Here are 100 books that Coaching A to Z fans have personally recommended if you like
Coaching A to Z.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
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.
Carl Jung has two quotes that I love. First, “the gold is in the dark.” And second, “I’d rather be whole than good.” Both recognize that we’re complicated, contradictory, and gloriously messy beings. Debbie Ford’s book was the first time I felt I could actually do something with the profound wisdom of Jung. One particular exercise pretty much “cured” me immediately of some long-standing resentment I had with a former boss. Even though the language is sometimes a bit too woo-woo Californian hippy for me, it’s a book with some deeply useful exercises to help you become more whole, kinder to yourself, and ultimately more wholly you.
In this enlightening guide, Debbie Ford explains that the dark side of our personality should not be hidden. By denying our dark side, we reject these aspects of our true natures rather than giving ourselves the freedom to live authentically. Here she shows that it is possible to acknowledge and accept our so-called weaknesses, proving that these qualities may be important, hidden strengths. For example, perhaps some 'selfishness' can save us from exhaustion and resentment.
Full of illuminating stories and practical exercises, Debbie Ford shows us how to reconcile our darker impulses and find the gifts they offer. Your life…
I'm an author, trainer, coach, and podcaster – a description that would have shocked my much younger self. My own journey of self-development has taken me to the privileged position, through my business, of helping others on their journey to discover their own potential. The joy of seeing this emerge is fresh with every individual and group I work with, and of course my own journey of discovery continues too. Someone once said to the Dalai Lama, "When do you get to enlightenment?"…. "When I die!" came the reply. He recognised the value of being open to ideas and change… which is just some of the fabulous gifts we get from books and each other!
Originally written as a tennis coaching text – the wisdom of this approach transcends the world of tennis and carries an important message about how changing our thinking can release the latent potential in us whatever we are doing.
The focus is on the importance of self-talk – what our outer self is telling the inner self and in doing so chimes beautifully with what we know about our unconscious mind. We know that more than 90% of our behaviour is driven by our unconscious and it hears everything we say to ourselves – so consider the impact of critical self-talk and the potential damage to our confidence and performance.
The book is summarised in the formula:
Potential minus Interference = Performance
We achieve at our best when we manage the ‘Interference’ we impose on ourselves!
Improve your game and discover your true potential by increasing your concentration, willpower and confidence.
Described by Billie Jean King as her 'tennis bible', Timothy Gallwey's multi-million bestseller, including an introduction from acclaimed sports psychologist Geoff Beattie, has been a phenomenon for players of all abilities since it was first published in 1972.
Instead of concentrating on how to improve your technique, it starts from the understanding that 'every game is composed of two parts, an outer game and an inner game'. The former is played against opponents on the court, but the latter is a battle within ourselves as…
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.
My mentor Peter Block taught me that the ultimate act of being an adult, the ultimate act of taking responsibility for your own freedom, was making choices. Some choices of course are easy—I’ll have a double espresso, please—but plenty are difficult. You don’t have all the data, it’s too close to call, and you can feel the combination of anxiety and guilt that can come with committing. This book adds some structure and discipline to how to make the best possible choice, and by doing so makes it easier to be more courageous and bold.
When it comes to our hardest choices, it can seem as though making trade-offs is inevitable. But what about those crucial times when accepting the obvious trade-off just isn't good enough? What do we do when the choices in front of us don't get us what we need? In those cases, rather than choosing the least worst option, we can use the models in front of us to create a new and superior answer. This is integrative thinking.
First introduced by world-renowned strategic thinker Roger Martin in The Opposable Mind, integrative thinking is an approach to…
I taught myself to code back in 1994 while working the graveyard shift as a geologist in the environmental industry. My job consisted of sitting in a chair during the dark hours of the night in a shopping center in Stockton, CA, watching another geologist take samples from wells in the parking lot. A friend of mine suggested I learn to code because I liked computers. I don’t mean to make this out to be a “it’s so simple anyone can do it!” You need to have a relentless drive to learn, which is why I wrote my book, The Imposter’s Handbook - as an active step to learning what I didn’t know I didn’t know.
