Books

In this entertaining parable, bestselling authors Harry Paul, John Britt, and Ed Jent tell how to give and be your best in five critical work dimensions-passion, flexibility, communication, competency, and ownership-and foster excellence in your organization.

World-record endurance athlete and professional leadership coach Jason Caldwell draws on his amazing experiences to show how anyone can build and lead teams that accomplish incredible things.

As an adventurer who undertakes incredible challenges, such as rowing across the Atlantic or crossing the Namib Desert on foot, Jason Caldwell noticed how much of a pivotal role mistakes made in his record-breaking pursuits. The path to an ambitious goal is never a straight line. When mistakes inevitably happen, they can open up new options and choices. This book relays the crucial questions to ask when faced with any setback:

1. Is the failure something I have control over?
2. Is my goal still possible?
3. Do I want to keep going?
4. Is there another way to my goal?
5. Am I better, tougher, or smarter for this?

Caldwell draws on his amazing experiences to illustrate how these questions have helped him in literally death-defying situations. This is the first book to build a powerful business and personal success method out of the riveting and transformative failures of a true adventurer.

We are collectively creating results nobody wants, and most change efforts address the symptoms rather than the source.

Presencing offers a different approach—one that bridges inner development with outer systems change through 7 concrete practices built for this moment.

From Otto Scharmer, MIT senior lecturer and creator of Theory U, and Katrin Kaufer, MIT researcher, cofounder of the Presencing Institute, and author of Just Money (MIT Press), this field guide draws on more than twenty years of global work with the Theory U framework, now used by thousands of organizations across climate, finance, education, and social innovation.

Inside this book:

• The Wheel of Deep Change — a framework mapping 7 societal sectors and specific leverage points where transformation takes hold
• Social Fields theory — a deeper layer of systems thinking that accounts for the quality of consciousness from which collective action emerges
• Seven step-by-step practices covering generative listening, dialogue, co-sensing, presencing, co-imagining, co-creating, and ecosystem governance
• Real-world stories of “islands of coherence”—communities already demonstrating regenerative ways of working together across the globe
• Reflection questions and dialogue prompts for individual readers, leadership teams, and classroom or workshop settings

Readers new to Theory U will find a self-contained entry point, and those already familiar will find significant new depth and updated methods.

Lying can cause irreparable financial, psychological, and emotional damage in an organization, yet liars also know that we're terrible at recognizing their deceit. Goman's book is a simple primer to help anyone spot lies before they do harm.

Lies aren't good in general, but in the workplace they're especially poisonous. They can destroy employee engagement and productivity, undermine teamwork, increase stress, ruin people's livelihoods, and even bring down entire companies.

It's critical to catch workplace lies before they snowball into something catastrophic, but most of us have no clue about how to spot a liar. And the workplace setting adds another layer of complexity. At what point do you report a liar? If you decide to take action, what exactly should you do? And what if the liar is your boss?

In this entertaining and needed book, leading workplace body language expert Carol Kinsey Goman combines her own experiences with the latest research to provide a comprehensive guide to spotting, exposing, and minimizing workplace lies. Goman looks at the high cost of workplace deception for individuals and organizations, why people tell lies at work, and the kinds of lies they tell. She offers fifty ways that body language and vocal cues can help you spot a liar and explains how our own vanities, desires, self-deceptions, and rationalizations allow us to be duped.

Once you spot a lie, she provides tactical advice on how to respond, whether the liar is above, below, or on the same level as you. And Goman explains how to make sure your own body language doesn't inadvertently make you seem untrustworthy and what leaders at all levels can do to reduce lies and encourage candor.

Some workplace lies are a polite and positive part of professional life (“I'd be delighted to come to that meeting”). But Goman focuses on truly destructive lies and shows how you can prevent them from wreaking havoc on individuals and organizations.

The first and only guidebook that specifically outlines methodologies for diagnosing and dealing with all of the “hidden” or covert factors that can subtly sabotage even the most meticulously planned change processes.

An accomplished Fortune 50 executive translates for a western audience the lessons he learned from the land of his birth, India. Bob Miglani was stressed out, burnt out, and stuck until he rediscovered the enduring lessons of his childhood: celebrate impermanence, serve others, and move forward no matter what. Bob's message: chaos isn't going away--embrace it!

Drawing on Linda Stout's thirty years of experience training organizers, advocates, activists, and coalition groups, "Collective Visioning” provides a revolutionary guide to collaboration within and across diverse organizations.

The billion-dollar employee engagement industry has failed workers. This guide shows the data-driven alternative: measuring and improving employee well-being for lasting results.

For years, companies have trumpeted employee engagement as the lifeblood of success, weaving grand promises of thriving workplaces and soaring performance. Yet, Gallup's data shatters this façade: a mere 30 percent of US workers and 21 percent globally are engaged today, dismal figures essentially unchanged for over a decade. This rather damning reality exposes a commitment not just half-hearted but utterly disingenuous. Perfunctory surveys, dusted off once or twice a year, vanish into the void, sparking no meaningful change, while ineffective or toxic managers sidestep accountability with ease. The fallout is a workforce drowning in disillusionment, tethered to a metric that's broken beyond repair. In The Power of Employee Well-Being, Mark C. Crowley unveils a revolutionary vision, proving well-being ignites fierce commitment, unleashes boundless productivity, and forges workplaces where people and profits thrive.

