Here are 100 books that Systems Inspired Leadership fans have personally recommended if you like
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For over a decade I helped people develop their skills and expand their leaderful-ness in Agile Coaching and I kept hearing the same blocker: “This is great and all, but my leaders don’t get it. They are the impediment.” After working with many thousands of Agilists I decided to go into the “belly of the beast” and personally coach leadership teams. What I found were not beasts or even garden variety egomaniacs. Instead, I found well-meaning people who are genuinely confounded by the complexity of today’s business landscape and who struggle with performance-killing team dynamics. Good news: the human technology to “solve” these issues is widely available. We know how.
This book posits that the most important function of an organizational leader is to create other leaders throughout the organization. That’s right…not problem-solving, not clever strategy, not vision but leadership development. That’s because those other aspects are “table stakes” for the game of leadership in today’s complex business world. What I like about this book is that it is based on a huge pool of data about what makes leaders effective in the 21st-century and many of the insights are drawn from leaders themselves….from the feedback they give when they evaluate other leaders using the Leadership Circle Profile 360° assessment. It’s a nice marriage of relatable info “from the horse’s mouth” and decades of leadership theory borne out by insights from the assessment of hundreds of thousands of leaders. If you want to very specifically know what it takes to be a 21st-century leader, this book is a…
How do senior leaders, in their own words, describe the most effective leaders-the ones that get results, grow the business, enhance the culture and leave in their wake a trail of other really effective leaders? Conversely, how do senior leaders describe the kind of leader that undercuts the organization's capacity and capability to create its future? This book, based on groundbreaking research, shows how senior leaders describe and develop leadership that works, that does not, that scales, and that limits scale.
Is your leadership built for scale as you advance in today's volatile, uncertain,…
For over a decade I helped people develop their skills and expand their leaderful-ness in Agile Coaching and I kept hearing the same blocker: “This is great and all, but my leaders don’t get it. They are the impediment.” After working with many thousands of Agilists I decided to go into the “belly of the beast” and personally coach leadership teams. What I found were not beasts or even garden variety egomaniacs. Instead, I found well-meaning people who are genuinely confounded by the complexity of today’s business landscape and who struggle with performance-killing team dynamics. Good news: the human technology to “solve” these issues is widely available. We know how.
This book gives the philosophical underpinning for why creating a leadership development culture in all parts of your organization is essential for working in our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) business landscape. And, it shows you how to do it with specific practices and new-mindset concepts. It is geared toward organizations with Agile ways of working in the environment, but is also useful if Agile is not present. I especially enjoy the way several theories of adult development are interwoven in this book which makes using them to guide leadership development strategies (your own and others) simpler and more immediately applicable.
Organizations around the globe are struggling to adapt to an increasingly complex and turbulent social, economic, technological, and business environment—whether they be banks, product development companies, or city councils. Many are responding by embracing agility as a way of working—some with a primary orientation around operational agility (Agile software development methods such as Scrum and SAFe), others focusing on customer development agility (e.g., Lean Startup), while others are embracing a broader business agility. In almost all of these cases, the prevailing notion of agility is concerned primarily with processes and practices, with systems and structures—a form of outer agility. But,…
At 29 I was one of the first female traders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, building my own all-female trading company. I lost everything in 1987, which gave me a stellar opportunity to understand my power to choose how I responded to the turmoil. Now, I’m an internationally credentialed Master Certified Coach, Board Certified Coach, University of Chicago-trained psychotherapist, and Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Over 25 years ago I founded my coaching company, Jody Michael Associates. We focus on building emotional intelligence, executive presence, and mental fitness. When we help our clients learn to lead lightly, they take themselves, their teams, and their organizations to new levels of awareness, discernment, and performance.
I love this book because I routinely see blind spots get in the way of leaders’ performance and effectiveness.
These leaders are blind to how they are perceived or to their ineffective behaviors. The reason is simple – most of us don’t investigate and uncover the hidden perspectives we embody; the deeply reactive, repetitive response we have day-in and day-out, or understand the brilliant defense mechanisms we’ve built.
The reason I love this book is because it’s easy to read and the concept is simple, but profound. The authors explain clearly why forcing ourselves to look at our blind spots is the first step in correcting them, and paves the way for enhanced communication, increased productivity, and long-term success.
Cultivating the ability to see things from another person’s perspective is among other ways this book helps break the cycle of “self-deception,” that prevents leaders from reaching their full potential. It’s…
This third edition of an international bestseller--over 2 million copies sold worldwide and translated into 33 languages--details how its powerful insights on motivation, conflict, and collaboration can benefit organizations as well as individuals.
