Books

Burnout rising. Systems cracking. Talent leaving.

The solution: design for human dignity and full-person diversity—with this award-winning guide.

The Canary Code reorganizes work for thriving—starting with those first impacted by faulty systems, like canaries first sensing toxic air in coal mines. Neurodivergent talent (members of ADHD, autism, Tourette’s syndrome, and learning-differences communities, and others who think and experience life differently) offer unique skills and exceptional work ethics, yet face employment barriers. Their unique abilities and perspectives are excluded, and their canary warnings about bullying, broken workflows, or ethical drift are ignored.

This practical guide helps CEOs, managers, HR leaders, and changemakers improve work for all. Drawing on science and lived experience, 2025 Thinkers50 Talent Award winner and internationally renowned management expert Ludmila Praslova shows how embracing neurodiversity creates healthier, more innovative systems. A neurodivergent organizational psychologist with over twenty-five years of global practice and research on inclusive organizations, she offers the following:

• A holistic framework of human differences (social, cognitive, emotional, physical)
• An intersectional, whole-person approach to neuroinclusion
• Dignity-based talent practices, from hiring to leadership development
• Global perspectives celebrating diverse neurodivergent voices
• Actionable strategies for change at any organizational level

Blending lived experience, academic rigor, and accessible writing, this groundbreaking work exemplifies neuroinclusion. It clearly indicates academic, applied, and personal content, supporting an individualized reader experience.

Build organizations where employees feel truly safe to learn, contribute, and challenge the status quo.

The proven practical guide to psychological safety is now expanded with updated research and powerful new frameworks and tools.

Psychological safety—the belief that you can speak up without risk of punishment or humiliation—is crucial for high-performing teams and innovative organizations. This revised and expanded edition of Timothy Clark's groundbreaking framework provides leaders with a research-backed roadmap through four distinct stages that enable individuals to feel safe, valued, and empowered.

The four stages build progressively:

• Inclusion Safety (feeling included and accepted),
• Learner Safety (feeling safe to learn and ask questions),
• Contributor Safety (feeling safe to contribute and participate), and
• Challenger Safety (feeling safe to challenge the status quo and speak truth to power).

This new edition adds compelling quantitative evidence from Clark's global database of 1.2 million data points, validating the four-stage model across cultures and demographics. New chapters explore what psychological safety is not, the dangers of “nice” cultures, the relationship between psychological and physical safety, and practical measurement strategies.

Leaders will learn to banish fear, create performance-based accountability, and build environments where people thrive beyond expectations.

Stop running toward someone else’s definition of success, and start intentionally shaping your own. This prequel to Aesop’s famous tortoise and hare fable shows exhausted professionals how to shift from chasing external validation to creating internal meaning and alignment.

Stop chasing visibility. Start creating meaning.

In today’s high-pressure workplace, professionals are depleted from constantly proving themselves to others—yet struggling to find genuine satisfaction in their work. What if the breakthrough isn’t working harder within the system but instead reimagining what success means to you?

Stop Chasing, Start Creating reveals the untold story of Tano the tortoise before his famous race with the hare. In this prequel to the beloved Aesop’s fable, we discover that Tano wasn’t always the steady, purposeful creature we know. He once chased visibility, approval, and validation just like the rest of us—until a moment of awakening changed everything.

Through Tano’s journey from external pressure to internal clarity, readers discover the crucial difference between chasing meaning and creating it. Grounded in motivation science, this framework shifts professionals from extrinsic motivation (external rewards, recognition, and belonging) to intrinsic motivation (purpose, contribution, and alignment).

Perfect for burned-out professionals in healthcare, education, nonprofit management, and other purpose-driven fields, this story-first approach offers the metaphor-rich reflection modern workers crave without feeling like another productivity manual.

This book, the first to treat workplace culture like a garden instead of a construction project, offers a proven framework that transforms toxic environments into thriving ecosystems where all talent flourishes.

Organizations fail when they treat culture like a construction project. They thrive when they treat it like a garden, cultivating conditions for growth rather than engineering behavior through rigid blueprints.

Award-winning consultant Abi Adamson introduces the SERN™ framework (Soil, Exposure, Roots, Nutrients) to guide sustainable cultural transformation. Drawing from her experience working with international clients, including Spotify, Sony Music, and Match Group, Abi shows how to do the following:

• Identify and detoxify the soil poisoning organizational foundations
• Expose who's hoarding the light while others wither in shadows
• Strengthen the root networks where real culture actually lives
• Distribute the nutrients people actually need to thrive (hint: it's not pizza Fridays)

Unlike traditional culture initiatives, focused on compliance and conformity, this framework reveals why expensive transformation efforts keep failing and how to spot “nutrient vampires” draining your best people.

