Here are 85 books that I-deals fans have personally recommended if you like
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The average person spends over 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime – that’s roughly one quarter to one third of a person’s life. I’m an academic researcher who studies work. I know how to design workplaces that are good for organizations (high productivity) and the people who work in them (high employee well-being). But if we leave it all up to senior management, we won’t generate positive changes fast enough. There’s a robust body of evidence that we can all use to make our local workplaces more supportive, inclusive, and fulfilling. I’m on a mission to make the world a better place, one workplace at a time.
Deborah Tannen has a unique ear for the different ways that men and women communicate.
The book resonated with my personal experiences, and helped me to understand why I was having different kinds of conversations with men than with women – particularly around work issues. Professor Tannen emphasizes that these communication styles are taught to us when we are very young (and they are reflected in the different games men and women play as children).
But that means we can change our communication styles too – we can communicate more clearly about our work-related needs, and adapt our communication patterns to better align with the listener. Professor Tannen inspired me to bring research evidence to the attention of people who can use it in their daily lives.
This guide highlights problems of communication between men and women, who can interpret the same conversation completely differently, even when there is no apparent misunderstanding. It examines how the sexes can work through communication barriers and get to the heart of the matter.
The average person spends over 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime – that’s roughly one quarter to one third of a person’s life. I’m an academic researcher who studies work. I know how to design workplaces that are good for organizations (high productivity) and the people who work in them (high employee well-being). But if we leave it all up to senior management, we won’t generate positive changes fast enough. There’s a robust body of evidence that we can all use to make our local workplaces more supportive, inclusive, and fulfilling. I’m on a mission to make the world a better place, one workplace at a time.
We hear so much about flexibility at work, but most of the academic research is directed at senior managers (as in: “managers need to offer employees more flexibility”).
Professors Kossek and Lautsch deliberately flip that thinking. Their book is designed to help any employee become more mindful about how they can achieve better work-life balance – and to identify the changes that they can make to get there (even without their boss’s support).
This book inspired me to think about the very small changes that any of us can make in a workplace; it helped me to recognize that it’s not all up to the boss!
You are the CEO of your life: you, and nobody else. You can establish the new rules that will help you achieve true balance between work and the rest of your life. And if you don't do it, nobody else will. Now is the time to take control, and this is the book that will get you there. CEO of Me is like no other "work-life balance" book you've ever seen: there are no cliches here, and no one-size-fits all solutions. Instead, Drs. Ellen Kossek and Brenda Lautsch help you identify which of six worklife "patterns" you fit into and…
The average person spends over 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime – that’s roughly one quarter to one third of a person’s life. I’m an academic researcher who studies work. I know how to design workplaces that are good for organizations (high productivity) and the people who work in them (high employee well-being). But if we leave it all up to senior management, we won’t generate positive changes fast enough. There’s a robust body of evidence that we can all use to make our local workplaces more supportive, inclusive, and fulfilling. I’m on a mission to make the world a better place, one workplace at a time.
This book moved me at a very deep level, because Professor Frost makes the content very personal.
He wrote it when he was suffering (physically and emotionally), and his own pain made him acutely aware of ways that other people can alleviate pain (or conversely, make emotional pain become toxic). Many day-to-day workplace activities create emotional pain (e.g., a negative performance review, a downsizing decision) but people’s responses make all the difference.
Professor Frost’s focus is on managers who operate as “toxin handlers” in their workplaces, but any of us can be toxin handlers for our coworkers. The book helped me to be more mindful of workplace pain points and be more proactive in supporting my colleagues.
Human interaction is never flawless. Even the best relationships produce tension and at times, unpleasant emotions. Since organizations are comprised of people, all organizations generate emotional pain as part of the process of doing business: producing new products on tight deadlines, setting benchmarks for performance, creating budgets, crafting company policies, and so on. Getting the job done is rarely painless. But when emotional pain goes unmanaged or is poorly handled, it can negatively affect both employees and the bottom line - in essence, it becomes toxic. In "Toxic Emotions at Work and What to Do About Them", Peter J. Frost…
The average person spends over 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime – that’s roughly one quarter to one third of a person’s life. I’m an academic researcher who studies work. I know how to design workplaces that are good for organizations (high productivity) and the people who work in them (high employee well-being). But if we leave it all up to senior management, we won’t generate positive changes fast enough. There’s a robust body of evidence that we can all use to make our local workplaces more supportive, inclusive, and fulfilling. I’m on a mission to make the world a better place, one workplace at a time.
