Here are 100 books that The Collaboration Equation fans have personally recommended if you like
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I spent 20 years leading global teams in Silicon Valley, and I had few role models for empathetic, human, and inclusive leadership. I was committed to being the leader I wished I’d had all those years. I had a lot of success, a big VP-level job, and I loved my work. Then, I got a new manager who bullied, undermined, and silenced me. I decided I wanted to help leaders do better. I became an author, speaker, and consultant focused on inspiring leaders to create an environment where everyone is heard, seen, and respected.
When I received an advanced reader copy of this book from the author, Stephen Shedletzky (aka Shed), I was prepared to read with a critical eye because I had already felt I knew a lot about building psychologically safe team cultures. However, as soon as I read the opening of the book, where Shed shares the story behind Boeing’s 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019, I was hooked.
I appreciated the depth of the book. It’s not only about why leaders need to create a psychologically safe environment in which people can speak up and how they can do it; it’s also about how they make it worth taking the risk of speaking up. I loved the stories and found the whole book highly compelling.
We know the impacts of poor leadership: lackluster performance, missed opportunities, deleterious cultures, and, in some cases, disaster. While these issues are all too common, leaders also possess an immense opportunity. They can create a speak-up culture, one in which people feel it is both safe and worth it to share their ideas, concerns, disagreements, and even mistakes-all for the betterment of the organization.
Speak-Up Culture is for leaders at all levels? from senior executives who believe in putting people and purpose first; to mid-level supervisors who wish to lead better and nurture the voice of their people; to aspiring…
I’m now in my 25th year as professor of eastern philosophy at Santa Monica College. One of the things I love most about teaching this subject is the unconventional nature of the way I'm able to approach it. Unlike many other academic subjects, it lends itself to an experiential counterpart, so it’s a joy to share a few minutes of meditation before getting into any lectures or discussions. I share from my own personal experiences in different styles of meditation, which come from years of trainings in Kundalini and Hatha Yoga, as well as from my background in Zen.
In my own book, The Buddha in the Classroom, I tell the story of my fortuitous and life-changing first encounter with this book, while in my first year of college. Foreshadowing my career as a teacher of eastern philosophy, it lit the fire of my ongoing interest in Zen and had a profound impact on my personal journey into meditation. I sensed that the ironic title held some precious secret. I would discover, within its pages, the magic that happens when we learn to lean into the unknown, rather than fight against it. Indeed, the search for assuredness in life only seems to perpetuate the angst that is at the root of all the anxiety that characterizes the human condition... at least for many of us! Through letting go, we become more free.
Acclaimed philosopher Alan Watts shows us how—in an age of unprecedented anxiety—we can find fulfillment by embracing the present and living more fully in the now. He is "the perfect guide for a course correction in life" (from the Introduction by Deepak Chopra).
The brain can only assume its proper behavior when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it.
Alan Watts draws on the wisdom of Eastern philosophy and religion in this timeless and classic guide to living a more fulfilling life. His…
I am a compulsive reader and writer of speculative fiction, in love with the genre’s capacity to extrapolate our present social, economic and technological into horrifying/astonishing futures. That being said, I need strong writing and compelling characters to pull me into a world and make it feel lived in and real. It’s this kind of emotional realism that I seek out as a reader and try to create as an author.
Curveball is less compelled by plot than by setting and character. Sorese’s future is gorgeously imagined in melting black, white, and gray with electric orange highlights. Every element–from the clothing to the tech to the furniture–is thoughtfully designed and elegantly rendered. Moreover, Curveball has some of the best acting I have ever seen in *any* graphic novel. A triumph!
Curveball is a science fiction graphic novel telling the story of a waiter named Avery coping with the ending of a difficult relationship. Having spent years attempting to build something substantial with an indecisive sailor named Christophe, Avery stubbornly holds on despite the mounting evidence against him. The idea of the relationship has eclipsed its reality and in Avery's already troubled life, the allure of something dependable is a powerful force.
