The best books for transforming your career or any other area of your life for that matter

Why am I passionate about this?

Do you know you will spend 80,000 hours at work in your lifetime? And yet we get so little guidance on how to make choices about the work we do. I am fascinated by the world of work and how we navigate it, and thrive in it. I’ve always wondered how people made decisions about how to live and how to approach finding the right kind of livelihood that fits their skills and interests. I’ve made it my job to design a method to help people get specific and clear and help them not only find the work that best utilises their skills and passions but also identifies the environment that works best for us.


I wrote...

The Career Equation: Coaching a Culture of Career Conversations

By Erica Sosna,

Book cover of The Career Equation: Coaching a Culture of Career Conversations

What is my book about?

Although this is my own book, there aren’t many books around about not only how to decide what is the perfect role for you, but also how to have poweful career conversations with others about their career. This book makes it easy for managers, leaders, coaches, and mentors to dive into what drives their talent and help them find work that really matches their skills and interests. I map out our simple and powerful Career Equation model and offer case studies and tangible examples for how can use it successfully with your team and across your business, as Amazon, Thales, and Savills have done to great effect. 

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes

Erica Sosna Why did I love this book?

This is a brilliant book for any life transitions, not just careers. Simple yet mind-blowingly effective, this is a process I have applied many times throughout my life, from starting businesses to closing them, getting new jobs as well as personal difficulties. We aren’t really taught how to manage change and yet it is a constant in our lives. This book helps you gain practical insight for when you are moving from one life experience to another. Life is all about changes and this book will help you manage them in a more effective and hopeful way.

By William Bridges, Susan Bridges,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Transitions as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

First published in 1980, Transitions was the first book to explore the underlying and universal pattern of transition. Named one of the fifty most important self-help books of all time, Transitions remains the essential guide for coping with the inevitable changes in life.

Transitions takes readers step-by-step through the three perilous stages of any transition, explaining how each stage can be understood and embraced. The book offers an elegant, simple, yet profoundly insightful road map to navigate change and move into a hopeful future: Endings: Every transition begins with one. Too often we misunderstand them, confuse them with finality-that's it,…


Book cover of What Color Is Your Parachute? 2022: Your Guide to a Lifetime of Meaningful Work and Career Success

Erica Sosna Why did I love this book?

This is an amazing book on careers and life purpose which although first published in the 70s has been updated very recently to reflect the changes in the world of work. What is most insightful about this book is instead of looking at just how to update your CV it helps you to think about how you think about your job search from the perspective of your unique skills and abilities. The book offers a number of innovative suggestions for how you decide what roles you want to go for, as well as dealing with the many challenges you will face along the way. 

By Richard N. Bolles, Katharine Brooks,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked What Color Is Your Parachute? 2022 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With timeless advice, up-to-the-minute insights, and more than ten million copies sold over fifty years, the world’s most popular and best-selling career guide is fully revised and expanded for 2022.
 
“One of the first job-hunting books on the market. It is still arguably the best. And it is indisputably the most popular.”—Fast Company

What Color Is Your Parachute? is the world’s most popular job-hunting guide. This completely updated edition features the latest resources, strategies, and perspectives on today’s job market, revealing surprising advice on what works—and what doesn’t—so you can focus your efforts on tactics that yield results.
 
At its…


Book cover of Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World

Erica Sosna Why did I love this book?

I have always loved stories, heroes, and big characters in books. I’ve drawn a lot from the narrative format in my own work, helping people to define and redefine who they are and what drives them. Archetypes are a powerful methodology for tuning into what really matters to us and the role that we are made to play in this lifetime. This book is a fascinating insight into the key heroic archetypes that make up your personality and ethos. It has a great diagnostic in it so you can get really clear about your unique profile and traits. 

By Carol S. Pearson,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Awakening the Heroes Within as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This companion to the bestselling THE HERO WITHIN outlines twelve archetypal patterns that can aid inner development and the quest for wholeness.


Book cover of The Work We Were Born To Do

Erica Sosna Why did I love this book?

The power of this book is in helping you discover what it is that you want to do, but also reflect on your beliefs about work, igniting the belief in our capacity to make the changes and discovering our true meaning of success. This book includes some very practical and insightful exercises and ways to help you think about what it is you really want to do at a very deep level.

By Nick Williams,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Work We Were Born To Do as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Would you like a more fulfilling work life? Do you want a job that s creative, exciting and rewarding? That allows you to be who you truly are? You need to discover the work you were born to do. Leading work-expert Nick Williams has identified the twelve principles of the work we were born to do. He shows how we can activate these principles to amazing effect and utilize our inner power at whatever stage we have reached in our working lives. The Work We Were Born To Do shows how to discover your purpose and reveals how to make…


Book cover of Refuse to Choose! Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams

Erica Sosna Why did I love this book?

If you are anything like me and struggle to decide on one career or one path then this is the book for you. If by working through your passions, skills, etc. you find that there isn’t just one area you want to work in but in fact, you are interested in loads of stuff, then this book will help you manage this challenge and create the life that you want not the one everyone else says you should have.

By Barbara Sher,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Refuse to Choose! Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Don't know what to do with your life? Drawn to so many things that you can't choose just one? New York Times best-selling author Barbara Sher has the answer-do EVERYTHING!

"Designed to help you enjoy your many interests without feeling overwhelmed and unfocused"
- Metro New York

Author of Wishcraft and I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was..., Barbara Sher has become famous for her extraordinary ability to help people define and achieve their goals. What Sher has discovered is that some individuals simply cannot, and should not, decide on a single path; they are genetically…


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Book cover of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

Michael Bungay Stanier Author Of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Coaching is a wonderful technology that can help people be a force for change… and is often wrapped up in mystic and woo-woo and privilege that makes it inaccessible and/or unattractive to too many. I want being more coach-like—by which I mean staying curious a little longer, and rushing to action and advice-giving—to be an everyday way of being with one another. Driven by this, I’ve written the best-selling book on coaching this century (The Coaching Habit) and have created training that’s been used around the world by more than a quarter of a million people. I’m on a mission to unweird coaching.

Michael's book list on unexpectedly useful books about coaching

What is my book about?

The coaching book that's for all of us, not just coaches.

It's the best-selling book on coaching this century, with 15k+ online reviews. Brené Brown calls it "a classic". Dan Pink said it was "essential".

It is practical, funny, and short, and "unweirds" coaching. Whether you're a parent, a teacher, a leader, or even a coach, you can stay curious longer.

By Michael Bungay Stanier,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Coaching Habit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Look for Michael's new book, The Advice Trap, which focuses on taming your Advice Monster so you can stay curious a little longer and change the way you lead forever.

In Michael Bungay Stanier's The Coaching Habit, coaching becomes a regular, informal part of your day so managers and their teams can work less hard and have more impact.

Drawing on years of experience training more than 10,000 busy managers from around the globe in practical, everyday coaching skills, Bungay Stanier reveals how to unlock your peoples' potential. He unpacks seven essential coaching questions to demonstrate how-by saying less and…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in archetypes, choice and choosing, and self-actualization?

11,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about archetypes, choice and choosing, and self-actualization.

Archetypes Explore 32 books about archetypes
Choice And Choosing Explore 28 books about choice and choosing
Self-Actualization Explore 213 books about self-actualization