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reading list |
Reading List
Books are a constant source of inspiration; I always have a pile ready to read for different occasions.
These are some of the titles I like best.
If you have any suggestions I like to hear about them!
Consulting
Culture
Interpersonal skills
Leadership
Mind
Organisation development
Personal development
Literature
CONSULTING
Learning with Colleagues, Erik de Haan
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. ISBN 1 4039-4287-0
Coaching with Colleagues, Erik de Haan and Yvonne Burger
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. ISBN 1 4039-4323-0
Professionals today, in whatever field, have an increasing need for life-long learning. Many professional bodies insist on continuing professional development as a pre-requisite to maintaining professional qualifications and much of this professional development takes place through interaction with peers and colleagues. These two new books by Erik de Haan and his collaborators are texts about the development of our professional skills and abilities. In the case of Learning with Colleagues it is an action guide to peer consultation, and for Coaching with Colleagues, an action guide for one-to-one learning.
- For a fuller review by Geof Cox published in Organisations and People, See the Learning Consortium site (Resources/Reading List).
Flawless Consulting (Second Edition), Peter Block
Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer. ISBN 0-7879-4803-9
The best book around for both internal and external consultants, this is one we have recommended or distributed to participants during in-company consulting skills workshops. The conceptual foundations mesh perfectly with that of Focus on Influence, and the checklists and concrete tips and suggestions are invaluable.
Consultant's Journey: A Professional and Personal Odyssey, Roger Harrison
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1995. ISBN 0-07-709089-6
During one phase in his life Roger was co-developer of the world's first powerful interpersonal skills training program, a forerunner of Focus on Influence. But Roger went through many phases in his professional life, each one reflecting a different phase in his personal development. In Consultant's Journey this leading international consultant reflects on each such phase with warmth, insight and remarkable modesty.
What makes Consultant's Journey such a compelling read is Harrison's sharing of his hard won principles and practices of consultancy, management education, and organization change, placing them in the context of a life dedicated to the unremitting search for personal integrity, professional growth and spiritual awakening.
The Consulting Process as Drama: Learning from King Lear, Erik de Haan
Karnac Books, 2004. ISBN 1-85575-986-1
Translated from the original Dutch by Learning Consortium member Nico Swaan, This short book is packed with insights and challenges for the experienced consultant, and the contrasting of the consulting process with the text of King Lear is not only unique, but also surprisingly helpful. Although it is as famous as Macbeth and Hamlet, King Lear is not one of Shakespeare’s most familiar tragedies, however, you do not need to be a Shakespearean scholar or even know the story in order to follow the metaphor, as De Haan skilfully intertwines the story with the consideration of the consulting process.
This is a book which imparts wisdom rather than knowledge about consulting, and it is a measure of the importance of the book that several names from the Hall of Fame of consulting – Roger Harrison (who comments: 'I have never read such an elegantly literate exposition of the nuances of the consulting process'), Bill Critchley, Peter Hawkins, David Armstrong and Lawrence J. Gould – have all contributed forewords.
- For a fuller review by Geof Cox published in Organisations and People, See the Learning Consortium site (Resources/Reading List).
Process consultation, Edgar H. Schein
Prentice Hall, 1998. ISBN 0-201-06744-7
This book reaffirms the concept of process consultation as a viable model of how to work with human systems. Included are such topics as cultural rules of interaction; initiating and managing change; intervention strategy; tactics and style; and emerging issues in process consultation.
The Fifth Discipline, Peter M. Senge
ISBN 0-385-26094-6 (1990)
Peter Senge presents a system of thinking and acting that, if followed correctly, can be the basis for reducing the 'learning disabilities' in any organization. His five core disciplines: system thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning are well explained.
The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, Peter M. Senge et al.
ISBN 1-85788-060-9 (1994)
The Fieldbook is an intensely pragmatic guide. It shows how to create an organization of learners. It shows how to create an organization of learners where memories are brought to life, where collaboration is the lifeblood of every endeavor, and where the tough questions are fearlessly asked.
CULTURE
The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why. Richard E. Nisbett
The Free Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7432-1646-6
Many of us are aware of important cultural differences between East and West, whether through personal experience or through reading. What makes Nisbett’s compact (230 pages) work important and interesting is his examination of the origins of these differences in the economics, philosophy and social practices of Eastern and Western civilizations. At the same time, as a psychologist, he describes numerous impressive experiments conducted by his American as well as his Chinese, Korean and Japanese colleagues, for the most part with college students East and West, which confirm and illustrate different patterns of perception and thought.
