BLINK

The power of thinking without thinking

Malcolm Gladwell

This book is about rapid cognition, the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When we meet someone for the first time, or read the first few sentences of a book, our mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions that can prove to be very powerful in determining our thoughts and actions. Blink is about those two seconds.

CHUTZPAH
unlocking the maverick mindset for success

Yanky Fachler

Chutzpah explores the ballsy and gutsy chutzpah mindset, and shows how the chutzpah gene in our DNA is waiting to be tapped. Chutzpah contains 100 case studies of famous and not so famous individuals who all chose unconventional routes to achieve their goals.

COMMUNICATION FOR BUSINESS

Henry McClave

A good analysis of the communication process, including the way we encode the messages we send, and how we decode the messages we receive. The book is particularly good on barriers to effective communication. Good chapters on how to improve the way we communicate with our teams.

CRUCIAL CONVERSATIONS 
tools for talking when stakes are high

Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzer

Preparing high-stakes situations, transforming anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue, being persuasive rather than abrasive, prefering healthy conversations over silly games.

DEALING WITH PEOPLE YOU CAN’T STAND
How to bring out the best in people at their worst

Rick Brinkman and Rick Kirschner

The authors tackle the challenges of teamwork and other people-facing situations from the worst case scenario – dealing with other peoples’ negativity, and handling unwanted behaviour. The book analyses the way difficult people think, and suggests techniques for turning conflict into cooperation.

FIERCE CONVERSATIONS
Achieving success at work and in life, one conversation at a time

Susan Scott

Success occurs one conversation at a time – whether it is a team conversation, a coaching conversation, a delegation conversation or a confrontation conversation. Business is fundamentally an extended conversation – with colleagues, customers, and others. Scott claims that to stay competitive, we need to become communication-rich.

FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

This is an eccentric, wacky, articulate and highly personal exploration of why human beings are so prone to mistake dumb luck for consummate skill. Instead of regarding probability as something that may happen in the future, Taleb claims that we need to take account of both observed and unobserved possible outcomes. We can’t judge performance by the results, but by the costs of the alternative.

FREAKONOMICS
A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything

Steven D Levitt, Stephen J Dubner

The fundamental themes of the book are that incentives are the cornerstone of modern life, conventional wisdom is often wrong, dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle causes, experts serve their own agenda, and knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world less so.

FUNKY BUSINESS

Jonas Ridderstrale and Kjell Nordstrom

The authors present a vision of the future for business, a world where only talent will allow you to be unique, where only talent will help you escape business as usual, a world that needs business as unusual, that needs innovative business, unpredictable business, funky business.

GAME PLAN
Your guide to mental toughness at work

Steve Bull

The consultant psychologist to the England cricket team claims that mental toughness in business is about preparation, resilience, control, risk management and execution. The book explores mental toughness, and offers easy-to-apply lessons as practiced by world-beating performers in the business world and beyond.

GOOD TO GREAT
 

Jim Collins

According to this runaway best-seller, good is the enemy of great. If we have good schools, we don’t have great schools. If we have good companies, we don’t have great companies. The challenge is how to take a good organization and turn it into one that produces sustained great results. Collins claims that people are not your most important asset – the right people are.

GROW YOUR OWN ACHIEVERS
A managers guide to developing effective people

Lesley Morrissey

Attitude is never static, and negative factors can often slip into our perspective. Our central nervous system can’t distinguish between a real event and an imagined event – hence we often succumb to self-fulfilling prophecies. This is a pragmatic approach to developing more creative, innovative, dedicated, positive, energetic and committed teams.

HOT SPOTS
Why some companies buzz with energy and innovation – and others don’t

Lynda Gratton

The author identifies Hot Spots as the most successful and most entrepreneurially minded companies that are buzzing with ideas, innovation and sheer trendiness. Hot Spots are places and times where cooperation flourishes, and where energy, innovation, productivity, excitement abound. The challenge facing companies is: How can leaders initiate and nourish Hot Spots?

LEADERSHIP

Rudolph Giuliani

During the minutes, hours and days after the two hijacked planes smashed into the World Trade Centre, Mayor Rudy Giuliani became a highly visible role model for leadership under pressure. The leadership skills he so publicly displayed on that occasion ware no accident. For years, he had been honing these skills during a series of high profile jobs, and in the months prior to 9/11, he had already been working on Leadership.