This book explains how any employee – not matter their role – can take action to make their workplaces better (without burning career bridges behind them).
I am inspired by Professor Meyerson’s insistence that any employee (not just managers, not just the CEO) can be an agent for positive change. What I particularly love about this book is her focus on small wins. Positive change in work environments is about accumulating small changes, not about huge transformational restructures.
I also love the fact that the book’s recommendations can be applied to any social issue. You can follow your passion to make your workplace more inclusive, more environmentally sustainable, or more socially responsible.
Most people feel at odds with their organizations at one time or another: Managers with families struggle to balance professional and personal responsibilities in often unsympathetic firms. Members of minority groups strive to make their organizations better for others like themselves without limiting their career paths. Socially or environmentally conscious workers seek to act on their values at firms more concerned with profits than global poverty or pollution. Yet many firms leave little room for differences, and people who don't "fit in" conclude that their only option is to assimilate or leave. In Rocking the Boat, Debra E. Meyerson presents…
When I got out of college, I fell in love with mediation—resolving other people’s conflicts in all kinds of settings. In developing my mediation career, I got deep into psychology as a therapist, and then deep into law, as a family lawyer. Putting these professions together, I developed a niche in handling high conflict personalities in family, workplace, and legal disputes. Now I teach how to mediate and negotiate with high conflict people around the world. I am excited to share how to negotiate in high conflict situations to bring peace to relationships everywhere.
I got this book when I was in law school and found it to be filled with insights that I never expected nor got anywhere else. It must be good because it’s on its 8th edition now! However, I should warn you that it’s dense (over 600 pages) and designed for students. But for the reader who wants to become a serious professional negotiator, this is the book I keep referring back to. This is for the person who wants a really deep dive into the subject of negotiations. It covers every aspect from psychology to economics to closing the deal.
Negotiation is a critical skill needed for effective management. Negotiation 8e by Roy J. Lewicki, David M. Saunders, and Bruce Barry explores the major concepts and theories of the psychology of bargaining and negotiation, and the dynamics of interpersonal and intergroup conflict and its resolution. It is relevant to a broad spectrum of management students, not only human resource management or industrial relations candidates.
Avinash Dixit is an emeritus university professor of economics at Princeton. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and was President of the American Economic Association for the year 2008.
This is the book that brought game theory to life. Eschewing dry mathematical theorems, and conducting rigorous logical analysis through rich examples of strategic use of threats, promises, and brinkmanship in real life, Schelling opened up a whole world of practical applications of the theory. My own thinking and writing about game theory owes a huge debt to Schelling. You should also read his “Arms and Influence,” “Micromotives and Macrobehavior,” and “Choice and Consequence.”
A series of closely interrelated essays on game theory, this book deals with an area in which progress has been least satisfactory-the situations where there is a common interest as well as conflict between adversaries: negotiations, war and threats of war, criminal deterrence, extortion, tacit bargaining. It proposes enlightening similarities between, for instance, maneuvering in limited war and in a traffic jam; deterring the Russians and one's own children; the modern strategy of terror and the ancient institution of hostages.
I am a native Bostonian and I have been working in the field of negotiation for over 25 years. I have been very fortunate to have been a member of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School for all that time. As a result, I have had the privilege to work with some amazing colleagues and have been given the opportunity to engage in many fascinating negotiations in the international, governmental, corporate, and nonprofit worlds. I truly love the field because it has the potential to do so much good in the world and because it is exceedingly challenging. For me, the more I learn the more I want to know. That quest continues to this day…
I am recommending this book because Ury turns the mirror on negotiators and gets them to look at themselves and why they do what they do at the negotiating table. This is critically important because I believe half our problems in negotiation are with the other party and the other half are within us. Ury gets people to really take this very seriously and to look in a place most ignore.
In his highly anticipated follow up to the bestselling "Getting to Yes: Negotiation Agreement Without Giving", Harvard University's world renowned negotiation expert William Ury provides the definitive guide to attaining success at work and at home.
