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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Written by Dan Sullivan, the acclaimed speaker, author, consultant, and coach to entrepreneurs, this book provides refreshingly simple laws that will instantly shift your perspective to help you fully realize your personal and professional potential.
Growth is a fundamental human need. It is at the root of everything that gives us a feeling of accomplishment, satisfaction, meaning, and progress. Yet many people find their growth stalled at some point. In The Laws of Lifetime Growth, Dan Sullivan and Catherine Nomura offer ten simple laws that everyone can use to keep a fresh, innovative perspective on their lives and the world around them.
These laws are the distillation of Sullivan's years of coaching successful people, paying attention to what motivates them and what unlocks their greatest abilities. Each chapter is devoted to exploring one of the ten laws in detail, including stories of people from all walks of life who exemplify the law in action, common pitfalls that people often run into trying to apply the law, and practical strategies for getting past those obstacles. This second edition includes new examples, a self-assessment to measure your progress, and access to an interactive online tool. Once you start to integrate these laws into your life, you'll never outgrow them, they'll never become obsolete, and they will continue to lead you to greater happiness and fulfillment.
Growth is a fundamental human need. It is at the root of everything that gives us a feeling of accomplishment, satisfaction, meaning, and progress. Yet many people find their growth stalled at some point. In The Laws of Lifetime Growth, Dan Sullivan and Catherine Nomura offer ten simple laws that everyone can use to keep a fresh, innovative perspective on their lives and the world around them.
These laws are the distillation of Sullivan's years of coaching successful people, paying attention to what motivates them and what unlocks their greatest abilities. Each chapter is devoted to exploring one of the ten laws in detail, including stories of people from all walks of life who exemplify the law in action, common pitfalls that people often run into trying to apply the law, and practical strategies for getting past those obstacles. This second edition includes new examples, a self-assessment to measure your progress, and access to an interactive online tool. Once you start to integrate these laws into your life, you'll never outgrow them, they'll never become obsolete, and they will continue to lead you to greater happiness and fulfillment.
Building on the success of his classic bestseller Eat That Frog! -- nearly one million copies sold - Brian Tracy shows how everyone can turn negative frogs (negative thoughts, emotions, and behaviors) into positive princes (positive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors) in all areas of life and work.
“The perfect book for the times in which we live . . . page after page of engaging stories, profound insights, and practical tips on how you can stand up and take responsibility for making something meaningful happen.”
-Jim Kouzes, coauthor of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge
Stepping Up argues that almost every problem, from personal difficulties and business challenges to social issues, can be solved if all of us look to ourselves to create change rather than looking to others. And with the research to prove it, John Izzo shows that by seeing ourselves as the locus rather than the victims of change, we are happier, less stressed, and more powerful.
Izzo offers seven compelling principles that enable anyone to effectively bring about positive change. This book is filled with stories that illustrate the incredible power of stepping up: a middle-aged Italian shopkeeper who fought back against the Mafia, two teenagers who ignited an antibullying movement, an executive who turned a dying division into a profit center, and many more. This second edition includes a new chapter on the Stepping Up Continuum, a model that looks at six ways to know if you are stepping up or stepping back, as well as fresh stories and a self-assessment tool for helping leaders create a culture for stepping up in their organizations.
-Jim Kouzes, coauthor of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge
Stepping Up argues that almost every problem, from personal difficulties and business challenges to social issues, can be solved if all of us look to ourselves to create change rather than looking to others. And with the research to prove it, John Izzo shows that by seeing ourselves as the locus rather than the victims of change, we are happier, less stressed, and more powerful.
Izzo offers seven compelling principles that enable anyone to effectively bring about positive change. This book is filled with stories that illustrate the incredible power of stepping up: a middle-aged Italian shopkeeper who fought back against the Mafia, two teenagers who ignited an antibullying movement, an executive who turned a dying division into a profit center, and many more. This second edition includes a new chapter on the Stepping Up Continuum, a model that looks at six ways to know if you are stepping up or stepping back, as well as fresh stories and a self-assessment tool for helping leaders create a culture for stepping up in their organizations.
In forty-two succinct, surprising essays, legendary scholar Henry Mintzberg brings management down from the clouds and onto solid ground.
"Enough of heroic leadership, it's time for engaging management!" is the rallying cry from management and leadership giant Henry Mintzberg. He establishes this theme in the first story in the book, about the CEO of a failing airline who always flew comfortably in first class, blithely unaware of the terrible things happening with his customers in coach (in this case, being served famously inedible scrambled eggs). Managing can't be about sitting where you have become accustomed, insulating yourself--it has to be about eating the scrambled eggs.
