Professional Development

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.

In a world of increasing polarization, Digital, Diverse & Divided shows us how to use cultural intelligence to bridge our divides and authentically connect with those around us.


Our divides are destroying us: red versus blue, Black versus White, globalists versus nationalists, agnostics versus Christians. Drawing on seminal research on social identity and cultural intelligence, this book explains our impulse to divide people into “us” versus “them” and reveals how we can tackle tribalism, confront racism, and develop a common vision for the future.

In Digital, Diverse & Divided, David Livermore outlines the four competencies of Cultural Intelligence (CQ):

• Motivation (CQ Drive)
• Cognition (CQ Knowledge)
• Metacognition (CQ Strategy)
• Behavior (CQ Action)

He shows how we can apply this foundation to a wide range of intercultural situations. This book includes personal anecdotes, stories from around the world, and references to the work of prominent authors, psychologists, thinkers, and economists.

Livermore examines different factors-place, race, gender, religious beliefs, and politics-that shape how we see the world and offers a way for us to reclaim our shared humanity.

The ever-increasing complexity we face requires a new way to think and work. To effectively lead an organization, bestselling author Mark Miller says, you have to play chess, not checkers. He shows how this mentality enables you to marshal all your available resources, including every employee, to strategically address challenges and opportunities.

In his latest business fable, top leadership author Mark Miller tells the story of newly appointed CEO Blake Brown, who takes over a company distressed by poor performance and low morale. Nothing Blake learned from his previous job seems to help him deal with the bigger, more complex problems he now faces. The game has changed. As his new mentor points out, Blake is playing a simple game of checkers when he should be playing chess.

Miller uses this metaphor to show how leaders can encourage deep, strategic thinking throughout an organization and utilize the unique abilities of each employee (bishops move differently than knights). He explains how to apply the “chess not checkers” mentality in four critical areas: leadership development, employee engagement, organizational alignment, and execution. This is an appealing, accessible guide to helping all leaders think ahead, plan their moves, and avoid getting checkmated by circumstances or competitors.

Bestselling author Ken Blanchard and leading psychologist Morton Shaevitz offer advice, based on both research and personal experience, for infusing the second half of your life with passion, energy, and excitement.

Learn how to take the right risks for lasting success. Begin Boldly provides a framework for making the kind of bold moves that will get your career off to its best start!

Many women enter the workforce feeling like they can never make a mistake, and as a result, they don't take risks in the crucial early stages of their careers. Women, and BIPOC women especially, are disproportionally penalized for mistakes, so any risk begins to feel like a bad risk. A 2019 KPMG study found that fewer than 43 percent of women surveyed were willing to take “big” risks, including volunteering to do a major presentation or asking for a pay raise.

Christie Hunter Arscott equips readers with the ability to differentiate between reckless and intelligent risks using an actionable model built around three mindsets: a curious mindset, a courageous mindset, and an agile mindset. With a step-by-step method for taking risks, making refinements, and assessing rewards, Arscott's approach gives women a flexible and repeatable framework to guide them through this critical career skill.

Liftoff empowers women to take chances on themselves so that risk-taking becomes an enlightening and empowering antidote for self-doubt.

This book will include a discussion guide.

Now in a second edition, this classic book shows how to make conversations generative and productive rather than critical and destructive so people, organizations, and communities flourish.



We all know that conversations influence us, but we rarely stop to think about how much impact they have on our well-being and our ability to thrive. This book is the first to show how Appreciative Inquiry-a widely used change method that focuses on identifying what's working and building on it rather than just trying to fix what's not-can help us all communicate more effectively and flourish in all areas of our lives.

By focusing on what we want to happen instead of what we want to avoid and asking questions to deepen understanding and increase possibilities, we expand creativity, improve productivity, and unleash potential at work and home. Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres use real-life examples to illustrate these two practices and the principles that underlie them.