Many of us have relationships with East Asian colleagues who have lived in the West or worked in Western organisations for a number of years. The author reports studies on the impact of years of experience of Western social, educational and organisational practice on individuals of Eastern origin, and identifies where changes do and do not take place in habits of thought and perception. Nisbett’s book seeks (successfully) to deepen understanding rather than to provide ‘new knowledge’.
Cultures and Organisation - Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and its Importance for Survival, Geert Hofstede
McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-029307-4
Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding diversity in global business, Fons Trompenaars
McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0 7863 1125 8
These two books are the 'must-haves' for understanding the dimensions of culture in nations and corporations, and how to use these in a positive way.
Talking from 9 to 5. Women and men at work: Language, sex and power, Deborah Tannen
Virago. ISBN 1-86049-200-2
Anyone (male or female) who does not understand the differences between male and female communication needs to read this book. Written by the best-selling author of 'You Just Don't Understand' this book deals with the conversational style of men and women in the workplace, and how the differences can lead to major misunderstanding.
INTERPERSONAL SKILLS
Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion, Marshall B. Rosenberg
PuddleDancer Press, 2000. ISBN 1-892005-02-6
This is a book we wish we had written ourselves! Its emphasis on identifying and expressing feelings, on listening empathically and on the direct and honest communication of our wishes and needs fits seamlessly into the approach which lies at the heart of Focus on Influence.
De Tao of Coaching, Max Landsberg
Harper Collins Business, 1997. ISBN 0-00-838811-6
This brief and highly readable little book (two or three hours should be plenty to get through it) nevertheless highlights all the basic coaching skills required of modern managers. Highly recommended!
Getting Past No: Negotiating your way from confrontation to cooperation, William Ury
Bantam Books, 1993. ISBN 0-533-37131-2
This is a book we like to give participants during a negotiation skills workshop. The conceptual framework works so well with the influence model on which Focus on Influence is based. Readable, enlightening and practical.
Getting to yes: negotiating agreement without giving in, Roger Fisher
ISBN 0-395-31757-6 (1981)
Principled negotiation offers an approach to achieving a successful agreement in which the parties gain that to which they have a legitimate claim without needing to get nasty. The book shows how it is possible to remain reasonable, and how to cope with those who think their objectives best served by 'dirty tricks' and hard-nosed tactics. 'Getting to Yes' is a highly readable and practical primer on the fundamentals of negotiation and conflict resolution.
Pragmatics of human communications, Paul Watzlawick et al.
ISBN 0-3930-1009-0 (1967)
A classic study into the effects of interpersonal communication on behaviour. Watzlawick and his co-authors shed new light on fundamental characteristics of communication. They examine interaction patterns, paradoxical communication and double-bind situations.
LEADERSHIP
The seven habits of highly effective people, Stephen R. Covey
Free Press / Simon & Schuster, 1989.
Leadership has nothing to do with 'position', but is based on the inner strengths of an individual. The leader of the future has en eye for issues such as justice, integrity, human dignity, service and quality.
Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership, Joseph Jaworski
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1998. ISBN 1-57675-031-0
We know of no one whom this book has left unmoved. It is a very personal account of a process of inner transformation while at the same time presenting an inspiring vision of 'servant leadership.'
Imagin-i-zation: new mind sets for seeing, organizing, and managing, Gareth Morgan
ISBN 0-7619-1269-X (1997)
'Imaginization' is a way of thinking and organizing. It is a key managerial skill that will help you understand and develop your own creative potential, and find innovative solutions to difficult problems. It answers the call for more creative forms of organization and management and shows how we can find new roles in a changing, uncertain world.
Action learning: a practical guide, Krystyna Weinstein
ISBN 0-566-08097-4 (1998)
If you want to understand the benefits of being part of an AL program, or would like to set one up but need to know more, then this popular guide is an ideal place to start.
Leadership and the New Science, Margaret J. Wheatley
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1992. ISBN 1-881052-44-3
We work in a number of high-tech organizations; in this book the worlds of the 'new science' on which so much progress in the hi-tech world is based, and organisation and management theory meet.
Margaret Wheatley shows how the new science provides powerful insights for transforming how we organize work, people, and life.
Written in an inviting style for a general readership, this pioneering book offers new light on issues that trouble people in organizations most: order and change, autonomy and control, structure and flexibility, planning and innovation.