Since its original publication in 2000, Leadership and Self-Deception has become an international word-of-mouth phenomenon. Rather than tapering off, it sells more copies every year. The book's central insight--that the key to leadership lies not in what we do but in who we are--has proven to have powerful implications not only for organizational leadership but in readers' personal lives as well.
Leadership and Self-Deception uses an entertaining…
For over a decade I helped people develop their skills and expand their leaderful-ness in Agile Coaching and I kept hearing the same blocker: “This is great and all, but my leaders don’t get it. They are the impediment.” After working with many thousands of Agilists I decided to go into the “belly of the beast” and personally coach leadership teams. What I found were not beasts or even garden variety egomaniacs. Instead, I found well-meaning people who are genuinely confounded by the complexity of today’s business landscape and who struggle with performance-killing team dynamics. Good news: the human technology to “solve” these issues is widely available. We know how.
Amazon tells me I have bought this book 8 times. Honestly, I’m surprised it’s that few. I tend to give Perseverance to colleagues and leaders I am coaching. We all need a little help “keepin' on keepin’ on” when we are doing the heavy lifting of inner development and this little book does that. Perseverance manages to be simple and profound, short and deep, and oh, so helpful for functioning in the midst of chaos. You can open it to any “random” page and get the message you need in the moment, or to prepare your mind and heart for the day ahead. Given the permanent whitewater we leaders find ourselves in, the need for this kind of inner resourcefulness is essential, and the need to replenish it constantly.
In this inspiring and beautifully illustrated book, bestselling author Margaret Wheatley offers guidance to people everywhere for how to persevere through challenges in their personal lives, with their families, at their workplaces, in their communities, and in their struggles to make a better world. She provides hope, wisdom, and perspective for learning the discipline of perseverance.
Wheatley does not offer the usual feel-good, rah-rah messages. Instead, she focuses on the situations, feelings, and challenges that can, over time, cause us to lose heart or lose our way. Perseverance is a day-by-day decision not to give up. We have to notice…
I am a Clinical Psychologist and the parent of a once-anxious child who grew up before I developed the expertise I now have, which means I did just about everything wrong. The silver lining, I guess, is that I see anxiety not only from a therapist’s perspective but also through the eyes of a child who is suffering and a parent who has no idea how to help. All of the books I have written, and all that I have recommended, speak respectfully to children and the adults reading with them about real struggles and real solutions. I feel privileged to be able to do this work.
This book manages to convey lots of information about anxiety without feeling overwhelming to tween readers, in part due to an effective layout and the use of workbook activities (quizzes, questionnaires, word searches, etc.) that encourage kids to personalize and practice what they are learning. Anxiety is externalized in the form of a gremlin, which readers are taught to recognize, challenge, and ultimately tame. There is the added bonus of a UK author – and plenty of British-isms - helping US readers remember the universality of anxiety.
Children's Choice Winner at the School Library Association's Information Book Awards 2014
The Anxiety Gremlin loves one thing - to feed on your anxiety! But watch out, as the fuller he gets, the more anxious you get! How can you stop him? Starve him of his favourite food - your anxiety - and he'll shrink and shrivel away.
Starving the Anxiety Gremlin is a unique and award-winning resource to help young people understand different types of anxiety and how to manage them, including panic attacks, phobias, social anxiety, generalised anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. Based on cognitive behavioural principles that…
I had depression when I was young, but I didn’t know what that meant or what to do about it. So much of mental health is invisible and nobody knew. I didn’t have the language to explain how I felt, or to ask for help, and I didn’t know how to find out. Any book that could have helped me jump those hurdles would have been incredibly valuable. Children relate to stories, characters, metaphors and pictures more than words. Giving children the tools to explore how they feel in ways they can relate to is really important. I wouldn’t want anyone else to feel as alone as I did.
I will not mince words: this book is silly. It follows a very simple formula of describing the symptoms of anxiety, general worry, and stress alongside photographs of birds. The funny expressions candidly captured on the bird’s faces somehow seem to always illustrate the specific situations and emotions being described in the text more perfectly than I even could as a professional illustrator. It’s really good fun and would be an especially great resource for a parent/carer/teacher to read along with an anxious child - jumping off and discussing how they relate to what the birds look like they’re feeling as they go.
Life as a bird can be stressful! From worrying about airplanes, windows, and getting enough worms to eat, it is clear that birds can be anxious beings. Through a light-touch, quizzical depiction of bird behaviour, All Birds Have Anxiety uses colourful images and astute explanations to explore with gentle humour what it means to live with anxiety day-to-day, and how to begin to deal with it.
