I found myself leading a newsroom in my mid-20s. No one took me aside and told me how to lead a group of ambitious reporters, most of whom were half-again my age. Maybe that’s the same for you. There are lots of leadership books, and it’s easy to go astray (A fellow editor quoted Machiavelli a lot; it didn’t work out well for him). Instead, I found good guidance in authors who advised me to be authentic, think differently, and lead with compassion. Many years have since passed, and I’ve had the privilege to lead great teams and mentor many young leaders. We always start with being more human.
I wrote
The Empathy Advantage: Leading the Empowered Workforce
Over the years, I have given this book to countless people who are trying to navigate the tangled challenges that large organizations tend to be.
The former chief creative at Hallmark Cards, Gordon MacKenzie unraveled organizational complexities with humor and style. Often twisting corporate policies to achieve his creative and managerial objectives, he proved that you can be a rule follower (and bender) and still achieve great things.
Orbiting the Giant Hairball (MacKinzie’s description of corporate bureaucracy) is a quick, delightful read that will inspire you to discover your own creative leadership style.
Creativity is crucial to business success. But too often, even the most innovative organization quickly becomes a "giant hairball"--a tangled, impenetrable mass of rules, traditions, and systems, all based on what worked in the past--that exercises an inexorable pull into mediocrity. Gordon McKenzie worked at Hallmark Cards for thirty years, many of which he spent inspiring his colleagues to slip the bonds of Corporate Normalcy and rise to orbit--to a mode of dreaming, daring and doing above and beyond the rubber-stamp confines of the administrative mind-set. In his deeply funny book, exuberantly illustrated in full color, he shares the story…
What does mountaineering have to do with leadership? Far more than you might think.
Alison Levine extrapolates her experiences leading the first all-women team to attempt to summit Mt. Everest into clear lessons that, if you grasp them early, will turn you into an expedition leader at work. The book wraps great leadership advice in a compelling adventure story (Do they make it to the summit?), told with Alison’s signature wit.
It’s a quick and enjoyable read and a great start to your leadership library.
Alison Levine is a high altitude mountaineer and polar explorer. Born with a heart-condition that has resulted in three separate surgical procedures, she is one of those rare people who confront life head-up. The result is this book, which details her experiences scaling the world's tallest mountain peaks to hiking across the frozen climes of the North and South Poles.
When not out on the trail, she teaches leadership skills to West Point cadets, and is also the leading motivational speaker for Keppler's, one of the nation's top speakers' bureaus. She did more than 100 major corporate events last year…
A fresh take on the difference between trauma and hardship in order to help accurately spot the difference and avoid over-generalizations.
The book integrates the latest findings in brain science, child development, psycho-social context, theory, and clinical experiences to make the case that trauma is much more than a cluster…
The best leaders are great influencers, persuading people to get behind an initiative, adopt a new approach, and maybe even have a change of mind.
Turns out that many of the ways we’re taught to influence – make a strong argument, show compelling data, insist that we are right, among other tactics – simply don’t work with the way our brains are wired. In this deeply researched yet highly readable book, neuroscientist Tali Sharot unwraps the mysteries of persuadable brains and leaves you with the tools to better advocate for your ideas at work and beyond.
Selected as a best book of 2017 by Forbes, The Times, Huffington Post, Bloomberg, Greater Good Magazine, Stanford Business School and more.
'A timely, intriguing book' Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take
'This profound book will change your life. An instant classic' Cass R. Sunstein, bestselling co-author of Nudge
Part of our daily job as humans is to influence others; we teach our children, guide our patients, advise our clients, help our friends and inform our online followers. We do this because we each have unique experiences and knowledge that others may not.…
Be honest: managing people for the first time is anxiety-inducing and your internal monologue is racing so fast and churning enough doubt to make you wonder why you took this job.
Relax. You’re not alone. Not even close. And you are in good company with Morra Aarons-Mele, who has built a stellar career despite wrestling with anxiety from her earliest days. She shares her story in The Anxious Achiever, and delivers useful advice on not just how to manage your anxiety, but to use it to get ahead.
A timely and compelling guide to managing the anxiety that comes with succeeding and leading-from entrepreneur, mental health advocate, and top-rated podcaster Morra Aarons-Mele.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses in the world. But in our workplaces, anxiety has been a hidden problem-there in plain sight but ignored. Until now.
The Anxious Achiever is a book with a mission: to normalize anxiety and leadership. As leadership expert and self-proclaimed anxious achiever Morra Aarons-Mele argues, anxiety is built into the very nature of leadership. It can-and should-be harnessed into a force for good.
This manual addresses the need to ensure that people are at the centre of the organisation. There has never been a timelier reminder of the need to ensure that leading, supporting and developing staff are critical aspects of creating the right organisational culture to grow and develop. Written with sensitivity,…
No matter what field you are in or the mission of your team, leadership is about navigating constraints, identifying obstacles, solving problems, and searching for breakthrough innovation.
It can be frustrating, and it can be, well, beautiful, especially when overcoming those constraints delivers new growth for you and your team and new value for your organization. Packed with stories and smart strategies, this book will help you see problems for what they are - opportunities, and give you the tools and the courage to face them straight on.
An inspiring yet practical guide for transforming limitations into opportunities A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages And Why It's Everyone's Business Now is a book about everyday, practical inventiveness, designed for the constrained times in which we live. It describes how to take the kinds of issues that all of us face today lack of time, money, resources, attention, know-how and see in them the opportunity for transformation of oneself and one's organization's fortunes. The ideas in the book are based on the authors' extensive work as business consultants, and are brought to life in 35…
For too long, businesses have treated workers as a cost to contain, often orchestrating every minute and action on the job—even when they did not know exactly what those minutes or actions really meant. The pandemic showed what we have always known, but long ignored: Workers aren’t cogs, they are people. People with complex and sometimes messy lives. Jobs, we found out, can be integrated into those lives when people have the agency and flexibility to balance professional and personal demands.
Business success and employee engagement skyrockets when businesses embrace that agency and recognize that people are assets to nurture and invest in rather than costs to contain. The Empathy Advantage shows leaders how.
My book is a collection of monthly Editor-in-Chief letters to the readership of World Neurosurgery, a journal that I edit. Each essay is short and sweet. The letters were written for neurosurgeons but have been re-edited so that they apply to all human beings. They cover topics such as leadership,…