LEADERSHIP AND SELF-DECEPTION:

Getting Out of the Box

The Arbinger Institute

It's not what we do that matters, but why we do it. We know what the right thing to do is, but constant self-justification becomes such an ingrained habit that it's hard to break free of it. Self-deception hampers our ability to lead, and blinds us to the true cause of our problems. The authors show how self-deception skews our view of ourselves and the world.

LEADERSHIP FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Kevin Cashman

Cashman maintains that leadership is authentic self-expression that creates value. The book explores seven pathways to mastery from within: personal, purpose, change, interpersonal, being, balance and action. This is a book that challenges the reader to ask questions on uncomfortably close-to-the-bone issues.

LEADERSHIP THE SVEN GORAN ERIKSSON WAY - How to turn your team into winners

Julian Birkinshaw, Stuart Crainer

As manager of England’s national soccer team, Sven-Goran Eriksson introduced a leadership style that defied conventional stereotypes of how leaders think and behave. He transformed the English squad from perennial under-achievers with little tactical sense, into one of the best teams in the world. This book shows how business leaders can benefit from his approach..

MAVERICKS AT WORK

William C Taylor, Polly LaBarre

Organizations once dismissed as upstarts are making waves. In an age of hypercompetition and non-stop innovation, the only way to stand out is to be a maverick. The authors describe the strategy of maverick companies as being edgy, not just enduring; disruptive, not just distinctive; and timely, not just timeless.

NO BOSSES BUT LEADERS
How to lead the way to success

John Adair

This classic and pioneering work from the world's first professor of Leadership Studies, is still relevant after 20 years. Adair believes that to be successful, executives have to become business leaders. The book goes beyond fundamentals to look at the day-to-day realities of management and at what a leader has to do in practice.

PUSH
for success

Saira Khan

From the very first episode of the first series of The Apprentice, Saira Khan dominated the screen. She was pushy, she was opinionated, she was irrepressible, and she held her own in any argument. In this book on assertiveness, Saira explains what makes her tick, and why she does not regard being self-confident as wrong. On the contrary, she claims that this is a pre-requisite for getting on in the business world.

RESOLVING CONFLICT
How to manage disagreements and develop trust and understanding

Shay and Margaret McConnon

This book offers an understanding of the nature of how we communicate, and shows how easily we slip into conflict mode. The authors offer tips on how to remove the mind-reading syndrome, how to go beyond assumptions, and how to choose words that promote rather than inhibit effective communication. The book also offers ways of preventing conflict at work and at home.

SHACKLETON'S WAY
Leadership lessons from the great Antarctic Explorer

Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell

Between 1914 and 1916, Sir Ernest Shackleton, hailed by some as "the greatest leader that ever came on God's earth, bar none," reached a new pinnacle of leadership when he led his entire crew of twenty-seven men to safety after a death-defying two years in freezing Antarctica. Shackleton has been a role model for countless business and political leaders.

SIMPLY BRILLIANT 
The competitive advantage of common sense

Fergus O’Connell

This book features common sense principles that can be adapted to attack many of the workplace problems we encounter on a daily basis. This is the smart person’s guide to the straightforward stuff that many of us overlook as we search for more complex answers.  

THE 12 CLICHES OF SELLING – AND WHY THEY WORK

Barry Farber

Farber takes a fresh look at 12 sales maxims that are so packed with wisdom and experience that they’ve become clichés. He employs the shortcut wisdom of the clichés to reinfoprce the core values of selling.

THE 8TH HABIT

Steven Covey

A follow-up to the author’s famous 7 Habits of Successful People, this book focuses on the profound yearning in both people and organizations to find their true voice, to matter, to make a difference. If the 7 habits are about doing, the 8th is about being.

THE ART OF HAPPINESS AT WORK

The Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler

The Dalai Lama and psychiatrist Howard Cutler discuss how to turn work into a satisfying and meaningful part of our lives. They explore the nature of work, how to find fulfillment, and how to reconcile the relationship between our personal values and the values of our employer, coping with dissatisfaction, coping with conflict with colleagues, and handling boredom.

