Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great


James C. Collins - 2001
    Using information gathered from interviews with over 100 social sector leaders, Jim Collins shows that his "Level 5 Leader" and other good-to-great principles can help social sector organizations make the leap to greatness.

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention


Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - 1996
    The author's objective is to offer an understanding of what leads to these moments, be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab, so that knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on 100 interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists to politicians and business leaders, poets and artists, as well as his 30 years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous theory to explore the creative process. He discusses such ideas as why creative individuals are often seen as selfish and arrogant, and why the tortured genius is largely a myth. Most important, he clearly explains why creativity needs to be cultivated and is necessary for the future of our country, if not the world.

A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader


Maria Popova - 2018
    On the page facing each letter, an illustration by a celebrated illustrator or graphic artist presents that artist's visual response.Among the diverse contributions are letters from Jane Goodall, Neil Gaiman, Jerome Bruner, Shonda Rhimes, Ursula K. Le Guin, Yo-Yo Ma, Judy Blume, Lena Dunham, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Jacqueline Woodson, as well as a ninety-eight-year-old Holocaust survivor, a pioneering oceanographer, and Italy’s first woman in space. Some of the illustrators, cartoonists, and graphic designers involved are Marianne Dubuc, Sean Qualls, Oliver Jeffers, Maira Kalman, Mo Willems, Isabelle Arsenault, Chris Ware, Liniers, Shaun Tan, Tomi Ungerer, and Art Spiegelman.  This project is woven entirely of goodwill, generosity of spirit, and a shared love of books. Everyone involved has donated their time, and all profits will go to the New York Public Library systems.Preface by David Remnick, editor, The New Yorker; Edited and introduced by Maria Popova, who has been writing since 2006 about what she reads on Brain Pickings (brainpickings.org), which is now included in the Library of Congress archive of culturally valuable materials; Edited by Claudia Bedrick, publisher, editorial and art director of Enchanted Lion Books.

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be


Paul Arden - 2003
    If you want to succeed in life or business, this book is a must.

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas


Warren Berger - 2014
    Questioning—deeply, imaginatively, "beautifully"—can help us identify and solve problems, come up with game-changing ideas, and pursue fresh opportunities. So why are we often reluctant to ask "Why?"Berger's surprising findings reveal that even though children start out asking hundreds of questions a day, questioning "falls off a cliff" as kids enter school. In an education and business culture devised to reward rote answers over challenging inquiry, questioning isn't encouraged—and, in fact, is sometimes barely tolerated.And yet, as Berger shows, the most creative, successful people tend to be expert questioners. They've mastered the art of inquiry, raising questions no one else is asking—and finding powerful answers. The author takes us inside red-hot businesses like Google, Netflix, IDEO, and Airbnb to show how questioning is baked into their organizational DNA. He also shares inspiring stories of artists, teachers, entrepreneurs, basement tinkerers, and social activists who changed their lives and the world around them—by starting with a "beautiful question."Berger explores important questions, such as:- Why aren't we nurturing kids' natural ability to question—and what can parents and schools do about that?- Since questioning is a starting point for innovation, how might companies and business leaders begin to encourage and exploit it?- And most important, how can each of us re-ignite that questioning spark—and use inquiry as a powerful means to rethink and reinvent our lives?A More Beautiful Question outlines a practical Why / What If / How system of inquiry that can guide you through the process of innovative questioning—helping you find imaginative, powerful answers to your own "beautiful questions."

Marching Off the Map: Inspire Students to Navigate a Brand New World


Tim Elmore - 2017
    The population in this new land has different attitudes (many entitled and narcissistic) and speaks a different language (emojis and social media). Attention spans are six to eight seconds. They multi-task on five screens. They often possess multiple personas on social media platforms. Understanding and connecting with this generation is often times frustrating and draining. The old maps that helped adults navigate students through adolescence are now producing graduates who move back home, are afraid to take healthy risks, and are unwilling to start at the bottom of a career path. We’re in new territory. We need new strategies on how to navigate new land…to march off our old maps and create new ones. That is what this book is all about. From decades of research and hands-on experience, Dr. Tim Elmore and Andrew McPeak collate their conclusions into one resource. In Marching Off the Map, they share practical, research-based solutions that help adults: • Inspire students to own their education and their future • Lead students from an attitude of apathy to one of passion through metacognition • Enable students to push back from the constant digital distractions and practice mindfulness • Raise kids who make healthy progress, both emotionally and intellectually, through their teenage years • Give students the tools to handle the complexities of an ever-changing world • Understand and practically apply the latest research on Generation Z • Leverage what is cultural to instill in teens the wisdom and advice you know they need to succeed in any stage of life.