This book is extremely cringy, but that’s the entire point.
The author has studied powerful figures from the past and examined the things they did to wield enormous power and “play the game”. Reading through this book takes a particular focus, and for me it was trying to understand what other peoplewere up to - specifically my coworkers.
Humans are a competitive bunch - it’s the simple truth - and the key to getting ahead at work is to see how you’re being manipulated to another’s advantage. If you plan on moving up in your career you’re going to need to be armed with a basic understanding of the Human Chess Game because it’s everywhere.
The Bad Bosses and Crappy Coworkers of the world are reading this book and using it as a guide to get ahead - but that becomes meaningless if you can spot their tricks and…
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature.
In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.
I have worked for some really toxic leaders in my lifetime. Over the decades, I’ve figured out that even well-intentioned people can be toxic leaders without knowing it. As a team and leadership performance coach for the past 15 years, my job has been to help leaders show up as people others want to follow; to help employees feel cared for, and as a result, be intrinsically motivated to care about their company’s mission. These books represent the figurative fuel in my tank for this work, and I hope you find them useful.
Simon Sinek exposes how the twisted incentives of short-term profits are causing leaders to steer their companies off course. The book had a huge impact on me because it starkly revealed and explained the game my clients are really playing despite their claims to the contrary.
Because of this book, I was able to connect these motives to some of the worst toxic behaviors I observe in leaders and better understand why they behave this way. As someone often tasked with helping them change course, this book really helps me meet leaders where they are and help them move in a better direction.
The New York Times-bestselling author of Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, and Together Is Better offers a bold new approach to business strategy by asking one question: are you playing the finite game or the infinite game?
In The Infinite Game, Sinek applies game theory to explore how great businesses achieve long-lasting success. He finds that building long-term value and healthy, enduring growth - that playing the infinite game - is the only thing that matters to your business.
As a 25-year business coach, I have often assigned clients the task of wandering through a book store and acting like a heat-guided missile, letting themselves notice what topics and books they are naturally drawn to. For me, even as a liberal arts major with no entrepreneurial experience when I started my consulting business 25 years ago, I was always drawn to the business, psychology, and entrepreneur section. The world of work is my playground, and I am fascinated by how to help people build a powerful body of work while sustaining themselves financially and having a deep quality of life.
When your business begins to gain momentum and scale, you need to build both communication infrastructure and process to motivate your employees, partners, and customers. Drawing from decades of award-winning work at their firm Duarte, Nancy and Patti give creative, specific advice about how to be an inspiring and effective leader.
'Change can be fear-filled in prospect but fearsome in effect. With Illuminate, Duarte and Sanchez light our path through that crucial transition dazzlingly' ROBERT B. CIALDINI, author of Influence
To envision the future is one thing, getting others to go there with you is another. By harnessing the power of persuasive communication you can turn your idea into a movement.
In Illuminate, acclaimed author Nancy Duarte and communications expert Patti Sanchez equip you with the same communication tools that great leaders like Steve Jobs, Howard Schultz, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used to move people.
I’ve always wondered why meetings are so terrible. And, why we spend so much awful time in them. So, in my graduate studies, I decided to try to figure that out. What makes meetings good and what makes meetings bad? Then, over the course of a couple decades, I wrote what constituted about 25% of all the science on the topic of workplace meetings. It may be self-proclaimed, but I am the Meeting Doctor. Just like you go to a physician for an illness, I’m who people go to when their meetings are sick and need a cure!
So, you’re trying to make your meetings better, but every self-help book out there seems to fall short of your expectations. Well, try some science! This book is all about the science of effective meetings. What they are, what they look like, and how everyone can participate in and lead good meetings. Based on the best science by author, Steven Rogelberg, PhD, and his many colleagues, former students, and research collaborators, this book provides best practices that work. They’ve been tested and they really, actually, work!
A recent estimate suggests that employees endure a staggering 55 million meetings a day in the United States. This tremendous time investment yields only modest returns. No organization made up of human beings is immune from the all-too-common meeting gripes: those that fail to engage, those that inadvertently encourage participants to tune out, and those that blatantly disregard participants' time.
