The ATD Senior Leaders Community of Practice reviews a few new book titles that learning execs can't afford to miss.
Erica Ariel Fox
Harper Business
September 2013
384 pages
Winning from Within, by leadership and negotiation expert, Erica Ariel Fox, presents a contemporary approach for getting more of what you want, improving relationships, and enjoying life’s deeper rewards. With principles developed while teaching negotiation at Harvard Law School and coaching executives around the world, Fox provides a map for understanding your inner world and a method for sorting yourself out. She uses insights from Western psychology and Eastern philosophy to resolve the gap between what people know they should say and what they actually do. Fox explains how to master your “inner negotiators,” whether working with a difficult client, struggling with a stubborn spouse, or developing your highest leadership potential.
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Walter Isaacson
Simon & Shuster
October 2014
560 pages
Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. What were the talents that enabled certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail? Isaacson begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. He explores the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page. This is the story of how their minds worked and what made them so inventive. It’s also a narrative of how their ability to collaborate and master the art of teamwork made them even more creative.
Ram Charan
PublicAffairs Books
February 2015
240 pages
The phenomenon of uncertainty is not new. What is new is its intensity and potential to change industries and destroy companies. Business leaders can be on the defensive, or they can be on offense, prepared to lead decisively. The ability to deal with uncertainty is perhaps the paramount skill leaders must have to be successful in this era. Without it they risk becoming personally obsolete and driving their companies off a cliff. In The Attacker's Advantage, renowned business expert and bestselling author, Ram Charan, shows what skills are needed to be able to spot the disruption that is coming, and what actions are necessary to take advantage of these changes.
Herminia Ibarra
Harvard Business Review Press
February 2015
200 pages
You aspire to lead with greater impact. The problem is that you're busy executing on today's demands. You know you have to carve out time to build your leadership skills, but it's easy to let immediate problems and old mind-sets get in the way. Herminia Ibarra, an expert on professional leadership and development, shows how managers and executives at all levels can step up to leadership by making small but crucial changes in their jobs, their networks, and themselves. In Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, she offers advice to help you:
- redefine your job in order to make more strategic contributions
- diversify your network so that you connect to, and learn from, a bigger range of stakeholders
- become more playful with your self-concept, allowing your familiar—and possibly outdated—leadership style to evolve.
Ibarra turns the usual "think first and then act" philosophy on its head by arguing that doing these three things will help you learn through action and will increase what she calls your outsight—the valuable external perspective you gain from direct experiences and experimentation.