For C-suite leaders, executives, people managers, and anyone who has ever felt invisible at work, this guide offers a sustainable alternative: treating culture as a living ecosystem requiring ongoing cultivation, not a one-time fix.

Because as Abi says, “We bloom together or we wilt alone.”™

This manager's guide shows how to recognize and eliminate the leadership behaviors that kill morale, crush productivity, and drive top talent away.

The workplace is broken—and managers are the problem. Through coaching hundreds of frustrated employees, Tanya Uyigue has identified the toxic management patterns driving people to quit. Employees are exhausted by leaders who micromanage their every move, disappear for months without check-ins, or create environments where speaking up feels dangerous.

The truth is, your team isn't telling you what's actually wrong because they're afraid of being retaliated against, dismissed, or labeled as “difficult.” But their silence is costing you talent, productivity, and profitability.

What Your Team Won't Tell You exposes the seven destructive manager archetypes that poison workplace culture, and each chapter provides specific, actionable strategies to transform these toxic patterns into leadership strengths. When you create an environment where employees feel heard, valued, and empowered, retention soars, productivity increases, and engagement becomes authentic-not forced.

Can't afford housing or healthcare? One 1886 Supreme Court fraud gave corporations constitutional rights over you—discover how billionaire oligarchs stole your future and the constitutional amendment to take it back.

You work harder than your parents did, yet you can’t afford a home. Billionaires are richer than ever. You know the system is rigged—but no one’s told you how it happened or who rigged it.

Here’s what they don’t teach in law school: In 1886, the Supreme Court never ruled that corporations have constitutional rights. That “precedent” came from a single fraudulent sentence inserted by a court reporter working with a corrupt justice. One headnote. One lie. The greatest legal heist in American history.

That fraud did the following and more:

• Crushed unions and shipped jobs overseas
• Slashed taxes for the wealthy and gave corporations the power to buy elections
• Transferred trillions from working families to billionaire oligarchs

That’s why your paycheck doesn’t stretch. That’s why corporations have more rights than you do. That’s why democracy is eroding. For 140 years, they’ve distracted Americans by blaming immigrants, “welfare queens,” and each other—while billionaires rewrote the rules. Now people are pushing back: passing local ordinances, organizing for a constitutional amendment, and reclaiming power for We the People.

The rebellion has begun. Stop blaming your neighbors. Start demanding accountability. Learn how the system was stolen—and how to take it back.

Top consultant Sarah Beaulieu offers a five-part framework that enables employees to have difficult but necessary conversations about sexual harassment and violence and develop new, better ways of working together.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, employees and leaders are struggling with how to respond to the pervasiveness of sexual harassment. Most approaches simply emphasize knowing and complying with existing laws. But people need more than lists of dos and don'ts-they need to learn how to navigate this uncertain, emotionally charged terrain. Sarah Beaulieu provides a new skills-based approach to addressing sexual harassment prevention and response in the workplace, including using underdeveloped skills like empathy, situational awareness, boundary setting, and intervention.

Beaulieu outlines a five-part framework for having conversations about sexual harassment: Know the Facts; Feel Uncomfortable; Get Curious, Not Furious; See the Whole Picture; and Embrace Practical Questions. By embracing these conversations, we can break the cycle of avoidance and silence that makes our lives and workplaces feel volatile and unsafe. Grounded in storytelling, humor, and dozens of real-life scenarios, this book introduces the idea of uncomfortable conversation as the core skill required to enable everyone to bring their full talent and contributions to safe and respectful workplaces.

Competence does not speak for itself! You can't simply display it; you have to draw people's attention to it. World-renowned negotiation and deception detection expert, business professor, and mentalist Jack Nasher offers effective, proven techniques to convince others that we are talented, trustworthy, and yes, even brilliant.

Nasher offers the example of Joshua Bell, possibly the world's most famous violinist. In January 2007, at rush hour, he stepped into a Washington, DC, subway station, dressed like any street busker, and began to play a $4,000,000 Stradivarius. It was part of an experiment staged by a journalist of the Washington Post, who expected Bell's skill alone to attract an immense, awed crowd. But Bell was generally ignored, and when he stopped, nobody applauded. He made $34.17.

The good news is that you don't have to accept obscurity: you can positively affect others' perception of your talent. Whether you're looking for work, giving an important presentation, seeking clients or customers for your business, or vying for a promotion, Nasher explains how to use techniques such as expectation management, verbal and nonverbal communication, the Halo Effect, competence framing, and the power of nonconformity to gain control of how others perceive you.

Competence is the most highly valued professional trait. But it's not enough to be competent, you have to convey your competence. With Nasher's help you can showcase your expertise, receive the recognition you deserve, and achieve lasting success.

