Contributors to the June 2022 issue of TD magazine offer their book recommendations.

Bridgett McGowen

52 Tips for Owning Your Career: Practical Advice for Career Success

by Simone E. Morris

Happiness should come from not only family and friends but also from your career, and this book guides you through a year of getting in the driver's seat of your career. The author will have you confidently steering your career so you are driving toward achieving professional goals and experiencing happiness at work.

The Ten-Minute Trainer: 150 Ways to Teach It Quick and Make It Stick!

By Sharon L. Bowman

If you’re looking for strategies to make training sessions or breakout presentations more engaging, then this book is for you. The author provides easy-to-implement techniques that work well for different presentation styles and that have audience members thinking about your content and applying it right away.

Robert Kienzle

Smashing the State of Dumb-stuck

by Nick Fleming

This book begins with understanding our approaches to solving problems. Then Fleming provides dozens of methods and models for solving tangible problems and includes real-world examples.

Suddenly Hybrid: Managing the Modern Meeting

by Karin M. Reed and Joseph A. Allen

This book combines research on hybrid communication with strategies for long-term hybrid teams and short-term hybrid meetings. Facilitators promoting hybrid solutions can back up their suggestions in case anti-hybrid colleagues or clients need convincing.

Maria Morukian

The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World

by Jamil Zaki

Zaki combines his expertise as a neuroscientist with personal vignettes and case studies of building human connection in a fractured, polarized society. This is a must-have book for anyone committed to building or rebuilding human bonds in our personal lives as well as the workplace.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

by Isabel Wilkerson

This book offers a deeply researched account of the history and perpetuation of oppression in our societies and the manifestation of racism in the US as the most violent form of caste. It’s sobering but also provides valuable knowledge to help us address and challenge the systems all around us that continue to maintain inequities and racial injustice in particular.

Rebecca Ayers

Handbook on Performance Management in the Public Sector,

edited by Deborah Blackman

This offers an excellent review of individual and organizational performance management practices in public organizations, covering some of the most recent research and practices relevant to today’s performance management challenges.

Mindset

by Carol Dweck

This is one of the more transformative books I’ve read in understanding my own growth mindset and how to instill a growth mindset in those I lead. I appreciate the psychology behind why some people approach life with an abundance perspective and a can-do attitude.

Drive

by Daniel Pink

This is an excellent review of known motivation theories and what we know truly motivates human beings. I regularly apply the concepts in my leadership and management approaches.

Anders Grondstedt

Play to Learn: Everything You Need to Know About Designing Effective Learning Games

by Sharon Boller and Karl M. Kapp

This book is a must-read, step-by-step guide for anyone aspiring to build engagement at the intersection of instructional design and game design.

Lisa Christen

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

by Marshall B. Rosenberg

This is by far the best communications book I’ve ever read and the book I most often recommend to business executives. The lessons on getting clarity regarding your own needs are equally as important as the lessons for how to find out the other person’s needs. Any great negotiator or influencer will tell you: The best way to success is listening, understanding, and speaking a language of connection. That is this book.

Emotional Agility

by Susan David

This book presents a great tool for how to make emotions work for you, not against you. The book offers an interesting perspective on how to balance emotions in a Goldilocks fashion: not ignoring your emotions and not letting your emotions overwhelm you but rather showing up to your emotions and discovering what useful information they provide you. This book makes the best case for using emotions for what they truly are—data points to be listened to with curiosity.