Drawing upon decades of experience in some of the world's most challenging conflict areas - from million-dollar corporate mergers to high profile Middle Eastern struggles - Ury highlights a previously unexamined issue which affects us all, personally and professionally: the biggest obstacle to achieving what we want comes from our own self-destructive actions.
In his brilliant new book, Ury outlines practical strategies for dealing…
I did all the right things to become a corporate lawyer or an academic, but learned those were not for me. What I love is solving problems, with other people. And that is what negotiation is all about. Whether it’s work on a big transaction or trying to stop a civil war, putting a deal together up front, or trying much later to pick up the pieces of a relationship gone wrong, what I most enjoy doing is figuring out what we need to solve for, who has to be involved, and how we are going to get there. These books have helped me get better at doing that.
It’s not either/or: You can get a good deal and improve your relationship with the other side, at the same time. I loved Getting to Yes when I first read it in Roger Fisher’s law school class, and I still love it today, because it taught me I could solve difficult problems or deal with difficult people, and do it in a principled way. Whether it is a transaction for a Fortune 500 company, negotiating for a raise, or working on an international boundary dispute, the concepts and tools are the same, and they don’t start by requiring the other side to lose. Whether you are a negotiation expert, or just starting out, start here.
__________________________ THE WORLD'S BESTSELLING GUIDE TO NEGOTIATION
Getting to Yes has been in print for over thirty years. This timeless classic has helped millions of people secure win-win agreements both at work and in their private lives. Founded on principles like:
* Don't bargain over positions
* Separate the people from the problem and
* Insist on objective criteria
Getting to Yes simplifies the whole negotiation process, offering a highly effective framework that will ensure success.
I am a Professor at MIT and co-founder of both the inter-university Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the not-for-profit Consensus Building Institute that provides help in resolving some of the most complex resource management disputes around the world. I have been teaching negotiation and dispute resolution, doing research about the circumstances under which various negotiation strategies do and don’t work, and offering online training for more than four decades. Given the many negotiations I've observed, I’m convinced that negotiating for mutual advantage is the way to go -- avoid unnecessary conflict, get what you want in all kinds of negotiating situations, and walk away with good working relationships and a solid reputation.
Bill Ury was one of the authors of the most important book in the negotiation field – Getting to Yes written more than 30 years ago. It challenged the win-lose model of negotiation that prevailed at the time. Bill and his partners Roger Fisher and Bruce Patton made it clear that we not only need to get agreement, when one is possible given the underlying interests of the parties, we also need to know how to defend our own interests in the face of inside and outside pressure.
One of the reviewers of The Power of a Positive No said that the book “has the power to transform our lives by enabling us to say Yes to what counts – our own needs and values.” I’ve watched him in action; Bill’s three-step method works. First, you say what you really need. Then, you say no to proposals that don’t meet…
“William Ury brings a marvelous blend of experience, insight, integrity and warmth to his work. In this wonderful book he teaches us how to say No—with grace and effect—so that we might create an even better Yes.” —Jim Collins, author of Good to Great
No is perhaps the most important and certainly the most powerful word in the language. Every day we find ourselves in situations where we need to say No–to people at work, at home, and in our communities–because No is the word we must use to protect ourselves and to stand up for everything and everyone that…
Not many people know that I was so timid as a child; I used to burst into tears if I had to ask for something in a store. Now, I am known for my “out there” presentation style and mastery of words. Since 1982, I have been working with individuals and groups to help them get better at persuading, solving conflicts, and having inspiring relationships. So, how can you be a nice, caring person and still be persuasive, even with the most skeptical of people? These books helped me do this.
I love this book because his techniques are so practical and easy to use.
I re-read his book when I was in the middle of a difficult business negotiation over Zoom and email and followed his directions step by step. This led to a positive outcome for both of us.
He makes sure that you are very clear on what is essential for you, enables you to figure out the sometimes hidden motivations of the other person, and guides you through on what to say and do next. I will go through it again the next time I am preparing a negotiation.
A former FBI hostage negotiator offers a new, field-tested approach to negotiating - effective in any situation.
'Riveting' Adam Grant 'Stupendous' The Week 'Brilliant' Guardian ____________________________ After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a kidnapping negotiator brought him face-to-face with bank robbers, gang leaders and terrorists. Never Split the Difference takes you inside his world of high-stakes negotiations, revealing the nine key principles that helped Voss and his colleagues succeed when it mattered the most - when people's lives were at stake.
