2018 Reading List

Sleep for Success (James Maas, Rebecca Robbins) 
Tips on how to relax, get centered, get eight hours of sleep, and be happier and more successful. Recent research has shown us that when we get enough sleep, we are able to accomplish more in less time and with less stress and greater health. A convincing, psychological approach to changing attitudes and behaviours, is written for anyone who wants to get a great night's sleep, feel wide awake, and be a peak performer all day. If you're human, chances are that you are at least somewhat sleep deprived.
 
Manager as Coach: The New Way to Get Results (Andrew Gilbert, Jennifer Rogers, Karen Whittleworth)
In Manager as Coach, Jenny Rogers challenges many of the traditional assumptions about what works in management and shows you, step by step, how to be a brilliant manager and get fantastic results: Reduce your stress, develop employees' key skills, Create a culture of engagement, Improve bottom line results. 'Employee engagement' is the magical ingredient to manage performance: it makes staff genuinely committed, creating excellent work. Few organisations actually achieve it, though all say they want it. Coaching is the most reliable a way of producing it.
 
Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni)
Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones–often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.
 
The House by the Lake (Thomas Harding)
The House by the Lake is a groundbreaking work of history, revealing the story of Germany through the inhabitants of one small wooden building: a nobleman farmer, a prosperous Jewish family, a renowned Nazi composer, a widow and her children, a Stasi informant. Moving from the late 19th century to the present day, from the devastation of two world wars to the dividing and reuniting of a nation, it is a story of domestic joy, of terrible grief and tragedy, and of a hatred handed down through the generations.
 
Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time (Adriana Huffington)
In The Sleep Revolution, Arianna shows how our cultural dismissal of sleep as time wasted not only compromises our health and our decision-making but also undermines our work lives and our personal lives. She explores all the latest science on what exactly is going on while we sleep and dream. The Sleep Revolution both sounds the alarm on our worldwide sleep crisis and provides a detailed road map to the great sleep awakening that can help transform our lives, our communities and our world.
 
The Power (Naomi Alderman)
What would the world look like if men were afraid of women rather than women being afraid of men?
All over the world women are discovering they have the power.
With a flick of the fingers they can inflict terrible pain - even death. Suddenly, every man on the planet finds they've lost control.
 
Dearing Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent and lead (Dr Brene Brown)
Everyday we experience the uncertainty, risks and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable, or to dare greatly. Whatever the arena is a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process or a difficult family conversation we must find the courage to walk into vulnerability and engage with our whole hearts.
 
Beyond Measure: The Impact of Small Change (Margaret Heffernan)
Margaret Heffernan reveals how organizations can build ideal workplace cultures and create seismic shifts by making deceptively small changes. The writer looks back over her decades spent overseeing different organizations and comes to a counterintuitive conclusion: it's the small shifts that have the greatest impact.
 
Diversify (June Sarpong)
June Sarpong puts the spotlight on groups who are often marginalised in our society, including women, those living with disabilities, and the LGBTQ community. Diversify uncovers how a new approach to how we work, learn and live can help us reach our maximum potential, lessen the pressure on the state, and solve some of the most stubborn challenges we face.
 
The Trusted Advisor (David Maister, Charles Green & Robert Galford)
The book explores the need for trust-based relationships in business. The writers show readers that the key to professional success goes well beyond technical mastery or expertise. It was primarily written with sales people in mind but there are a lot of cross-overs to general working relationships, and relationships with audit stakeholders.
 
Messy: How to be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World (Tim Harford)
We all benefit from tidy organisation - up to a point. However, the trouble with tidiness is that, in excess, it becomes rigid, fragile and sterile. In Messy, Tim Harford reveals how qualities we value more than ever - responsiveness, resilience and creativity - simply cannot be disentangled from the messy soil that produces them. This is a book about the benefits of being ‘messy’.
 
Drive (Daniel H. Pink)
Daniel discusses the surprising truth about what motivates us in this New York Time top 10 bestseller. He explains the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today’s world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and the world.
 
Furiously Happy (Jenny Lawson)
Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are – the beautiful and the flawed – and using it to find joy in fantastic and  outrageous ways.
 
Mindfulness Solution (Ronald D. Siegel, Psy.D)
Mindfulness offers a path to well-being and tools for coping with life's inevitable hurdles. And though mindfulness may sound exotic, you can cultivate it—and reap its proven benefits—without special training or lots of spare time.
Lots of scientific studies recently issued are proving that mindfulness has positive impact on your brain and how being in the moment also help with coaching, motivation and focus.
 
Lean In (Sheryl Sandberg)
In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg – Facebook COO and one of Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women in Business – draws on her own experience of working in some of the world's most successful businesses and looks at what women can do to help themselves, and make the small changes in their life that can effect change on a more universal scale.
 
Quiet (Susan Cain)
Summarizing five years of research and arguing that society has ignored a veritable powder-keg of untapped talent. Susan Cain studied at Princeton and Harvard Law School, and practiced corporate law for seven years.
Recognising that solitude can be a catalyst for innovation and that quiet leadership is not an oxymoron. Society has greatly overlooked the intellectual gifts of the introverted.
 
Presence (Amy Cuddy)
Amy Cuddy explains the science behind her TED talk on 'power poses' and how the mind working with the body can change who we are and how we are perceived.  Some practical tips on facing high-pressure moments without fear.
 
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein)
 Nudge shows you how you can unconsciously make better decisions by designing your environment so it nudges you in the right direction every time temptation becomes greatest and thus build your own choice architecture in advance.
 
Never Again (Peter Hennessy)
At the end of the Second World War Britain was in flux. It was an age of rationing and rebuilding; when hope for a better future contrasted with the horror of war. From the high politics of Court and Cabinet room to the everyday discussions in kitchen or queue, Peter Hennessy's Never Again: Britain 1945-51 recreates the mood and feel of life in early post-war Britain.
 
There is an I in Team: What Elite Athletes and Coaches Really Know About High Performance (Mark de Rond)
There Is an I in Team explores the relationship between individual and team—asking the question, How can we harness the talent of individual performers into a cohesive, productive team that creates overall value? And why are so many of our assumptions about teams wrong?
 
Utopia for realists and how we can get there (Rutger Bregman)
This guide to a revolutionary yet achievable utopia is supported by multiple studies, lively anecdotes and numerous success stories. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he introduces ideas whose time has come.
 
Another Time (W.H. Auden)
W H Auden’s collection of poems Another Time was published in 1940 in Britain and America, after Auden emigrated to the United States in the winter of 1939. The book contains poems written in England during the late 1930s alongside new verse written in America. Among the poems he wrote during his first months in America was ‘September 1, 1939’, which contained his reflections on the outbreak of World War Two. Auden dedicated Another Time to his romantic partner and collaborator the poet Chester Kallman.