Following the style of the best-selling All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome and All Dogs Have ADHD, wonderful colour photographs express the complex and difficult ideas related to anxiety disorder in an easy-to-understand way. This…
Often, people don’t understand the emotions of a child. The care and keeping of children have been my life focus as a mother of five,4-H leader, Kindergarten aide, religious education teacher, and owner of Whalen’s Country Childcare. I hold dear the awe and wonder seen in the eyes of a child and hope to forever be inspired by the sight. Since my new book, Little Red Rolls Away was released, I have presented at schools, libraries, appeared in newspapers, magazines, and been featured on CBS Good Day Sacramento. Endorsements include filmmaker Joey Travolta, Founderand Creative Director, Inclusion Films, a company that aims to teach the art of filmmaking to people with developmental disabilities.
The title explains the way children often feel…much too much! We tend to overdo it when wanting to give our children too much of most things. Children become overwhelmed as Maud did. This book is a wonderful way to show children how this can happen and help them understand more isn’t always better and sometimes a break is best. I especially like the note to caregivers in the back.
Maud the koala can't wait for her birthday party--until everything starts to feel way too overwhelming.
Maud is having a birthday party in her backyard, and she's invited her friends--all fifty-six of them--to celebrate with her. She's not worried, though. After all, you can never have too much birthday! But when the guests arrive and the party gets packed, she isn't so sure. What will happen if Maud can't bear her own birthday?
J. E. Morris's charming illustrations and comic-like panels make this a unique format with a narrative style perfect for storytime.
As a philosopher, I’m not just interested in solving ‘academic’ problems that arise from philosophical inquiry. I also think philosophy should return to the role it often had in the ancient world, as a tool for helping us navigate the perennial challenges that being human presents us. Much of my own philosophical work has sought to help us figure out how to relate to arguably the biggest challenge we face: that we inevitably die. The books on this list are powerful examples of how philosophy can provide us with an emotional compass!
I enjoy being surprised by philosophical work on emotions. Kurth’s The Anxious Mind is full of unexpected insights into anxiety, an emotion that seems to have little to recommend it. But Kurth manages to persuade readers that we should actually be glad for the presence of anxiety in our lives. He explains how anxiety can enhance our performance and contribute to moral progress both individually and collectively.
An empirically informed, philosophical account of the nature of anxiety and its value for agency, virtue, and decision making.
In The Anxious Mind, Charlie Kurth offers a philosophical account of anxiety in its various forms, investigating its nature and arguing for its value in agency, virtue, and decision making. Folk wisdom tells us that anxiety is unpleasant and painful, and scholarly research seems to provide empirical and philosophical confirmation of this. But Kurth points to anxiety's positive effects: enhancing performance, facilitating social interaction, and even contributing to moral thought and action.
Kurth argues that an empirically informed philosophical account of…
I have cerebral palsy, but the list of things that I absolutely can’t do is surprisingly short: I can climb a flight of steps or walk the length of a football field, for example, but those tasks are going to take a lot more time and energy for me than they would an able-bodied person. We all choose where to invest in life, but cerebral palsy makes that process much more deliberate, and I’ve been fascinated by it for a long time. I’m always on the hunt for stories that demonstrate that our choices shape our life, not our limitations, and I’m determined to choose joy.
I love this book because it’s a triumph of storytelling—and by that, I mean both the way that the story is narrated, as the audiobook frequently gave me chills, and the way that the story is told by the author. I love this book because it’s realistic enough to draw me in, unusual enough to keep me guessing, and rewarding enough for every single second I spent listening to it to pay off in the end.
I was inspired by this book in the very best way: when an author presents characters with realistic, messy lives and then provides them with happy endings, it’s easy for me as a reader to believe that joy is out there waiting in the mess for me as well.
The funny, touching and unpredictable No. 1 New York Times bestseller, now a major Netflix TV series
'A brilliant and comforting read' MATT HAIG 'Funny, compassionate and wise. An absolute joy' A.J. PEARCE 'A surefooted insight into the absurdity, beauty and ache of life' GUARDIAN 'I laughed, I sobbed, I recommended it to literally everyone I know' BUZZFEED 'Captures the messy essence of being human' WASHINGTON POST
From the 18 million copy internationally bestselling author of A Man Called Ove _______
It's New Year's Eve and House Tricks estate agents are hosting an open viewing in an up-market apartment when…
Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein have been thinking deep thoughts and writing jokes for decades, and now they are here to help us understand philosophy through jokes, and jokes through philosophy. They like philosophy and they like jokes, not necessarily in that order. Best of all, they like combining them.
First published in 1844, Soren Kierkegaard's concise treatise identified-long before Freud-anxiety as a profound human condition, portraying human existence largely as a constant struggle with our own spiritual identities.
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