The best interpersonal communication books

When it comes to our hardest choices, it can seem as though making trade-offs is inevitable. But what about those crucial times when accepting the obvious trade-off just isn't good enough? What do we do when the choices in front of us don't get us what we need? In those cases, rather than choosing the least worst option, we can use the models in front of us to create a new and superior answer. This is integrative thinking.

Creating Great Choices is a field guide to integrative thinking. The book includes fresh stories of successful integrative thinkers that will demystify the process of creative problem solving, as well as practical tools and exercises to help readers engage with the ideas. 

A compassionate practical guide to retaining your dignity when bullied in a team setting, speaking up for a colleague who is attacked in front of you, preventing a bully from controlling you or your team, and developing a bully-proof mindset.

Learn how to protect yourself from the sometimes devastating impact of bullying in your team. Develop the skills and resilience you need to confront bullying behaviour, and discover how to retain your personal power under pressure during an attack. Learn how to speak out effectively and avoid becoming a passive enabler or an active colluder should you witness a team colleague being targeted. Rediscover your self-confidence and renew your self-belief after team bullying.

Critical Thinking: The Basics is an accessible and engaging introduction to the field of critical thinking, drawing on philosophy, communication, and psychology. Emphasising its relevance to decision making (in personal, professional, and civic life), academic literacy, and personal development, this book supports the reader in understanding and developing the knowledge and skills needed to identify poor reasoning, construct strong arguments, and engage critically in dialogues.

With discussion questions/exercises and suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, this book is an essential read for students approaching the field of critical thinking for the first time, and for the general reader wanting to improve their thinking skills and decision-making abilities.

Shame might be far from the first thing that comes to mind when you think about what's causing your problems. Shame is hidden, and rarely something we talk about, but it can underlie challenges that we deal with on a daily basis, including anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem.

This book will help you understand what shame is, how it arises, and, in turn, how to overcome it. With exercises in each chapter, it provides tools to reflect on, confront and free yourself from shame. The book also includes a questionnaire to assess how much shame impacts you. Be kind to yourself and rediscover your empathy for yourself with Confronting Shame.

If you knew how powerful your story was, you wouldn’t be sitting on it. What if you could make a connection instantly, effortlessly engaging your audience every time you introduced yourself and the work you do? And more importantly, what if you could get people to pay attention to what you had to say, share or sell?

In Glow in the Dark, Mark Leruste shows how to turn your myriad of life experiences into a memorable and magnetic origin story that people will remember, helping you generate opportunities, connections, and rewards beyond your wildest imagination. 

Do This, Not That: Career is a straightforward and easy-to-use guide that will help you navigate the modern workplace, gain the confidence you need to go after what you want, and build the career you dream about.

Organized into chapters based on themes like finding a new job, dealing with your boss, and handling common workplace dilemmas,  this book will help you identify what to do (and not do) in tricky situations, like: asking for a promotion or raise; dealing with a boss who is a micromanager; negotiating a job offer; managing team conflict; creating a “manager-worthy” resume; and many more!

People often get promoted to leadership positions without knowing how to communicate an inspiring strategic vision to the people who report to them. So they focus on what they know: tactics, not strategy. As a result, they become stuck in micromanagement mode. Dianna Booher wants to prevent micromanagement before it happens by providing you with the right leadership communication skills. Grounded in extensive research, this book offers practical guidelines to help professionals think, coach, converse, speak, write, meet, and negotiate strategically to deliver results. In thirty-six brief chapters, Booher shows you how to communicate effectively to audiences up and down the organization so you can fulfill your most essential responsibilities as a leader.

Are you unsure of how to give productive feedback that fully engages and motivates others? Does it make you uncomfortable to give up control, when you can do it faster yourself? Do you struggle to trust other people and hold them accountable? Managers often feel pressure to generate all the ideas and know all the answers, which leads to too much talking and not enough employee engagement.

 In Shut Up and Manage, you’ll find a straightforward, practical guide that provides you with researched principles along with specific examples from the author’s executive coaching work to become a more effective manager and leader. From hard skills such as organizing your work, onboarding, delegating, evaluating, creating goals, and keeping others accountable, to soft skills, such as navigating tough conversations, building trust, coaching, and motivating others, this book provides an operations guide for managers to fully engage others to achieve greater success.

Do you shrink under the spotlight? Discover a powerful method to banish nerves and help you stand out from the crowd. Does public speaking terrify you? Are presentations enough to make your knees knock? Is fear crippling your performance? As a clinical hypnotherapist and singer-songwriter for twenty years, Elisa Di Napoli has played in front of thousands and knows what it is like to suffer at the center of attention.

If you like expert advice on how to defeat anxiety, jargon-free solutions on how to improve your speaking skills, and practical tactics on how to be authentically confident, then you’ll love this groundbreaking resource. Using coaching exercises, hypnotic techniques, and inspiring examples, her life-changing strategies will transform you from camera-shy to someone who dares to be seen.