The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education


Grace Llewellyn - 1991
    This book tells teens how to take control of their lives and get a "real life." Young people can reclaim their natural ability to teach themselves and design a personalized education program. Grace Llewellyn explains the entire process, from making the decision to quit school, to discovering the learning opportunities available.

Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message


Tara Mohr - 2014
    Mohr’s work helping women play bigger has earned acclaim from the likes of Maria Shriver and Jillian Michaels, and has been featured on the Today show, CNN, and a host of other media outlets.   Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In gave many women new awareness about what kinds of changes they need to make to become more successful; yet most women need help implementing them. In the tradition of Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly, Playing Big provides real, practical tools to help women quiet self-doubt, identify their callings, “unhook” from praise and criticism, unlearn counterproductive good girl habits, and begin taking bold action.   While not all women aspire to end up in the corner office, every woman aspires to something. Playing Big fills a major gap among women’s career books; it isn’t just for corporate women. The book offers tools to help every woman play bigger—whether she’s an executive, community volunteer, artist, or stay-at-home mom.   Thousands of women across the country have been transformed by Mohr’s program, and now this book makes the ideas and practices available to everyone who is ready to play big.

The Way of Mindful Education: Cultivating Well-Being in Teachers and Students


Daniel Rechtschaffen - 2014
    The Way of Mindful Education is a practical guide for cultivating attention, compassion, and well-being not only in these students, but also in teachers themselves. Packed with lesson plans, exercises, and considerations for specific age groups and students with special needs, this working manual demonstrates the real world application of mindfulness practices in K-12 classrooms.Part I, Why Mindful Education Matters, explains what mindfulness is, the science behind its benefits for students and educators, and the inspiring work that is already underway in the Mindful Education movement.In Part II, Begin with Yourself, we are reminded that in order to teach mindfully, we need to be mindful. Here teachers will learn the when, where, and how of mindfulness so they can effectively embody its practices with their students. Mindfulness practices offer teachers self-care and attention skills that prepare them to teach with greater energy and mastery. Discover how simple exercises can help manage stress, focus attention, develop compassion, and savor positive experiences in everyday life.Part III, Cultivating a Mindful Classroom, explores the qualities of a mindful teacher, the ingredients of a mindful learning environment, and helpful skills for appropriate, supportive work with cultural diversity, student stress and trauma, and varying age groups and developmental stages.Finally, in Part IV, Mindful Education Curriculum, we learn eighteen ready-to-use mindfulness lessons for use in schools. These practical exercises, designed to foster skills like embodiment, attention, heartfulness, and interconnectedness, can be readily adapted for any age group and population, and the author draws from his extensive personal experience to offer a wealth of tips for introducing them to students in real-time.Decades of research indicate the impressive benefits of mindfulness in social, emotional, and cognitive development, and as an antidote to emotional dysregulation, attention deficits, and social difficulties. This book invites teachers, administrators, and anyone else involved in education to take advantage of this vital tool and become purveyors of a mindful, compassionate, ethical, and effective way of teaching.

