Succession & planning consultant
Strong relationships are built on clear, empathetic communication. In 4 Essential Keys to Effective Communication, Bento C. Leal III provides a practical guide to mastering four foundational skills—empathic awareness, empathic listening, empathic speaking, and empathic dialogue. These tools help readers improve their connections at home, at work, and anywhere else relationships matter.
by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
Leadership isn’t defined by titles or trophies; it’s reflected in the impact you have and the legacy you create. In A Leader’s Legacy, James Kouzes and Barry Posner illustrate how exceptional leaders establish lasting influence through small, intentional actions and consistent daily habits.
The central idea is simple but profound: Legacies aren’t built on one big moment. They result from consistent decisions, meaningful relationships, and the environments that leaders shape every day. This focus on the ordinary reveals the emotional core of leadership—the ways leaders touch lives and create opportunities for others to thrive.
In Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day, Daniel Goleman and Cary Cherniss redefine peak performance. They focus on achieving an “optimal ” state—a sustainable state of focus, productivity, and emotional balance—rather than chasing fleeting moments of “flow.” Emotional intelligence (EI) is the key to unlocking this state for individuals, teams, and organizations.
by Adam Grant
Think Again challenges us to reconsider how we approach knowledge, opinions, and beliefs. Author Adam Grant says that the ability to rethink and unlearn in our rapidly changing world is crucial for personal and professional growth. Using scientific research, storytelling, and practical examples, Grant highlights the importance of intellectual humility and the risks associated with cognitive rigidity. He encourages readers to adopt a “scientist” mindset characterized by curiosity, adaptability, and openness to new evidence. This approach can help us navigate change, make better decisions, and inspire others to question their own assumptions.
by Cynthia McCauley and Lynn Fick-Cooper, Center for Creative Leadership
This book aims to help us refine our perspective on group performance by deepening our understanding of “leadership” and its impact on collective success. It encourages us to move beyond instinctively blaming individual leaders for poor performance. Instead, it urges us to recognize that leadership is a social process involving factors across the group, extending beyond the person in charge. As a result, a “leadership” problem isn’t always a “leader” problem. Effective leadership yields three outcomes within the group: direction, alignment, and commitment (DAC). We can enhance the overall success of the group by assessing and improving DAC variables in a holistic manner.
by Paul J. Zak
Stewarding the organization’s culture and operating environment are among the most important leadership functions. And trust is one of the most crucial factors in that environment. Trust profoundly influences everything from employee retention to the organization’s ability to achieve its most crucial goals.
In the Trust Factor, neuroscientist Paul Zak uses his original research to reveal insights for building high-trust organizations. He explains how brain chemicals affect people’s behavior, how trust is undermined, and how you can stimulate it.
by Jennifer Riel and Roger L. Martin
Conventional wisdom says that trade-offs are inevitable when making hard choices. But settling for the least bad option is a lousy way to make a big decision. This book proposes a “third and better way” to make important choices using proven, repeatable processes to create better answers to problems, sidestep our built-in biases, and avoid trading off one stakeholder group’s needs for another.
by Teresa Amabile, Ph.D. and Steven Kramer, Ph.D.
This book uncovers the real ingredients of productivity that lead to high-performance teams and organizations. It’s principally based on research involving 238 employees in seven companies who provided daily diary entries (nearly 12,000 of them) that revealed the ups and downs of their “inner work lives” and the impact on their performance.