So Mintzberg urges leaders to call their own call centers, work with their workers, expect extraordinary ideas from ordinary people. Be a keynote listener, not a keynote speaker. Don't say "top management" if you won't say "bottom management." In this best-of collection from his popular, entertaining and irreverent blog, Mintzberg writes that he captures "a lifetime of learning about managing and organizing and strategizing, while getting out many of the ideas that I buried in obscure publications... If some strike you as outrageous, please understand that my most outrageous ideas tend to be my truest." This is Mintzberg at his most playful, but always with serious intent.
"Enough of heroic leadership, it's time for engaging management!" is the rallying cry from management and leadership giant Henry Mintzberg. He establishes this theme in the first story in the book, about the CEO of a failing airline who always flew comfortably in first class, blithely unaware of the terrible things happening with his customers in coach (in this case, being served famously inedible scrambled eggs). Managing can't be about sitting where you have become accustomed, insulating yourself--it has to be about eating the scrambled eggs.
So Mintzberg urges leaders to call their own call centers, work with their workers, expect extraordinary ideas from ordinary people. Be a keynote listener, not a keynote speaker. Don't say "top management" if you won't say "bottom management." In this best-of collection from his popular, entertaining and irreverent blog, Mintzberg writes that he captures "a lifetime of learning about managing and organizing and strategizing, while getting out many of the ideas that I buried in obscure publications... If some strike you as outrageous, please understand that my most outrageous ideas tend to be my truest." This is Mintzberg at his most playful, but always with serious intent.
In FLIGHT PLAN, bestselling author Brian Tracy (author of Eat That Frog, over half a million copies sold) explains the real secret to success in business and personal life. Using the metaphor of an airplane trip from coast to coast, Tracy reveals the key ingredients that go into accomplishing any long-term, meaningful success.
How can people best develop their leadership skills to match their personality, to amplify their strengths, and to compensate for their weaknesses? This is the first book to answer this question with the latest version of the DiSC model of human behavior, which is one of the most widely used, most scientifically based, and most effective approaches to assessing and improving leadership styles and skills.
This book takes a systematic approach to learning that has been long revered in the education field (approximately 75,000 educators take the Kolb Learning Style Inventory each year) and makes it accessible to any reader who wants to be a lifelong learner.
Being a lifelong learner is one of the secrets to happiness, success, and personal fulfillment. This book awakens and enhances the power of learning that lies within us. David Kolb originated the concept of Experiential Learning-a systematic approach to understanding how we learn-and in this book he and Kay Peterson take what has up until now been a powerful professional development tool and make it accessible to a popular audience.
Peterson and Kolb offer deep, research-based insights into how we learn, what Kolb calls the Experiential Learning Cycle. Then they identify nine specific learning styles and guide you in identifying your dominant style. This will help you understand your strengths and weaknesses as a learner, but they emphasize that flexibility is the key to lifelong learning. So they suggest ways you can expand your repertoire of learning styles. This book is an eye-opening read for anyone who wants to continue to grow and meet life challenges in a transformative way.
Being a lifelong learner is one of the secrets to happiness, success, and personal fulfillment. This book awakens and enhances the power of learning that lies within us. David Kolb originated the concept of Experiential Learning-a systematic approach to understanding how we learn-and in this book he and Kay Peterson take what has up until now been a powerful professional development tool and make it accessible to a popular audience.
Peterson and Kolb offer deep, research-based insights into how we learn, what Kolb calls the Experiential Learning Cycle. Then they identify nine specific learning styles and guide you in identifying your dominant style. This will help you understand your strengths and weaknesses as a learner, but they emphasize that flexibility is the key to lifelong learning. So they suggest ways you can expand your repertoire of learning styles. This book is an eye-opening read for anyone who wants to continue to grow and meet life challenges in a transformative way.
Tech experts Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever describe dozens of astonishing technological advances in this fascinating and thought-provoking book, which asks what kind of future lies ahead-Star Trek or Mad Max?
Astonishing technology developments, from personalized genomics to self-driving cars to artificial intelligence, could make our lives better. On the other hand, these very same technologies could raise the specter of a frightening future-eugenics, a jobless economy, loss of privacy, and exacerbating economic inequality.
Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever propose that we ask three questions about any new technology: Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are the risks and the rewards? Does the technology more strongly promote autonomy or independence? They offer a host of solutions to mitigate the harm that tech can cause but ultimately leave it to the reader to make the final decision.
This revised edition includes sections on accelerating changes in genomics and the use of CRISPR to modify human embryos, reexamining driverless cars in the wake of Uber deaths, and exploring how advances in AI are enabling robots to perform tasks we naively assumed would remain the province of humans
Astonishing technology developments, from personalized genomics to self-driving cars to artificial intelligence, could make our lives better. On the other hand, these very same technologies could raise the specter of a frightening future-eugenics, a jobless economy, loss of privacy, and exacerbating economic inequality.
Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever propose that we ask three questions about any new technology: Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are the risks and the rewards? Does the technology more strongly promote autonomy or independence? They offer a host of solutions to mitigate the harm that tech can cause but ultimately leave it to the reader to make the final decision.
This revised edition includes sections on accelerating changes in genomics and the use of CRISPR to modify human embryos, reexamining driverless cars in the wake of Uber deaths, and exploring how advances in AI are enabling robots to perform tasks we naively assumed would remain the province of humans
Bestselling author Brian Tracy teams up with Christina Stein to show how to find true balance-when all your actions and choices are guided by a profound knowledge of what is most important to you. You'll not only feel less stressed, but you'll accomplish more, and more efficiently, that you ever thought possible.
People's lives become unbalanced because they're not clear on what's really important to them. As a result, they make thoughtless and impulsive choices, and up feeling exhausted and unfulfilled without understanding why. What bestselling author Brian Tracy and Christina Stein offer is a way to find true balance.
With true balance, you feel clear and focused, and everything in your life feels like it is in perfect harmony. You go through your day with courage, confidence, and purpose-you accomplish more of what really matters to you. People experience true balance when they find and operate from their own unique balance point.
Tracy and Stein show how to find your personal balance point-the place where you have a thorough understanding of your deepest personal values, vision, purpose, and goals. They illustrate how using your balance point to set priorities and manage your time can both energize and simplify every aspect of your life. The result is a new, active approach to integrating life balance, work achievement, and time management.
People's lives become unbalanced because they're not clear on what's really important to them. As a result, they make thoughtless and impulsive choices, and up feeling exhausted and unfulfilled without understanding why. What bestselling author Brian Tracy and Christina Stein offer is a way to find true balance.
With true balance, you feel clear and focused, and everything in your life feels like it is in perfect harmony. You go through your day with courage, confidence, and purpose-you accomplish more of what really matters to you. People experience true balance when they find and operate from their own unique balance point.
Tracy and Stein show how to find your personal balance point-the place where you have a thorough understanding of your deepest personal values, vision, purpose, and goals. They illustrate how using your balance point to set priorities and manage your time can both energize and simplify every aspect of your life. The result is a new, active approach to integrating life balance, work achievement, and time management.
From beloved bestselling author Parker J. Palmer (Let Your Life Speak) comes a beautiful book of meditations and reflections on eight decades of life, the process of aging, his own spiritual journey (which has never been confined to a creed), and his vocation as a writer and thinker.
On the Brink of Everything is an exploration of Parker Palmer's experience of living and aging, written in hopes of encouraging readers of every age to explore their life course. It is not a "guide to" or "handbook" for "getting old"--something all of us are doing all the time. Instead it's a set of meditations in prose and poetry that turn the prism on the meaning(s) of one's life--and on the importance of staying meaningfully engaged with life until the end. From beginning to end the book is packed with both humor and gravitas.
On the Brink of Everything is an exploration of Parker Palmer's experience of living and aging, written in hopes of encouraging readers of every age to explore their life course. It is not a "guide to" or "handbook" for "getting old"--something all of us are doing all the time. Instead it's a set of meditations in prose and poetry that turn the prism on the meaning(s) of one's life--and on the importance of staying meaningfully engaged with life until the end. From beginning to end the book is packed with both humor and gravitas.
Nowhere else in the business world is communication more important than to consultants, moving between hundreds of communities every year. In an increasingly complex world, a new level of skill is required, but begins with a seemingly paradoxical skill for a consultant: how to ask rather than tell.
This new book reveals what it takes for consultants of all types, as well as organizational leaders, to be really helpful in dealing with the complex, systemic, constantly changing organizational problems of today. They need to rapidly create a relationship of trust and openness that enables clients, subordinates, and team members to reveal what is really on their minds and to jointly develop a sense of what is the problem and what kind of adaptive response could best deal with it.
Schein first introduced some of these concepts in his foundational 1969 book Process Consultation, which is still in use today. But now clients don't have the time or patience for the endless questioning that characterized much of process consultation. And clients still expect consultants to hand them answers. But Schein has come to realize that answers from outsiders are useless, because they're often working the wrong problem, don't understand the client organization's culture, or ignore the fact that constant change makes today's solutions obsolete tomorrow.
To achieve a joint sense of what to do requires consultants and other helpers to develop a different kind of relationship with clients-a set of attitudes and behaviors that Schein calls humble consulting. Schein shows how helpers can display from the moment of first contact a level of caring and curiosity to move from relationships of professional distance to relationships of personalized trust and openness. And he gives many illustrations of the profound changes in mindset, behavior, and daily actions that flow from this new helpful consulting model.