Self Matters: Creating Your Life from the Inside Out


Phillip C. McGraw - 2001
    Key questions and an amazingly clear "map" are now at your fingertips to begin your journey to "Live by Design." These are questions that, with the help of this book, you can answer and bring into action-oriented focus:What are the ten most defining moments of your life?What are the seven most critical choices you have made to put you on your current path?Who are the five most pivotal people in your world and how have they shaped you? Identifying and working with these key elements are at the heart of Dr. Phillip C. McGraw's latest work, Self Matters, and soon they will be at the heart of your own new work: you. Through his books, McGraw has changed the lives of millions. In introducing the world to his matter-of-fact, tell-it-like-it-is philosophy of life, Dr. Phil, as he is known to his legions of fans, has put an end to the "everyone's a victim" attitude that had taken hold of our culture. Published in over twenty-five countries, and with millions of books sold, his two number one bestsellers, Life Strategies and Relationship Rescue, forced readers to take a serious look at the excuses they had so long been clinging to as to why they were not happy, not successful, and not enjoying their one chance at living. Now, Dr. Phil takes those lessons a great leap further and explores one of the most challenging questions facing us all: When you look in the mirror, who is truly hiding beneath that face? Instead of taking a surface look at the way we live our lives, Dr. Phil demystifies how your self-concept came to be and gives a nuts-and-bolts approach to creating a new plan for living and, in turn, for discovering the real you. In this groundbreaking work, Dr. Phil challenges you to find your "authentic self" -- that person you once were before life took its toll. It is you at your greatest, most fulfilled, most real moment. It is the person you have always wanted to be, but were too distracted, busy, or scared to become. Instead, you have created a "fictional self" -- taking on the identity of who you believe you are supposed be, the person people tell you you are. The incongruence between these two selves is what leads you to feel that your life is incomplete, unbalanced, and altogether more difficult than it really should be. The good news is it no longer needs to be that way. By using the plan set forth in Self Matters, Dr. Phil helps you to demystify your self-concept and learn how to reclaim your authentic self. In evaluating your life by only the facts, you can learn to think beyond the excuses and fears that have masked the person you have always wanted to be. Self Matters is one of the most forward-thinking works on self-concept and self-esteem ever published. For the first time, an author tells it how it is and, in the process, teaches us all how to live the lives we have always wanted but prevented ourselves from living. We get only one chance in this world, and now, Dr. Phil shows all how to make the most of it.

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life


Marshall B. Rosenberg - 1999
    Nonviolent Communication partners practical skills with a powerful consciousness and vocabulary to help you get what you want peacefully.In this internationally acclaimed text, Marshall Rosenberg offers insightful stories, anecdotes, practical exercises and role-plays that will dramatically change your approach to communication for the better. Discover how the language you use can strengthen your relationships, build trust, prevent conflicts and heal pain. Revolutionary, yet simple, NVC offers you the most effective tools to reduce violence and create peace in your life—one interaction at a time.Over 150,000 copies sold and now available in 20 languages around the world. More than 250,000 people each year from all walks of life are learning these life-changing skills.

How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers


Sönke Ahrens - 2017
    This book helps students, academics and nonfiction writers to get more done, write intelligent texts and learn for the long run. It teaches you how to take smart notes and ensure they bring you and your projects forward. The Take Smart Notes principle is based on established psychological insight and draws from a tried and tested note-taking-technique. This is the first comprehensive guide and description of this system in English, and not only does it explain how it works, but also why. It suits students and academics in the social sciences and humanities, nonfiction writers and others who are in the business of reading, thinking and writing. Instead of wasting your time searching for notes, quotes or references, you can focus on what really counts: thinking, understanding and developing new ideas in writing. It does not matter if you prefer taking notes with pen and paper or on a computer, be it Windows, Mac or Linux. And you can start right away.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less


Greg McKeown - 2011
    It’s about getting only the right things done.  It is not  a time management strategy, or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter.  By forcing us to apply a more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy – instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us.Essentialism is not one more thing – it’s a whole new way of doing everything. A must-read for any leader, manager, or individual who wants to learn who to do less, but better, in every area of their lives, Essentialism  is a movement whose time has come.

Coaching for Performance: GROWing Human Potential and Purpose - the Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership (People Skills for Professionals)


John Whitmore - 2002
    Coaching has matured into an invaluable profession fit for our times and this fourth edition of the most widely read coaching book takes it to the next frontier.Good coaching is a skill that requires a depth of understanding and plenty of practice if it is to deliver its astonishing potential. This extensively revised and expanded new audio edition of Coaching for Performance clearly explains the principles of coaching and illustrates them with examples of high performance from business and sport. It continues to follow the GROW sequence (Goals, Reality, Options, Will) and clarifies the process and practice of coaching by describing what coaching really is, what it can be used for, when and how much it can be used, and who can use it well.

Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning


Oliver DeMille - 2008
    While the world is in desperate need of leaders very few people have the tools to become one. Oliver and Rachel DeMille's Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning is the manual that every person who aspires to be an effective leader, or to raise one, needs. Principled decision-making, the cultivation of character, studying the classics, and using critical thinking skills are just a few of the lost educational virtues of today restored by this book. An in-depth look at the philosophy and phases of education are indispensable when creating leaders. This book will help any family find the direction they are looking for when pursuing leadership education. This book teaches not only the theories behind Thomas Jefferson Education but also the practical application of these theories for you and your children. If we apply the philosophy contained in Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning then we will transform not only our families and our classrooms, but the world.