Books

DEI isn't just a box to check.

After being in corporate America for nearly a decade as a triple minority who passes for a straight white woman, Dannie Lynn Fountain knows that corporations' modern plague is the story of its DEI duality. Time and time again, she has witnessed companies pretend to care about DEI for public relations fodder and then discriminate against employees or ignore their identities.

Dannie's solution to this problem? Rage against the system by refusing to accept mediocre-at-best action.

This story isn't just about how messed up corporate DEI currently is; it also takes a hard look at what is necessary to get diversity right in three parts:

● The context of corporate DEI
● Why the change in perspective
● What's not working and how to change

Ending Checkbox Diversity gives readers an understanding of exactly how corporate America is failing underrepresented identities and offers a plan for what to do next, with clear examples and metrics for evaluating DEI in their own careers and aligning themselves with companies that are actually doing the work.

Bestselling author, psychologist, and relationship coach Melanie Joy shares the principles and tools that can make any relationship, from personal to professional, healthier and more resilient.


Relationships are complicated. Yet it's an unfortunate reality that while most of us have to learn complex geometry that we'll probably never use, we don't get a single formal lesson in how to relate to others. In this one-stop guide, psychologist Melanie Joy reveals the common psychological dynamics that underlie all kinds of relationships-with a romantic partner, friends, family members, colleagues-in short, with anyone in any situation. Understanding these dynamics will help you make all your relationships healthier and more resilient.

Relationships are like bodies: they get sick when their immune system is weaker than the germs that stress them. Drawing on the most relevant research as well as on her own extensive experience as a psychologist, Joy explains how to strengthen your relational immune system to resist not only interpersonal stressors but also largely invisible yet potentially devastating societal stressors like racism and sexism. With this understanding, you can cultivate relationships that consistently reflect core moral values and honor the dignity of everyone involved. Resilient relationships are not only a source of joy and fulfillment for those who are in them, they also support the thriving of the organizations and communities of which we all are a part.

Businesses worry about new technologies, but customers are the ultimate disruptors-Suman Sarkar offers bold strategies for making sure you understand your customers and keep up with their ever-changing needs.


Disruption-the brutal roiling of markets, the decline of long-established brands and products, and the rise of new upstarts-drives business failure and success. Most people think technology causes disruption, but technology merely enables it-changing customer needs cause disruptions and too many businesses get caught unaware. The irony is your customers are constantly telling you what they want-you just have to know how to listen. This book offers five proven strategies that will enable any business to stay radically close to its customers and give them what they want: (1) win with current customers before chasing after new ones; (2) personalization is not a luxury; (3) customers won't wait; (4) good enough is no longer good enough; and, in the spirit of disruption, (5) go beyond strategies one through four.

The authors of the classic bestseller The Leadership Challenge bring their expertise to higher education, offering five practices that can make any college or university leader into an exemplary leader.

Drawing on the same vital research that formed the foundation of their classic bestseller The Leadership Challenge-more than two million copies sold-Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner offer higher education professionals a set of leadership skills and practices that are available to everyone, not just a charismatic few.

This book is meant for all leaders on campus. Not only academic faculty, but the staff and managers of residential life, career development, student records, admissions, campus safety, information technology, library, counseling and health centers, facilities, alumni relations, and development, and all other organizations on campus. Kouzes and Posner identify Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® and provide case examples of real people who demonstrate each practice:
• model the way
• inspire a shared vision
• challenge the process
• enable others to act
• encourage the heart

Anyone in higher education who wants to transform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, segments into solidarity, and risks into rewards must read this book.

This is the first book to fully adapt the principles of agility for government leaders who want to make their organizations more effective and nimble while better serving their public mission.

This practical resource will equip government leaders with evidence-based, hands-on guidance for transforming their organizations, enabling them to better serve the public and their customers. While many books on organizational agility are available for leaders in for-profit companies, this is the first one tailored to the unique limitations and requirements government leaders face.

Public servants are increasingly asked to do more with less and must also find a way to accomplish their mission while balancing constant change. New laws are passed that impact their agencies, new technologies are introduced, and unexpected events occur. Government leaders at all levels are often in a position for only two to four years, rotating within and across agencies as they gain experience. They have a relatively short amount of time to learn a new role, make changes, and then begin seeking out their next opportunity. This guide will help leaders weather the storm of that constant change so they can help their agencies realize their missions to provide services and be better stewards of taxpayer or donor dollars.

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.

Leading experts Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff describe eight highly effective leadership skills that confound conventional views-you can be a more effective leader if you give up trying to change or control people.

Leadership experts Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff make a bold claim: contrary to conventional management theory, you actually gain more control when you exert less pressure on those you lead-which also means less stress for you.

Working with people all over the world, Weisbord and Janoff realized that leaders trying to tell their people what to do, the traditional approach, wasn't' working. It was far more effective for leaders to nurture and guide people's ability to lead and control themselves. Over time, they developed three alternative principles which form the foundation of this book: 1) Have people build on their own experiences instead of pushing for yours; 2) Set things up so that people coordinate and control their own work rather that you doing it for them; and 3) Change the conditions under which people interact rather than try to change the people.

This book describes eight essential leadership skills that put these principles into practice. It shows leaders how to let go of the unrealistic demands that they put on themselves and the far-fetched expectations that others place on them. Leaders will discover how to wear authority lightly and control less while leading more.

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.

Find out how to uncover the hidden talents, assets, and abilities in your neighborhood and bring them together to create a vibrant and joyful community. It takes a village!

We may be living longer, but people are more socially isolated than ever before. As a result, we are hindered both mentally and physically, and many of us are looking for something concrete we can do to address problems like poverty, racism, and climate change. What if solutions could be found on your very doorstep or just two door knocks away?

Cormac Russell is a veteran practitioner of asset-based community development (ABCD), which focuses on uncovering and leveraging the hidden resources, skills, and experience in our neighborhoods. He and John McKnight, the cooriginator of ABCD, show how anyone can discover this untapped potential and connect with his or her neighbors to create healthier, safer, greener, more prosperous, and welcoming communities. They offer a wealth of illustrative examples from around the world that will inspire you to explore your own community and discover its hidden treasures.

You will learn to take action on what you already deeply know-that neighborliness is not just a nice-to-have personal characteristic but essential to living a fruitful life and a powerful amplifier of community change and renewal.

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:

• 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.

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.

Award-winning entrepreneur and crowdfunding expert Jamey Stegmaier shares his inspiring lessons and practical guidance for building the business of your dreams by engaging with customers and investors online.

As a veteran of five successful Kickstarter campaigns and the proprietor of the Kickstarter Lessons blog, Jamey Stegmaier knows something about crowdfunding. In this book he goes beyond the nuts and bolts of how it works to the deeper level of what makes it work.

This book is filled with stories and examples of over 40 crowdfunding campaigns, some that succeeded wildly-like the high-tech cooler designer whose first campaign faltered but whose second raised 13 million dollars-as well as sobering disasters, like the board game maker whose project collapsed in two months and had to return over $100,000 to his backers. Stegmaier uses these stories to illustrate lessons about things like preparation, timing, what kind of offers to make and what kind to avoid, what to spend money on and when, and more. The book includes 125 Kickstarter lessons, in one sentence each (more or less).

But Stegmaier's overarching point is that you've got to see crowdfunding as more than just a cool way to raise money-it's a way to create a community that will offer you far more than just dollars. If you treat your backers as people-communicate with them, attend to their needs, ask for their opinions-your chances of you and your projects succeeding increase exponentially.