurrence in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Handling complaints doesn't have to be a negative, soul-crushing experience. Janelle Barlow gives the right tools to treat each of them as a source of innovative ideas that can transform your business.
The first edition of A Complaint Is a Gift introduced the revolutionary notion that customer complaints are not annoyances to be dodged, denied, or buried but are instead valuable pieces of feedback-not to mention your best bargain in market research. Complaints provide a feedback mechanism that can help organizations rapidly and inexpensively strengthen products, service style, and market focus. Most importantly, complaints that are well received create customer loyalty.
This new edition condenses the tried and true eight-step formula into a tighter, more efficient three-step formula. From her work with clients, the author has updated industry-specific complaint examples and added in new concepts, such as a process that enables employees to handle complaints with increased emotional resilience-something that is sorely needed since dealing with increasingly difficult customers is a common occurrence in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Handling complaints doesn't have to be a negative, soul-crushing experience. Janelle Barlow gives the right tools to treat each of them as a source of innovative ideas that can transform your business.