“What brought you the greatest joy? What do you wish you had learned sooner? What ultimately mattered and what didn’t?” asks Dr. John Izzo. Based on a highly acclaimed public television series, this book takes the reader on a heartwarming and profound journey to find lasting happiness.

Imagine for a moment that you are about to take a foreign vacation to an exotic destination. You have saved your entire life to travel there. It is a destination with almost unlimited choices of how to spend your time and you know you will not have enough time to explore every opportunity. You are fairly certain that you will never get to take a second trip to this destination; this will be your one opportunity.

Now imagine that someone informs you that there are several people in your neighborhood who have been to that country, explored every corner. Some of them enjoyed the journey and have few regrets, but others wish they could take the trip again knowing what they know now. Would you not invite them over for dinner, ask them to bring their photographs, listen to their stories, and hear their advice?

This is precisely the journey explored in this book. Dr. John Izzo and his colleagues interviewed over 200 people, ages 60-106, who were identified by friends and acquaintances as “the one person they knew who had found happiness and meaning.” From town barbers to Holocaust survivors, from aboriginal chiefs to CEOs, these people had over 18,000 years of life experience between them. He asked them questions like, “What brought you the greatest joy? What do you wish you had learned sooner? What ultimately mattered and what didn’t?”

Here Izzo shares their stories—funny, moving, and thought-provoking—and the Five Secrets he learned from listening to them. This book will make you laugh, bring you to tears, and inspire you to discover what matters long before you die.

Drawing on 30 years of helping families, this profound fable by the Anasazi Foundation illustrates the true anguish of conflict and explains how we can end war within ourselves, within our families, and even between nations.

Created in 1988 by renowned wilderness pioneers Larry D. Olsen and Ezekiel C. Sanchez (a Totonac Indian whose native name is Good Buffalo Eagle), the Anasazi Foundation invites young people, through a primitive living experience, to effect a change of heart. For over thirty years, their teachings have helped families begin anew and walk in harmony in the wilderness of the world.

Inspired by their wisdom, this book tells the story of two brothers whose warring hearts threaten to destroy their lives and their community. Trapped in a canyon, the two brothers are rescued by a mysterious old man who perceives their need for peace. He offers to guide them home—inviting them to open their hearts toward a New Beginning. When they agree, he teaches them the five legends of peace. And as they walk forward, they learn that we are free to create peace in our own lives—and how to do it. This discovery saves not only the brothers but ultimately their people. This poetic narrative offers us all a hopeful way out of the canyons of war, leaving behind the warring within.

Leaders today—whether in corporations or associations, nonprofits or nations—face massive, messy, multidimensional problems. No one person or group can possibly solve them—they require the broadest possible cooperation.

But, says Harvard scholar Dean Williams, our leadership models are still essentially tribal: individuals with formal authority leading in the interest of their own group. In this deeply needed new book, he outlines an approach that enables leaders to transcend internal and external boundaries and help people to collaborate, even people over whom they technically have no power.

Drawing on what he’s learned from years of working in countries and organizations around the world, Williams shows leaders how to approach the delicate and creative work of boundary spanning, whether those boundaries are cultural, organizational, political, geographic, religious, or structural.

Sometimes leaders themselves have to be the ones who cross the boundaries between groups. Other times, a leader’s job is to build relational bridges between divided groups or even to completely break down the boundaries that block collaborative problem solving. By thinking about power and authority in a different way, leaders will become genuine change agents, able to heal wounds, resolve conflicts, and bring a fractured world together.

A Company Discovers Its Soul is the engaging story of a year in the life of a fictional, yet true-to-life company as it undergoes profound transformation. Grounded in the author's own experiences in organizations, it is a tale that probes deeply into the “soul issues” of organizational life and offers an inspiring and realistic portrayal of how new principles and concepts evolve in everyday business reality.

Randall Hawkes was trained in modern business schools and is CEO of a company founded by his grandfather-a traditional, hierarchical organization that is facing decreasing profits, low morale, and competitors that are taking market share. Recognizing that the managerial techniques he learned in school are now producing dis-ease in himself, his family, his staff, and the organization, Randall becomes convinced that some kind of radical change must be made. Exploring the gradual changes in Randall's own thinking and way of leading the company, A Company Discovers Its Soul illustrates how such a process of change might happen. It shows how—through a combination of humility, courage, rigorous self- and mutual appraisal, and practice—Randall and his staff gradually learn to see the Hawkes Company as a living community.

Most important to this change process is Randall's own change in perception and thinking regarding his role in the organization and his notions about control, ownership, information sharing—and the resulting freedom for his staff, and everyone in the organization, to be more powerful and creative. By the end of the first year of this journey, The Hawkes Company staff has become more strongly aligned around their purpose and vision, the management team has truly become a team, relationships with suppliers and customers have been strengthened, and even their work environments have been improved as employees have taken ownership for maintaining their working spaces, and the plant in general.