'Inspiration and guidance to begin your own journey of discovery in using new science ideas to forever change your understanding of leadership, organizations, and life.' [quoted from the back cover]
The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching adapted for a new age, John Heider
Humanics New Age. ISBN 0-7863-1125-8
'John Heider's Tao of Leadership provides the simplest and clearest advice on how to be the very best kind of leader: be faithful, trust the process, pay attention and inspire other persons to become their own leaders. Its application is universal - for politicians, teachers, parents, clergy, business persons, all of us.' [quoted from the back cover]
The Leadership Mystique, Manfred Kets de Vries
Pearson Education Limited, 2001. ISBN 0-273-65620-1
The author uses his psychoanalytical background to probe the many layers of complexity that underlie effective leadership, and his experience as a management guru and consultant to formulate concrete lessons for practicing and would-be leaders.
Leadership now requires very different behaviour from the leadership tradition we are used to. It requires leaders who speak to the collective imagination of their people; leaders who are able to motivate people to full commitment. It's all about human behaviour. It's about understanding the way people and organizations behave, about creating relationships, about building commitment, and about adapting behaviour to lead in a creative and motivating way.
Ready-Aim-Fire Problem Solving: A Strategic Approach to Innovative Decision Making, Geof Cox
Oak Tree Press, 2000. ISBN 1-86076-172-0
Written by a member of Learning Consortium, this easy-to-read book gives a simple and useful overview of Personality Types (Myers-Briggs), Team Roles (Belbin) and how the knowledge of these models helps teams to review and re-plan their approach to decision making, what makes people and teams 'tick', and how to put all this knowledge into action. Walt Hopkins: 'The best thing about this book is that once you have discovered your strengths within the Ready-Aim-Fire sequence - and thus discovered your weaknesses - Geof gives you specific techniques to fill in those gaps.'
MIND
The Brain Book, Peter Russell
Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0-415-03455-8
In all the learning we go through, the brain is involved in a non-refutable way! This book gives lots of background, tips, and general information on how the brain works and how we can use that knowledge to understand and use the brain better. There are also lots of examples of mind-maps and other well-known tools. A must for people who want to know 'themselves' better.
ORGANISATION DEVELOPMENT
Free Space: Philosophy in Organisations, Jos Kessels, Erik Boers & Pieter Mostert
Boom Amsterdam, 2004. ISBN 90-8506-047-8
In ancient Greece ‘philosophy’ played an integral and guiding role in the counsels and deliberations of politicians and business people. The authors, including Learning Consortium’s Erik Boers, have taken philosophy out of the academic setting in which it is usually found nowadays.
Drawing on their many years of experience as consultants and trainers, introducing the rigours of philosophical practice into board rooms and management teams, they have written a practical essay on the modern application of the original ‘liberal arts’: dialectics, the art or skill of conducting dialogue; rhetoric, the art of persuasion; and grammar, the art of crafting written messages to achieve maximum impact.
The book is practical in tone, and it invites – and challenges – the modern reader to think anew, and to think differently, about how he conducts himself. A final chapter (“Tools and Tips”) provides accessible and useful exercises designed to enhance the quality of thinking and communicating in the organisational setting.
On Organizational Learning, Chris Argyris
ISBN 0-6312-1309-0 (1992)
Through our own behaviour when in conversation with others (and because of our underlying assumptions) we shut out or miss relevant data, make achieving commitment more difficult and generate distrust during the implementation of decisions. This is a very concise summary of that which Chris Argyris describes in the many articles in this book. He looks at why it is that bright individuals in particular have such a difficult time learning, and at how easily defensive behaviour in organisations is generated.
The collected papers of Roger Harrison, Roger Harrison
Jossey-Bass, 1995. ISBN 0-07-709090-x (1995)
Organizational development, the discipline, and Roger Harrison, the man, have been virtually synonymous for over 30 years. This book is a collection of his ground-breaking papers on role negotiation, organization culture, principles of intervention, self-directed learning and many other subjects.
William R. Noonan, Discussing the Undiscussable
Jossey-Bass, 2007. ISBN 987-0-7879-8632-2
From the foreword by Chris Argyris:
[ . . . ] A key criterion for effective cultural change is to change behavior. But if the changes are to persist, we must identify the most fundamental causes of the behavior. They are (1) the theories-in-use human beings hold about effective learning, (2) the defensive reasoning mind-sets that they use to design and execute their actions, (3) the organizational defensive routines that reward anti-learning, self-sealing processes, (4) the ways in which we are all causally responsible for creating these counterproductive features, and (5) our skilled unawareness and skilled incompetence, which prevent us from producing the changes that we can identify but cannot produce in sustainable ways.
