Books

Collaborative strategies work when they're designed by teams-where each person is heard, valued, and held accountable. This book is a practical guide for project team leaders and individual contributors who want their teams to play by a better set of rules.

Where do teams go wrong? Having the right people with the right skills doesn't mean they'll know how to work together as a team. David and Mary Sherwin maintain it's all in the design. Through a blend of straightforward activities, conversational stories, and dialogues that help model different forms of team interaction, this book will help teams:
• Create workday rituals that aid them in making better decisions and following through on their work responsibilities

• Identify patterns of behavior that are getting in the way of team performance, and design and test potential ways to them 

• Reinforce habits that help team members bring the human element into their interactions and foster open communication
Readers of this book will be more prepared to set up and survive challenging projects alongside their coworkers with a shared sense of ownership, and an eye towards retaining the integrity of their teams in the long term. Using a process that has worked at some of the world's cutting edge companies, the authors detail the steps to take control of team design and plan for success. The key is to give every team member a voice in designing the team's rules, and in keeping it aligned with the design over the life of the team.

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.

The must-have book for everyone who wants to be heard. More than just a book on business speech, it looks at the range of common communication mistakes--from repeating oneself to speaking too quickly--that can result in a poor impression

Ditch the negative mental habits that derail conversations and destroy projects, and discover a framework for forging authentic, enduring, and productive connections.

All too often, we find our conversations stuck in cyclical patterns of unproductive behavior. We listen half-heartedly, react emotionally, and respond habitually, or what Chuck Wisner calls “sleep talking.”

Conscious Conversations explores the way we can reframe our thoughts, emotions, reactions, and interactions so we form a connection from the very first conversation and keep our discourse positive and productive throughout any endeavor. Wisner identifies four universal types of conversations and offers specific advice on maximizing the effectiveness of each:

• Storytelling-Acknowledging and investigating the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and others
• Collaborating-Exploring the way our stories interact with other people's stories
• Creating-Cocreating possibilities and discovering unforeseen solutions to sticky problems
• Committing-Coordinating our actions with others to get things done

These conversations unfold sequentially: our awareness of our stories transforms our ability to listen and collaborate, which opens our thoughts to creative possibilities, guiding us toward mindful agreements. This framework makes it possible to identify, understand, and deactivate disruptive emotional triggers; listen with empathy to people with opposing perspectives; and forge relationships built on trust.

Once vilified by pro-life and pro-choice supporters alike, Aspen Baker has now shown that “pro-voice” might be the best method to move past conflict and hatred around abortion. With her nonprofit, Exhale, she has demonstrated that it's possible to get people talking respectfully even about the most polarizing topics.

When Aspen Baker had an abortion at the age of twenty-four, she felt caught between the warring pro-life and pro-choice factions, with no safe space to share her conflicted feelings, which didn't fit into either side's party line. In this hopeful and moving book, Baker shows how she and Exhale, the organization she cofounded, developed a philosophy and a set of tools that enables anyone to have respectful, compassionate exchanges about even the most divisive topics. Initially distrusted by both sides, Exhale now receives post-abortion referrals from pro-life and pro-choice organizations and has become a leader and innovator by pioneering a more respectful, supportive dialogue about this highly emotional issue.

Baker examines the history of the abortion debate, identifying the mistakes and misunderstandings on both sides that have led us to the current painful divide. She shares how Exhale discovered creative ways to build a caring, nonjudgmental space for women and men to share their feelings about abortion, such as starting a post-abortion telephone service and piloting a nationwide story-sharing tour led by women who'd had abortion experiences. They call their approach “pro-voice.”

This book shows how pro-voice can be adopted by anyone interested in dialogue rather than dogma. Peace, in this perspective, isn't a world without fighting or conflict but one where conflict can be engaged in-fiercely and directly-without dehumanizing ourselves or our opponents. Our world is full of gray areas. It's vital we learn practices like pro-voice to help us move from paralysis to progress.

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:

• 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.

A practical and irreverent guide to taking the sting out of feedback and reclaiming it as a motivating, empowering experience for everyone involved.