Curveball focuses on the duality of hope and delusion. How ignorance is integral to surviving our day to day lives but can be incredibly destructive if allowed to blossom…
I’ve lived with anxiety for most of my life. Whether it’s been with emetophobia (a phobia of vomit) or an intense bout of panic attacks, I know the story well. Now, as a psychologist, I’ve seen up close what works and what doesn’t. I love helping my clients and the audiences that I work with learn how to accept their anxiety, rather than try to make it go away. This is often counterintuitive at first but we can still live an empowered life, even with the anxiety present. When we do this, we’ve unlocked a whole new level of liberation where we can show up fully, worries and all.
This book is a staple in the field of psychology and mental health and for very good reason.
So many of us struggle with being kind to our mind and we worry that we’ll truly fall apart if we are compassionate to ourselves. Dr. Neff brings the evidence-backed research to prove that self-compassion is the antidote to anxiety and it has incredibly restorative potential to help us not only get back to baseline, but truly feel better.
THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION WITH A NEW FOREWORD FROM KRISTIN NEFF
'Kristin Neff offers practical, wise guidance on the path of emotional healing and deep inner transformation.' Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Acceptance
Kristin Neff PhD, is a professor in educational psychology, and the world's expert on self-compassion. A pioneer who established self-compassion as a field of study, Kristin offers a powerful solution for combating negativity and insecurity - the symptoms of living in a high-pressure world.
Through tried and tested exercises and audio downloads, readers learn the 3 core components that will help to heal destructive emotional patterns…
When I worked in clinical practice as a psychotherapist, I worked with many burnt-out clients and always found it frustrating that the conventional wisdom was to take time off or stop working, which is just not practical (or desirable) for many people. I was always looking for alternative things people could do to help themselves. Then I experienced burnout myself, and whilst it was dreadful, I learnt first hand how to put all of this into practice, hence my research on the topic. I now work with people and organisations in high pressured, innovative environments where the focus is on preventing burnout rather than recovering.
In organisations, culture can drive or protect people against burnout, and I love Amy’s work because she addresses a wide range of organisational issues through the topic of psychological safety.
I find the ideas and concrete strategies described in this book can flex to almost any type of business and she provides just enough science to convince the more academically minded whilst remaining practical and realistic.
Conquer the most essential adaptation to the knowledge economy
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are serious about success in the modern economy. With so much riding on innovation, creativity, and spark, it is essential to attract and retain quality talent-but what good does this talent do if no one is able to speak their mind? The traditional culture of "fitting in" and "going along" spells doom in the knowledge economy. Success requires a continuous influx of new ideas, new challenges, and critical thought,…
We are scholars and writers, coaches and company builders, optimists, and (on our best days) accelerators of action. It’s been the privilege of our lives to work as change agents at some of the world’s most influential companies—and with some of the world’s most inspiring business leaders. But at the core of our identities, we are educators, which is why we write books about leadership. We believe that what we’ve learned in the process of changing things can be useful to anyone who seeks to lead, particularly now, when the scale and complexity of our shared challenges can seem overwhelming.
This book changed our relationship with failure. We stopped seeing failure as something to avoid at all costs, an idea that was wired into us at a young age.
In our work with organizations, we’ve also observed that a willingness to experiment and “fail wisely,” in the author’s words, is part of the foundation for effective leadership. This book shows you how to take smart risks while preventing avoidable harms.
Shortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year
A revolutionary guide that will transform your relationship with failure, from the pioneering researcher of psychological safety and award-winning Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson.
We used to think of failure as the opposite of success. Now, we’re often torn between two “failure cultures”: one that says to avoid failure at all costs, the other that says fail fast, fail often. The trouble is that both approaches lack the crucial distinctions to help us separate good failure from bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail…
Frans Johansson is the Co-Founder and CEO at The Medici Group, an enterprise solutions firm that helps organizations build and sustain high-performing teams through our revolutionary team coaching platform: Renaissance. Our firm's ethos--diversity and inclusion drive innovation--is informed by our work with over 4,000 teams in virtually every sector and by his two books The Medici Effect and The Click Moment.
Amy coined the term psychological safety, and in this book, she tells you how to create that environment in order to build high-performance teams. This book walks you through every step needed and how to respond to the most common speed bumps when building an inclusive culture. She connects a diversity of every dimension to the process, and her work is a must-read.