This new book reveals what it takes for consultants of all types, as well as organizational leaders, to be really helpful in dealing with the complex, systemic, constantly changing organizational problems of today. They need to rapidly create a relationship of trust and openness that enables clients, subordinates, and team members to reveal what is really on their minds and to jointly develop a sense of what is the problem and what kind of adaptive response could best deal with it.
Schein first introduced some of these concepts in his foundational 1969 book Process Consultation, which is still in use today. But now clients don't have the time or patience for the endless questioning that characterized much of process consultation. And clients still expect consultants to hand them answers. But Schein has come to realize that answers from outsiders are useless, because they're often working the wrong problem, don't understand the client organization's culture, or ignore the fact that constant change makes today's solutions obsolete tomorrow.
To achieve a joint sense of what to do requires consultants and other helpers to develop a different kind of relationship with clients-a set of attitudes and behaviors that Schein calls humble consulting. Schein shows how helpers can display from the moment of first contact a level of caring and curiosity to move from relationships of professional distance to relationships of personalized trust and openness. And he gives many illustrations of the profound changes in mindset, behavior, and daily actions that flow from this new helpful consulting model.
Most new managers fail not because they're untalented but because the skills that earned the promotion are the wrong ones for leading a team.
This practical, research-backed guide from a senior research scientist at the Center for Creative Leadership walks newly promoted supervisors through 6 essential mindset and skill shifts, from individual contributor to people leader. Backed by data and endorsed by Brené Brown and Adam Grant, it delivers honest, sometimes humorous coaching grounded in real organizational research.
Inside the 6 flips:
Written for first-time managers across every industry and sector and used by HR teams as a new-leader onboarding resource.
If you were just promoted and feel like no one prepared you for this, this book was written for you.
This practical, research-backed guide from a senior research scientist at the Center for Creative Leadership walks newly promoted supervisors through 6 essential mindset and skill shifts, from individual contributor to people leader. Backed by data and endorsed by Brené Brown and Adam Grant, it delivers honest, sometimes humorous coaching grounded in real organizational research.
Inside the 6 flips:
- Mindset — from personal achievement to collective success
- Skill Set — from technical expertise to people leadership
- Relationships — from peer to leader without losing trust
- Attitude — from doing everything yourself to empowering others
- Perspective — seeing the organization through a leader's lens
- Focus — sustaining the shift for a lasting career in leadership
Written for first-time managers across every industry and sector and used by HR teams as a new-leader onboarding resource.
If you were just promoted and feel like no one prepared you for this, this book was written for you.
As leaders, how we are is as important as what we do. The second edition of this leadership classic, updated with new chapters, shows how to master the inner and outer work needed to build relationships that unleash the transformational creative potential in everyone.
Top-down, one-dimensional leadership models are hopelessly outmoded in today's rapidly changing world. And they waste the leadership ability present throughout an organization, not just at the top. In the second edition of this visionary book, Karen and Henry Kimsey-House provide a model that harnesses the possibility of many rather than relying on the power of one.
This new edition is updated with two additional chapters, one offering new ways to utilize the Co-Active Leadership Model and another that goes deeply into the Co-Active philosophy that drives the authors' approach. Each of the five dimension chapters is expanded to incorporate feedback, new language, case studies, and practical suggestions for practice and development.
Co-active leadership is a deeply collaborative approach, but the last of its five dimensions focuses on the individual: leading from within. We must be fully present and live with integrity, openheartedness, and self-awareness if we are to make the kind of conscious, creative choices co-active leadership demands.
Top-down, one-dimensional leadership models are hopelessly outmoded in today's rapidly changing world. And they waste the leadership ability present throughout an organization, not just at the top. In the second edition of this visionary book, Karen and Henry Kimsey-House provide a model that harnesses the possibility of many rather than relying on the power of one.
This new edition is updated with two additional chapters, one offering new ways to utilize the Co-Active Leadership Model and another that goes deeply into the Co-Active philosophy that drives the authors' approach. Each of the five dimension chapters is expanded to incorporate feedback, new language, case studies, and practical suggestions for practice and development.
Co-active leadership is a deeply collaborative approach, but the last of its five dimensions focuses on the individual: leading from within. We must be fully present and live with integrity, openheartedness, and self-awareness if we are to make the kind of conscious, creative choices co-active leadership demands.
This is the first book focused on how to do and use scenario planning – which is one of the most widely used tools in the world for strategic planning, change management, innovation, problem solving, and similar purposes – for social change at the community, national, and global levels. Adam Kahane is one of the world's pioneers and leaders on this topic and he is the author of two bestselling books.
In FLIGHT PLAN, bestselling author Brian Tracy (author of Eat That Frog, over half a million copies sold) explains the real secret to success in business and personal life. Using the metaphor of an airplane trip from coast to coast, Tracy reveals the key ingredients that go into accomplishing any long-term, meaningful success.