Feedback! Ugh. Say the word to a colleague, your spouse, or a friend, and watch the person's blood pressure rise and defenses go up. For most of us, it's a word loaded with experiences that may include bias, politics, pain, regret, and anger. However, if we take a step back and think about its true intent, we realize that feedback needn't be a bad thing. We humans want to improve, grow, and advance, and we need insights that can help us move in the right direction. If we close ourselves off from understanding how others experience us, then we close ourselves off to a life of learning and growth. The authors address how feedback got such a bad rap and how we can fix it. They provide three key Fs (focused, fair, and frequent) for positive feedback. They also include a slew of practical exercises and strategies to change how we view and experience feedback.

This is the first book to address the specific needs and challenges faced by high-level consultants, who work on very complex projects and must win the confidence of the most senior leaders in organizations.


Advanced consulting requires both expertise and personal qualifications that are distinct from those needed in everyday consulting. Advanced consultants work with high-level executive teams on complex issues such as strategy, organizational design, merger integration, digital disruption, culture change, and system-wide transformation. While neophyte consultants are often given a playbook to follow, advanced consultants need to invent methods that take full advantage of the opportunities that their work with clients presents.

There is an art to advanced consulting as well as a science; who you are is as important as what you do. Bill Pasmore draws on his four decades of experience as a consultant and teacher of consultants to show readers how to see possibilities that are not evident, conduct analyses that support the value of more comprehensive work, build relationships that engender deeper trust, adapt to changing circumstances, and empower members of their team to take independent actions while maintaining overall control of an engagement. Illustrated with vivid real-world examples and including a self-assessment to measure your progress, this book equips you to advance to more senior positions in your firm or to build a successful independent practice.

“This eloquent book inspires us to create a new reality of what it means to be humans on this magnificent planet.”
-Deepak Chopra


When New York Times bestselling author John Perkins was a young Peace Corps volunteer, his life was saved by an Amazonian shaman who taught him to "touch the jaguar”-to transform his fears into positive action. He went on to become an "economic hit man" (EHM), convincing developing countries to build huge infrastructure projects that put them perpetually in debt to the World Bank and other US-controlled institutions. Although he sincerely believed this was the best model for economic development, he came to realize it was really a new form of colonialism. Returning to the Amazon, he saw the destructive impact of his EHM work. But he also was inspired by a previously uncontacted tribe that touched its jaguar by uniting with its enemies to defend its territory against invading oil and mining companies.

For the first time, Perkins details how his experiences in the Amazon converted him from an EHM to a crusader for transforming our failing Death Economy that destroys its own resources and nature itself into a flourishing Life Economy that renews itself. He provides a strategy for each of us to change our lives and defend our territory-the earth-against destructive policies and systems.

Books like StrengthsFinder 2.0 have helped leaders discover their strengths-but tend to stop there. Thuy and Milo Sindell argue that focusing only on our best abilities neglects a vital development opportunity. Inside every leader are “middle skills,” hidden strengths that can be turned into full strengths with attention and focus.

Discover Your Strengths and the StrengthsFinder titles-has resulted in a very one-dimensional model for leadership growth, say Thuy and Milo Sindell. Their research and work have shown that, like everyone, you have hidden, undeveloped strengths that, if identified and worked on, can expand your repertoire of skills, make you a better-balanced leader, and significantly improve performance.

Everyone has what the Sindells call Default Skills, or obvious strengths; Deficient Skills, or weaknesses; and Hidden Strengths, or skills in the middle. Focusing only on Default Skills can lead to resting on your laurels. But trying to develop Deficient Skills isn't worth it. It takes too much time and effort to bring these skills up to speed-the ROI just isn't there. It's in the neglected middle skills that the most potent development opportunities lie. They're close enough to being strengths that working on them can offer a powerful payoff-they are Hidden Strengths.

Using assessments, exercises, and case studies, the Sindells help you identify your most promising middle skills-your Hidden Strengths-and create a plan to turn them into full strengths. In today's work environment, not growing and stretching yourself translates into lack of innovation, stagnation, and obsolescence. Relying upon strengths is like relying upon training wheels-at a certain point you need to take them off improve and grow.