The next level of breakthrough thinking in organizational learning, leadership, and change Harvard professor Amy Edmondson shows how leaders can make organizational learning happen by building teams that learn. Based on years of research and case studies from Verizon, Bank of America, and Children's Hospital, Edmondson outlines the factors that typically prevent groups from learning, such as the fear of failure, groupthink, power structures, and information hording. She shows how leaders can control these factors by encouraging reflection, creating psychological safety, and overcoming defensive routines that inhibit the sharing of ideas, among others. Leaders can use practical management strategies to…
I feel passionate about the topic of friendship because I haven’t been a great friend to all the people that have mattered to me. I’ve learned the value of friendship by making a lot of mistakes. I’m very lucky to be in my 40’s, have an amazing family, and still have a few individuals that I’ve known my entire adult life, who I still talk to on a regular basis. These people are really good friends, because, to be honest, they’ve seen me at my worst, and still love me. I consider myself a wealthy man, in no small part because of my friends.
I
was friends with the author in high school, and we co-edited the comedy section
of the school paper together. Reading her book as an adult is such a joy. Her
irreverent sense of humor really shines through. It's a very simple story about
two (monster) friends who find a red door. One imagines all the worst things
that could be behind it, while another imagines all the best. It's a great
example of how different points of view make for the best teams. Also, the
illustrations by Burton are both playful and breathtaking, with colors and
characters that really pop!
Monsters Morton and Bogart are best friends. But they don't always see eye to eye. So when they encounter a closed door, anxious Bogart wants to keep it closed, because there must be something really bad on the other side. But Morton thinks it'll be something amazing! Which is it?
Readers learn that, while not knowing can be frightening, being brave can lead to new discoveries. And even though your imagination can make it easy to worry, it can also make life better, less scary, and more fun.
In my younger days I was a graphic designer and copywriter, approaching brands largely from a creative viewpoint. Over the years I’ve discovered that creative work is much more powerful when harnessed to business strategy, and business strategy is much more powerful when combined with exceptional creative work. I’ve characterized the gulf between strategy and creativity as the “brand gap,” which has led to eight books on branding and a school for professional mastery called Level C.
Marketing psychologist Kit Yarrow explains how technology has rewired our brains, making us more individualistic, isolated, emotional, and distrustful. This is not a pessimistic book—it’s a practical guide to addressing customers’ desires and insecurities in a time of deep cultural shifts. Not only has she done her homework, but she also presents the results with lightness and clarity.
Take a glimpse into the mind of the modern consumer A decade of swift and stunning change has profoundly affected the psychology of how, when, and why we shop and buy. In Decoding the New Consumer Mind, award-winning consumer psychologist Kit Yarrow shares surprising insights about the new motivations and behaviors of shoppers, taking marketers where they need to be today: into the deeply psychological and often unconscious relationships that people have with products, retailers, marketing communications, and brands. Drawing on hundreds of consumer interviews and shop-alongs, Yarrow reveals the trends that define our transformed behavior. For example, when we…
I am a scholar of global politics, and I am drawn to psychoanalysis because it studies the unseen in politics, or rather, those things that are often in plain sight but remain unacknowledged. For example, why is it that, especially in this information economy, we are well aware of the inequality and environmental destruction that our current capitalist system is based on, but we still continue to invest in it (through shopping, taking out loans, using credit cards, etc.)? Psychoanalysis says that it's because we are unconsciously seduced by capitalism—we love shopping despite knowing about the socioeconomic and environmental dangers of doing it. I’m fascinated by that process of disavowal.
This is one of the first books that “blew my mind” when I was a young university student: it remains the one I constantly return to because it seeks to understand the psychoanalytic foundations of racism under French colonialism.
Fanon was only 27 when his book was first published in 1952, but his reflections provide a stunningly passionate and layered view on how anti-Black racism (de)forms the subjectivity of both white and Black people, locking them into constructions of whiteness/blackness that require constant questioning.
His arguments on the psychoanalytic and political underpinnings of racism remain as relevant today as they were in his time.
Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work. Fanon’s masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of readers. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a…
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