100 books like Toxic Emotions at Work

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.  

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!

When I read this book for the first time, my reaction was “wow.”

Professor Rousseau helped me to appreciate that everything (really, everything!) related to work was malleable and negotiable. We can all be more proactive in co-designing our own work arrangements, so that we can be happier people and deliver better value to our families, employers, and communities.

I say “negotiable” but the book is not motivated by self-interest. The book focuses on idiosyncratic deals that help employees to leverage their unique strengths, so that everyone (including managers and coworkers) benefit from employee i-deals.

Professor Rousseau’s recommendations are firmly anchored in empirical evidence, so her advice to employees is spot-on.  

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.

I personally recommend this book because it clearly pinpoints the importance of some relevant values (e.g., gratitude, purpose, meaning) and their practical application to the work environment. I like the way this text discusses the regular use of these values and their direct relationship with business key parameters (e.g., growth, etc.). I found useful the description of the human workplace shown in the book, which includes traits like trust, meaningful work, empowerment, and others. There are some interesting insights on the importance of employee experience and specific ways to enhance it, among other topics. Finally, it is interesting that this book is littered with valuable statistical data backing its more relevant themes.   

Do you use a webcam and a microphone to communicate with other people? Chances are you do and chances are you do it all the time! If that’s the case, this is an extremely important book for you, and anyone who meets with people via zoom, teams, google groups, or any number of other virtual meeting platforms. The On-Camera Coach is all about how to lead in a world that relies so heavily on communicating through video. It talks about how to enable presence, how to manage one’s “production value,” and how to inspire others using best practices in these virtual and now hybrid settings. I strongly recommend this read for sure!

This is the oldest book on my list and is the most underrated. It describes, with serious rigour and detail, how to run more effective software projects and teams.

Most of this advice has been ignored by most of the industry for most of the time but it’s a big part of the reason I’ve worked from home for 14 years and am as productive as I am today.

You might not think of excitement when you hear the words “Digital Governance” but I can assure you that this book is a real page-turner…especially if your job involves managing large-scale information messes. There is a special kind of chaos that only information and knowledge workers can understand and this book paints a picture so many of us have seen in practice but in a way that leaves the reader inspired to fight another day, instead of wallowing in a sea of information-induced self-pity.

I recommend this book because I have seen too many information architecture efforts die on the vine due to a lack of good governance. The frameworks and recommendations in this book mean I always have a playbook to hand to teams in need.

Stan captures the essence of the mindset needed to Collaborate. To quote Slap: “When an employee culture is repositioned as a newly precious, workable asset, a company will naturally protect it, same as with any asset. An employee culture can’t be protected without protecting their humanity. If we lose humanity in business, we’re all doomed. If we save it we will have saved ourselves. In case you fear this icy hand of altruism will grip your own company by the throat and choke the life out of revenue, not to worry: We’re talking here about making the business case for humanity. In any environment where meaning is determined by metrics, the point of view and processes in this book are going to cause measurable, sustainable results." We agree.

You know how people say ‘it’s business, it’s not personal’? Well that’s just wrong, business is personal because it’s made up of people – people with lives, families, hopes, fears, and dreams.

The authors argue that one of the main problems with our workplaces is that there isn’t enough compassion at work. Workplaces rob their employees of humanity and motivation, which has a negative effect on employee wellbeing, but also organizational potential. I have seen this in my own research and I have to say I couldn’t agree more.

The authors do a great job showing us that compassion isn’t a so-called ‘soft’ value, but a hard-core business strategy. The book’s strength is that it also works as a handbook for organizations to become more compassionate and caring.