THE HALO
EFFECT

Phil Rosenzweig

Most popular business ideas are no more than soothing platitudes that promise easy success to harried managers. Too many consultants, journalists and other pundits tap scientifically suspect methods to produce flawed assumptions that attribute sweeping positive qualities to any successful company. Many mega-selling books, like Jim Collins’ Good to Great, are nothing more than comforting, highbrow business fables.

THE INSPIRATIONAL LEADER

How to motivate, encourage and achieve success

John Adair

The author, the world's first professor of Leadership Studies, explains the fundamentals of leadership in a lucid and concise manner, and looks at the day-to-day realities of management and at what a leader has to do in practice. The book grew out of a series of real consultations with a young business executive who was about to take a leadership role in a struggling company.

THE INVISIBLE EMPLOYEE
Realizing the hidden potential in everyone

Adrian Gostick, Chester Elton

One of the major threats to organizations is employees who show up every day but who really aren’t there. They are actively disengaged, and go on to recruit others to join them in their discontent. These invisible employees leave chaos in their wake, and it is the challenge of management to manage employees in ways that make them feel valued and appreciated.

THE JELLY EFFECT
How to Make Your Communication Stick

Andy Bounds

Too much information and not enough relevance is a problem that pervades almost all business communication. The way many people communicate is like filling a bucket with jelly, flinging it at their audience, and hoping some of it sticks. It's ineffective, irritating and messy. Better communication means more relevance and a lot less jelly.

THE LIVING LEADER:
Become the leader you want to be

Penny Ferguson

This book shows that outstanding leadership is not just about how good a leader you are, but about how many leaders you develop. Leadership is not primarily about what you do, but about who you are and who you choose to be. Leadership is more "being" than "doing."

THE NO ASSHOLE RULE

Robert Sutton

Sutton defines assholes as those who deliberately make co-workers feel bad about themselves and who focus their aggression on the less powerful. Assholes poison the work environment, decrease productivity, induce qualified employees to quit and are detrimental to businesses. Sutton’s unequivocal recommendation: assholes have to go.

THE ONE MINUTE SALES PERSON
The quickest way to more sales with less stress

Spencer Johnson

The best-selling author of Who Moved My Cheese? claims that everyone is a sales person, and examines how to sell to others – before, during and after the sale, as well as self-managed selling.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO KNOW….
about great managing and
great leading

Marcus Buckingham

This book challenges the conventional maxim that leadership is the ultimate panacea. The author explores the central qualities at the core of great managing and great leading, and suggests how to push the right people-management buttons. Managing and leading are not interchangeable, and good organizations need both.

THE SALES BIBLE
The ultimate sales resource

Jeffery Gitomer

Gitomer shows how to make sales while others are whining, how to deliver your 30 second personal commercial, making cold calls hot, helping prospects feel confident to buy from you, preventing and overcoming objections, knowing how the product is used, and making sales after the 7th NO.

THE TIPPING POINT

Malcolm Gladwell

The tipping point is that magic moment when ideas, trends and social behaviours cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire. Gladwell explores the way ideas, behavior, messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease.

WINNING

Jack Welch

With his trademark optimistic, no-excuses, get-it-done approach, Welch offers insights, original thinking and solutions to nuts-and-bolts problems that change the way we relate to work. This classic book is a rich source of management and leadership wisdom.

WOMBAT SELLING How to sell by Word of Mouth

Michael Hewitt-Gleeson

Based on the assumption that we're not good at training salespeople, the author shows that it's not about the close of the sale, it's about the start of a relationship, and how to create sales opportunities out of thin air.

WORDS THAT WORK

Frank Luntz

In this book, Luntz says that we all need to narrow the gap between what we mean and what others actually interpret. He shows how the strategic and tactical use of specific words and phrases can change how people think and how they behave. The biggest challenge is how to make people hear our words among all the chatter.

YOU DON’T NEED A TITLE TO BE A LEADER

Mark Stanborn

Real leaders are great at communicating and at listening, they care deeply about the success of the whole team, and they encourage their people to contribute usefully to the team. You don’t need to be born with leadership skills, but you do have to master them if you want to become an effective leader.