Most companies and leaders view poor meetings as an inevitable cost of doing business. But managers can take heart: researchers now have a clear understanding of the key drivers that make meetings successful. In The Surprising Science of Meetings, Steven…
I’m a professional keynote speaker and author that has studied the pillars of high performance for most of my life. This journey started through basketball, as I was able to work with, work alongside, and observe many of the game’s top players and coaches and witness firsthand the disciplines, rituals, and routines they modeled in pursuit of optimal performance on and off the court. That transitioned into the business world where I not only watched these foundational principles be applied by executives and entrepreneurs… but I applied them to my own life and business as well.
The brilliance of Exactly What to Say is in its brevity and simplicity. It was built on the premise that when you ‘change your words you change your world’ and how what we say heavily impacts our ability to influence others. It is full of practical, actionable concepts on word choice and phrasing that can be implemented immediately by anyone looking to the effectiveness of their communication. While this book is a quick read–it is incredibly profound and powerful.
Often the decision between a customer choosing you over someone like you is your ability to know exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to make it count. Phil M. Jones has trained more than two million people across five continents and over fifty countries in the lost art of spoken communication. In Exactly What to Say, he delivers the tactics you need to get more of what you want.
In 2014, I was laid off from my management role at Lowe’s Home Improvement. Instead of starting another job, I took several months to reflect on my leadership experiences and researched how leadership has evolved in the 21st Century. Based on a detailed analysis of 14 books, including the five I recommend, I wrote my first book that explains how to practice 21st-century leadership (now in its second edition). After publishing, I’ve written another leadership book, several blogs, and have been a keynote speaker. I now host the Unlabeled Leadership Podcast, which helps listeners learn how everyday people practice leadership.
A colleague of mine introduced me to this book and argued that Kouzes and Posner wrote the gold standard of leadership practices. After reading their research-based stories, I agree.
The authors write in a way that goes beyond theory by offering a practical guide by focusing on the five practices of exemplary leadership. These practices are applicable to anyone’s career! Through inspiring examples and actionable steps, I learned how to lead with integrity, inspire others, and drive higher performance more effectively.
Read the gold standard of leadership development. It can become your call to action!
The most trusted source of leadership wisdom, updated to address today's realities The Leadership Challenge is the gold-standard manual for effective leadership, grounded in research and written by the premier authorities in the field. With deep insight into the complex interpersonal dynamics of the workplace, this book positions leadership both as a skill to be learned, and as a relationship that must be nurtured to reach its full potential.
This new sixth edition has been revised to address current challenges, and includes more international examples and a laser focus on business issues; you'll learn how extraordinary leaders accomplish extraordinary things,…
As I moved up in leadership, I found I was not prepared to manage people during uncertain and difficult times. Transitions bring about the worst in people. They get fearful and that causes bad behavior by triggering defense mechanisms. The books I listed are a progression of books that helped me to understand how transitions and change affect people and gave me a framework to continue to learn and increase my leadership skills. I then decided to write about new insights I gained in leadership to help others and have published two books and am writing articles on Medium.
Just Be Honestis a great book on communication strategies. One part of this book that has always stuck with me is what Steven Gaffney calls Notice vs. Imagine. Steven Gaffney estimates that at least 50% of what we imagine about others is inaccurate. For example, upon exiting a meeting at work, 50% of each person’s thoughts, opinions, and assumptions from the meeting are likely to be wrong. The worse part about this is that each person may well think he or she is 100 percent right. I learned a lot about hidden assumptions and communication strategies from this book.
In Just Be Honest, you will learn that honesty is not only the best policy; it's the easiest and most effective way to communicate. You'll learn how to be honest with others and how to get them to be honest with you. You will learn how to use honesty as a tool to get immediate and dramatic results with anyone regardless of their backgrounds, needs, personality or personal agenda. You will learn how to eliminate communication breakdowns and personality conflicts, prevent problems before they occur and get the bottom-line results you desire--quickly and painlessly. You will learn why the two…
