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.

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.

New managers who can't shift their focus from "me" to "we" are, statistically speaking, likely to fail, disappoint, or be labeled incompetent. Using the latest research, Gentry shows how any new boss can find success by supporting the success of others.


Becoming a manager is one of the most stressful and challenging transitions in any career. Why do half or more new managers quickly flame out? They're working from an old script for success. The Center for Creative Leadership Senior Research Scientist William Gentry shows them how to flip that script.

As an individual, your script is about “me.” It calls for you to keep your head down, work hard, do everything you are told to do and more, and outshine and relentlessly outperform everyone. But when you become a manager, everything about your job needs to change-your skillset, the nature of your work relationships, your understanding of what “work” is, how you see yourself and your organization. You have to operate from a brand new script, one that's about “we”-ensuring collective success. But very few managers get any kind of training for this new role, and even fewer are given any clue as to just how fundamental and far-reaching this change is.

Filled with practical advice and lessons, and backed by extensive research by Gentry and others, this book lays out the art, science, and practice behind learning and leading as a first time manager. Through first-hand accounts, stories, and other examples drawn from the experiences of first-time managers-including Gentry's own story of recently become a first-time manager himself-the book's practical, actionable content helps readers flip the old script, and write and live their new script.

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.

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.