William Noonan’s book provides one of the most complete and detailed answers as to how to achieve change. He engages the puzzles head-on. He provides rich, warm, and thoughtful insights into his trials and tribulations while learning to become more effective. He connects this personal learning to recommendations as to how to design and implement changes in organizational defensive routines - changes that are both effective and sustainable. I recommend Discussing the Undiscussable as a first-rate example of how effective individual and organizational change can happen.
Changing Conversations in Organizations: A Complexity Approach to Change, Patricia Shaw
Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0 415 24914 7
This book questions the way much thinking about organizational change suggests that we can choose and design new futures for our organizations in the way we often hope. The book encourages the reader to live with the immediate paradoxes and complexities of organizational life, where we must act with intention into the unknowable. It sets out to make sense of the experience of being in the midst of change. Shaw focuses on the essential uncertainty of participating in evolving events as they happen and enquires into the creative possibilities of such participation.
Deep Change, Robert E. Quinn
Jossey-Bass, 1996. ISBN: 0-7879-0244-6
This book is a story about excellence and leadership. It confronts us with deep change within ourselves as a source to understand organisational changes. It deals with the different phases in the change process and with the need for vision, risk taking and trust.
Robert tells us a very practical story with a lot of examples and case studies. Each chapter closes with a short questionnaire to check on your own understanding and attitude towards change and leadership.
The force of the book is that it is very personal and yet practical. It is rather easy to read and a good addition to the more instrumental books on organisational change.
Performance Consulting: moving beyond training, Dana Gaines Robinson
ISBN 1-881052-84-2 (1995)
Performance consulting is filled with proven tools on performance improvement. The Robinsons provide both a conceptual frame work and practical guidelines for success as a performance consultant.
Sensemaking in organizations, Karl E. Weick
SAGE, 1995. ISBN 0-8039-7176-1
Sensemaking in organizations highlights how the 'sensemaking' process - the creation of reality as an ongoing accomplishment that takes form when people make retrospective sense of the situations in which they find themselves - shapes organizational structure and behavior.
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
How The Way We Talk Can Change The Way We Work, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey
Jossey-Bass, 2001. ISBN 0-7879-6378-X
Underlying and informing the way we talk (to ourselves and others) is the way we think. The authors offer convincing evidence that the ways we think fundamentally block attempts to achieve lasting change in the way we talk with and relate to others.
Their basic thesis is that it is very difficult, indeed perhaps impossible, to sustain significant changes in behaviour without striving for significant changes in the underlying meanings that give rise to behaviour.
Building on the influential work of their esteemed Harvard colleague, Chris Argyris, the authors provide a practical, step-by-step approach uncovering our own meaning-making processes, thereby facilitating the achievement of real and enduring learning and change.
The authors invite the reader to rethink the language they use, offering seven alternative languages which make it more likely that conversations will be open and productive.
They describe seven language-shifts:
1. from complaint to commitment;
2. from blame to personal responsibility;
3. from New Years resolutions to competing commitment;
4. from BIG assumptions that hold us to assumptions we hold ourselves;
5. from prizes and praising to ongoing reward;
6. from rules and politics to public agreement;
7. from constructive criticism to deconstructive criticism.
The book urges the reader’s active participation, and is written in an accessible style full of useful and specific examples.
What color is your parachute?, Richard N. Bolles
ISBN 1-58008-541-5 (2004)
This practical self-help book, written for those in search of a new job or career, is also a useful guide and resource for any individual who can use structure and systematic approaches to facilitate looking at issues of life and career design.
Strangers to Ourselves - Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious, Timothy D. Wilson
Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01382-4
Surprizing and fascinating! 'Wilson convincingly argues that our conscious minds are but the tips of the iceberg in deciding how we behave, what is important to us, and how we feel. Surveying a variety of contemporary psychlogical research, this book describes an unconscious that is capable of a much higher degree of 'thinking' than previously supposed by adherents of either Freudian or Behaviourist branches of psychology.' [quoted from the back cover]
FICTION
When Nietzsche Wept, Irvin D. Yalom
Harper Perennial, 1992. ISBN 0-06-097550-4
Sometimes we recommend a thought-provoking novel as a good place to start for individuals who are wrestling with their demons or trying to develop a (renewed) sense of direction in their lives. Friedrich Nietzsche, one of Europe's greatest philosophers, and Josef Breuer, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, are the main characters in an unforgettable saga of an imagined relationship between an extraordinary patient and a gifted healer. Each, in his own way, is 'lost'; each helps the other to rediscover his destiny.
Copyright Parresia* Training & Advies.