The second edition includes a new chapter on establishing the right mindset for appreciative conversations and a free discussion guide download. This book demonstrates how the practices and principles of Appreciative Inquiry strengthen relationships and generate possibilities for a future that works for everyone.

Learn how to stop pouring vast sums of money into technology projects that don't have a lasting impact by closing the communication gap between IT and leadership.

Bob Nelson, author of the multimillion-copy bestseller 1001 Ways to Reward Employees, and human performance expert Mario Tamayo offer hundreds of practical, creative tips for helping employees-and their managers-make work more fun.


Every business needs happy, engaged, and motivated employees, whether it's a major corporation or one of the over thirty million small businesses in America today. Most elements in modern business work against this basic need: constant change and increasing stress from both the speed of business and its complexity, as well as the expansive application of technology to all aspects of business.

Work Made Fun Gets Done gives the reader simple, practical ideas for instantly bringing fun into the workplace. Based on examples from scores of real companies like Pinterest, Asana, Bank of America, Genentech, Zappos, Honda, General Mills, Microsoft, and many more, as well as the authors' collective experience, this book provides clear behavioral examples on exactly what managers can do to immediately lighten the tone of the work environment and excite their teams. The book, written in a fun style, contains lighthearted illustrations and callout boxes to highlight fun practices.

Master the balance between working on your career and working in it. Intelligence Isn't Enough helps Black professionals make strategic decisions and learn the unspoken rules for success.


Recounting the despair she felt as a frustrated young Black professional, Carice Anderson knows that many Black professionals are relying on their education alone to break into the workplace. In this book, she empowers young Black professionals everywhere with the right knowledge by exposing them to advice and little-known principles of career success from her interviews with thirty successful Black leaders.

Intelligence Isn't Enough is divided into six chapters that guide readers through what Anderson calls the six “major corporate muscles”:

● IQ
● Mental attitude
● People matters
● Cultural intelligence
● Personal branding
● Communication

This book includes personal stories, quotes, lessons learned, and advice from both the author and Black leaders who have worked in some of the finest institutions across North America, Africa, and Europe. Readers will learn tips and tools to strategically chart their career paths and advance in the workplace for lifelong success.

Leadership has for too long been treated as a function and not as a relationship. Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone argue that successful leadership must be based on love (altruism and empathy) and laughter (positive emotions and joy).


Recent bestselling books have completely altered the way we understand how humans work and play together. The Altruistic Brain and Born to Be Good show that humans are deeply wired for empathy and compassion. The Social Animal and Emotional Intelligence prove that our emotional selves help us make better decisions and motivate others. However, the tactics we use to train leaders bear little reflection of these advancements; we're still creating competent but emotionally distant leaders who “manage human assets” and lead by setting goals, deadlines, and deliverables.

Zina Sutch and Patrick Malone hope to flip a light switch and illuminate, above all else, that leadership begins with heart and soul. In five succinct chapters, they show that we lead best when we tap into our genetically driven human nature to love and nurture, connect and trust. This book seeks to reintroduce the warmth of human interaction and emotion into the leadership tool kit.

Convey the essence of leadership with every communication.



Everyone seems to have an opinion about leadership. We know good leaders Eat Last, Lean In, Break the Rules, Dare to Lead, and are Radically Candid as well as extremely aware of their Tribes, Drive, and Principles. But books about these topics overlook the value of leadership impression-the instant projection you exude as a leader. How do leaders sound? What do leaders say and not say? How do leaders tell stories, send emails, run meetings, conduct video conferences, give speeches, conduct interviews, and even listen to others?

Drawing on his experiences as a leadership coach, as well as his personal experience holding senior positions at Time Inc., Audible, PBS, MTV, and the ASPCA, Joel Schwartzberg offers practical tips and entertaining but eye-opening exercises that help readers convey genuine and impactful leadership in every conceivable situation. Understanding your leadership impression is vitally important: it is the first piece of evidence on which you and your ideas will be judged and your best chance to lay a foundation of confidence, competence, and commitment.