Author Alan Green examines the changes that take place in the lives of the company's top management as they struggle to achieve greater effectiveness previously prevented by their control-oriented, narrowly functional roles. Readers will learn along with Randall as he combines the roles of servant, steward, partner, and leader in an effort to create an organizational culture that fosters creativity, cooperation, and resiliency.

The Essence of Managing

Henry Mintzberg appreciates that managers are busy people. So he has taken his classic book Managing, done some updating, and distilled its essence into a lean 176 pages of text.

The essence of the book remains the same: what Mintzberg learned from observing twenty-nine managers in settings ranging from a refugee camp to a symphony orchestra. Simply Managing considers the intense dynamics of this job as well as its inescapable conundrums, for example:

• How is anyone supposed to think, let alone think ahead, in this frenetic job?
• Are leaders really more important than managers?
• Where has all the judgment gone?
• Is email destroying management practice?
• How can managers connect when their job disconnects them from what they are managing?

If you read only one book about managing, this should be it!

“A new perspective on servant leadership—challenging us to bring both courage and humility to the table—for the sake of the people and the enterprise.” —John C. Maxwell, New York Times-bestselling author

In this updated edition of Dare to Serve, former Popeyes CEO Cheryl Bachelder shows that leading by serving is a rigorous and tough-minded approach that yields the best results.

When she was named CEO of Popeyes in 2007, the stock price had slipped from $34 in 2002 to $13. The brand was stagnant, the team was discouraged, and the franchisees were just plain angry. Nine years later, restaurant sales were up 45 percent, restaurant profits had doubled, and the stock price was over $61. Servant leadership is sometimes derided as soft or ineffective, but this book confirms that challenging people to reach a daring destination, while treating them with dignity, creates the conditions for superior performance. 

The second edition of this bestselling book includes Bachelder’s post-Popeyes observations and new examples of how you can switch your leadership from self to serve. Ever engaging and inspirational, Bachelder takes you firsthand through the transformation of Popeyes and shows how anyone, at any level can become a Dare-to-Serve leader.

“Extraordinary! Dare to Serve describes the kind of leadership so desperately needed in the 21st century. A powerful blend of courage and humility, Cheryl Bachelder’s engaging story offers a clear path for leaders to follow, and what makes her message so compelling is the tremendous results she’s produced. I highly recommend this book.” —Stephen M. R. Covey, New York Times-bestselling author of The Speed of Trust

Daily healing practices for Black Americans combating systemic racism—transform exhaustion into renewal, resistance, and lasting joy!

Black Americans are exhausted. The relentless burden of navigating racism—at work, in healthcare, in daily life—takes a devastating toll. You're tired of being strong, tired of code-switching, tired of carrying emotional weight that isn't yours to bear. The question isn't whether Black fatigue is real. The question is: what do you do about it?

This book provides the answer. Mary-Frances Winters and Mareisha N. Winters Reese offer over fifty culturally grounded practices designed specifically for Black healing. It's a practical roadmap covering body, mind, and spirit renewal:

• Reclaim boundaries without guilt
• Build your healing village
• Navigate toxic workplaces while protecting your peace
• Transform pain into powerful action

This guide includes daily breathwork, somatic practices for release, boundary-setting frameworks, relationship mapping tools, workplace microaggression trackers, and thirty-day joy challenges. Each practice is rooted in Black cultural traditions and designed to fit into your real life. Whether you need immediate relief or long-term transformation, this book meets you where you are.

Your healing begins here.

The bestselling guide to aging with purpose is now updated with urgent wisdom on staying engaged, countering tyranny, and making peace with mortality.

Independent Publisher Book Awards gold medalist in the Aging/Death & Dying category.

Getting older isn't about withdrawal—it's about diving deeper into life, work, relationships, and meaning. But how do you stay engaged when facing loss, political chaos, and mortality?

In this revised and expanded edition, beloved teacher and bestselling author Parker J. Palmer returns with eight more years of hard-won wisdom. Drawing on nine decades of life, Palmer explores the urgent questions aging raises:

• How do we counter authoritarianism when democracy itself is threatened?
• How do we stay connected across generational divides?
• How do we make peace with endings while staying meaningfully engaged until the last breath?

Through meditations blending prose and poetry, Palmer shows that old is just another word for nothing left to lose—a time to speak truth, reach out, reach in, and fully inhabit the life you have. Laced with humor and gravitas, this book does not tell you how to age. It invites you to turn the prism on your own unfolding life, refracting new light at every turn.