Why Well-Being Matters
Drawing on a University of Oxford study of 17 million workers, Crowley urges leaders to abandon flawed engagement metrics and champion well-being. Far from a soft idea, it drives results. Gallup, Harvard, and London School of Economics studies show organizations prioritizing well-being gain 27 percent higher profitability, lower turnover, and better customer satisfaction. Yet, with three-quarters of US professionals facing burnout and a 74 percent surge in mental health–related leave (2023–2024), the crisis is urgent. Crowley highlights belonging-feeling valued, respected, and connected-as well-being's core, yet 94 percent of leaders overlook this vital driver.

A Practical Roadmap
Building on his trailblazing book Lead from the Heart, Crowley delivers a concise, actionable guide for busy managers to cultivate well-being and unlock team potential. Through practical strategies, he equips leaders to meet workers' core needs: caring leadership, manageable workloads, emotional support, growth opportunities, and fair treatment. Unlike hollow wellness programs, debunked by Oxford research, Crowley's methods reshape daily team experiences. His insights, forged over decades as a leader and researcher, are anchored by formidable data, including a British Telecom study linking well-being to higher sales and customer satisfaction.

A Leadership Revolution
With a foreword by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, a four-time New York Times bestselling author, The Power of Employee Well-Being is a clarion call to reject superficial fixes and ignite a leadership revolution. Crowley brilliantly distills complex ideas into a vital guide for busy managers. With 52 percent of workers willing to take a 20 percent pay cut for better well-being, stakes are high. This is the essential playbook for leaders to build thriving workplaces where retention soars and teams excel.

Agenda for the New Economy provides the most fundamental and far-reaching critique yet published of what is really wrong in our economic system and the path forward to creating a new economic system that better meets human needs. This Second Edition updates the arguments and information throughout the book in the light of developments in 2009 and 2010, and it offers new chapters that shows how the 2009 programs of the Obama administration and other governments are not getting at the root causes of the system failures nor making the deep changes that are needed if we are to avoid ongoing economic, social, and environmental crises. Over 30,000 of the original sold in under a year.

In today’s organizations, engagement is vital—more is being required of workers than ever. In this new edition of his classic book, Kenneth Thomas draws on the latest research findings to identify the key to employee engagement: intrinsic motivation.

Only intrinsic rewards—rewards that come directly from the work itself—encourage the profound commitment and sense of ownership needed for a truly engaged and innovative workforce.

Thomas identifies four intrinsic rewards, explains exactly how and why they build engagement, and provides a diagnostic framework to evaluate which need boosting and how to boost them.

The second edition has been revised and updated throughout, with an expanded section on how leaders can identify their own intrinsic rewards and new tools, tips, and practices for encouraging intrinsic motivation in others.

Seattle locals and tourists alike flock to Pike Place each day to watch the fish fly. But Pike Place Fish is about more than just crowd-pleasing entertainment --- there is an underlying philosophy at work that has made the market both wildly successful and internationally renowned.

In an unusual combination of oral biography and practical business blueprint, Crother and the fishmongers take you behind the scenes at the famous market to illustrate the PPF philosophy and reveal the underlying assumptions that have made PPF the international phenomenon it is today.

Catch! shows that to be "ordinary" is to be a victim of circumstances, responding to whatever comes one's way. To be "great" is to realize that anyone can live an extraordinary life. At Pike Place Fish, everyone is responsible for transforming themselves from ordinary to great by creating their own reality. The authors explore the issues of goals --- financial, personal and humanitarian --- and intention, showing how the crew itself creates these goals and works towards them in collaboration.

Most importantly, Catch! examines the power of possibility and shows how you can achieve greatness in your own life. Catch! explores such guiding principles as coaching and acknowledgment that are lacking in many businesses, and shows that you, too, can be the prime mover in your own experience.

Help is on the way for the legions of managers who woke up and found out they're in charge. Based on her background as a manager, trainer, and leadership consultant and coach, Devora Zack offers a book of lifesaving tips that is as humorous as it is wise.

Everyone needs to involve other people in order to accomplish their tasks and achieve their goals. It doesn't matter if you're a CEO leading a major restructuring or a PTA volunteer raising money for after-school programs, you can't do it all yourself-you and the work will suffer if you try. But the hit-and-miss way most people go about involving others often takes too much time and seems like more trouble than it's worth.

You Don't Have to Do It Alone takes a systematic approach to involvement. It lays out a simple, straightforward plan of action for finding the right people and keeping them energized, enthusiastic, and committed until the work is completed. The book is organized around a series of five questions corresponding to steps in the involvement process-in fact, these questions are the titles of the first five chapters. Each chapter begins with a short anecdote that introduces one of the questions and offers helpful tools and techniques for resolving it, as well as providing examples from corporations, government, and the nonprofit sector that make the book interesting, fun, memorable-and, above all, useful.

You Don't Have to Do It Alone is the Swiss Army Knife of involvement-a set of tools that can be used in any setting to get you the help you need. You will learn to involve others in a way that will actually make your work easier, resulting in less stress, better ideas, and more successful outcomes. This book's lessons apply whether you are working at a multinational corporation, an inner-city hospital, or at the community bake sale.

The Change Cycle offers a tested, six-stage approach for successfully navigating common work-life transitions so that you not only get through them but emerge stronger and better able to face the next challenge.