10 books like Emotional Agility

Kai-Fu Lee, once himself an AI pioneer, wrote AI Superpowers to help non-technical readers understand how and why AI is changing our world, with an emphasis on how it’s reshaping work. Lee breaks down which types of jobs are most vs. least likely to be replaced by AI, and offers wisdom on which skills it makes sense for all of us to lean into given those shifts. He also offers clear-eyed predictions about the potential for AI innovations to reshape global politics. 

I enjoyed this book from page one. Lee’s prose is crisp and his points sharp. I appreciated his occasional meanderings into humanistic realms. This also feels like a personal book, given how much Lee himself has done to accelerate the AI revolution.

I remember vividly the moment, while researching change, when I read an article by Jeffrey Pfeffer on power in organisations. It was an ah-ha moment for me in making sense of some of the behaviours I was witnessing at work. Marie McIntyre, who studied with Pfeffer, wrote Secrets to Winning at Office Politics and writes in a much more accessible and practical way on understanding and working with these politics, while maintaining your own integrity. Many a mentee has said to me, ‘I’m not interested in the politics, I just want to do my job.' And my response to that is that if you want to be successful in your career, then you need to not just understand but work with the politics. But there are ways to do this, while still being you. And this book helps with how.

Like most people, my brain can let me down at times with the endless chatter or ‘classroom inside my head’ as I like to call it. There was an amazing moment on a McKinsey course I did, where we all had to share our deepest darkest secret internal chatter about ourselves, and it was all versions of ‘I am inadequate.’ I love this book for how it normalises that chatter, but also provides practical, relatable strategies to use to help harness it. It explores what we can do ourselves, how we can change our environment to help us, what we can ask of our ‘board of advisors,’ and also how we can return the favour in helping others, when that voice of doubt gets too loud. 

While we would love to think we are always rational, we are hard-wired for story not the rational data (albeit key data can be a strong anchor in a story). I started my career far more in the assumption of rational data trumps all, but recognised, through bumps and bruises, how stories can overtake decision-making. When I learned how to tell a better story, I learned how to get the results I needed. Gabrielle is such a down-to-earth, energising speaker and writer, and this book provided me with such a practical, relatable framework for always having a good story or two in my back pocket.  

Getting your dream job is only the first step. You want to start strong and deliver value to the organization as quickly as possible. That is where Michael Watkins’ book comes in handy. When I was the head of talent management for a Fortune 50 company, we gave a copy of this book to each newly hired executive.

This book outlines how to promote yourself and learn your new role faster. It helps you analyze your business situation and choose the right strategy to get things done. Finally, it shares how to build a winning team that delivers results. You want your boss, peers, and subordinates to feel good about you.  This book helps you achieve early wins, energize your team, and build your credibility.

Colin is a French entrepreneur with expertise in the intersection of policy and tech. Hedge offers the most detailed vision I have seen for what the future of work could look like, fleshing out one particular future in which workers are separated into different classes based on how much direct service they provide other humans. Colin also offers a specific set of answers for the problems this will raise. Whether or not one agrees with his predictions or solutions the richness of the history and analysis he provides is invigorating and thought-provoking. This book makes clear just what is at stake for all of us in the coming decades, one way or another.

Future Politics takes the conversation to the societal level, looking at how technology will change the fabric of our communities. Susskind brings an expert eye to a sweeping body of knowledge and resists simple narratives. This book is dense, but worth the effort for those looking to understand the dynamics that will shape society as we know it, for better and for worse.

Susskind is a scholar of history and politics and brings that love of fundamental political questions to this work. I enjoy how he anchors modern questions about the implications of technology for freedom, for example, in much older debates about freedom and the State.

Quite a lot about what the defining forces in today’s world of work became clear to our military leaders many decades ago. Warfare was once centralized, linear, and choreographed. Modern war is fragmented, dynamic, and unpredictable. The term VUCA itself came from the military.

Scales is one of our greatest military thinkers leading the way on how we should be approaching soldier readiness in this new reality. We need to think much more about psychological agility and resilience so that the front lines are enabled to respond to an unforeseeable challenge. He’s ahead of the corporate curve in this thinking, but just by a hair. 

This is an excellent book that speaks to those who have inherited trauma from their ancestors. While Baack uses ample research and narratives about the victims of the Holocaust, the book is relevant for other descendants of long or short-lasting, acknowledged or non-acknowledged traumas, including: victims of genocides, ethnic cleansings, refugee camp residents, racism, wars, and other forms of victimization or natural disasters - and - their witnesses. Based on interviews with many descendants of trauma, the author focuses on giving the ‘inheritors’ a platform to describe, not only, their parents’ histories, but mostly their own. The book is instructional, as she also includes questions for individual or group reflection. The author’s emphasis on the non-pathological perspective is both productive and a relief, including chapters on resilience, post-traumatic grown, epigenetics, and more.

I am passionate about the book because I am a child of Holocaust survivors. Over many years, I… show more.

Dr. Bruce Perry, a well-known trauma expert, neuroscientist, and psychiatrist, and icon Oprah Winfrey break down mental illness barriers and hold conversations with emotionally struggling individuals. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with you?” they ask, “What events in your past led to how you feel and act today?” Trauma, especially childhood trauma, is covered, with the emphasis on how to renew one’s personal sense of worth and become more resilient. Readers learn what can cause trauma and lack of self-worth and how individuals can become strong, thrive, and move successfully through life. What experiences can lead to resilience rather than trauma? In these days of high stress, we must learn how to build each others’ self-determination and strengths that make us better humans.