Hopefully you get to enjoy some time off and a little more time to relax and read this summer. A road trip or sitting on the beach reading sounds good to me. At the very least those of us here in Phoenix tend to hibernate in the air conditioned indoors so we get a bit more reading done during the summer.
Reading is one of the best ways I have found to level up my own growth. Books introduce me to new ideas, they cause me to stop and reflect on my own life, and they inspire new questions for me to consider, keeping my curiosity forever growing.
Powerful Collaboration requires strong collaborative leadership skills and continuous growth. Here are my top 7 picks for anyone seeking to level up their game as a collaborative leader:
- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck – In Mindset, Dweck disrupts the idea that your abilities and talents are simply genetic, fixed, and thus cannot change. Dweck presents the well researched idea that it is far more our mindset that sets us apart than our actual talents. Let me warn you, the book is a bit repetitive. You may be wondering why I would start out my list of suggested summer reading with a book that I caution is repetitive?Understanding growth mindset and seeking to live life with a growth mindset is essential to powerful collaboration. Approaching collaborations with a growth mindset will change your collaboration. The book, or at least reading the full thing may or may not however be necessary for you to get the concept.
- Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want by Alex Ostenwalder – This is a fun book filled with illustrations and photos that make my facilitation brain giddy and the content is something EVERY human should understand. This extensive book covers value proposition design, design thinking, empathy mapping, and event touches on the business model canvas. More than just helping you understand value proposition, this book helps you walk through finding what your value proposition is. If you want to be a better collaborator, know what you bring to the table.This is a business book, but it applies to far more situations than just business. If you have a business, all the better. If you don’t have a business, read this with the frame that you are your business. What you personally bring to each collaboration is your value proposition. Each person you are interacting with is in some way your customer.
- Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking with People Who Think Differently by Dawna Markova and Angie McArthur – Markova offers a whole new approach to understanding thinking, building trust, and communicating with others who have different thinking styles. We often assume others think like us, this book explains how others think differently. Not just in that values may differ, but in the process of how we think (visual, kinesthetic, auditory). This book provides great insight in to how we communicate with others and how we can improve communication by better understanding those we work with. I would strongly suggest this book to anyone who leads groups of people and especially those who are responsible for training or educating others.
- Daring Greatly by Brene Brown– Brene Brown calls herself a researcher storyteller and she truly is. I love all of her writing. It is backed with research and written in an engaging manner. In this groundbreaking book, Brene Brown discusses her research on shame and vulnerability. Vulnerability increases trust as where shame diminishes it. This book was a game changer for me. Her work is provides substance in better understanding how to deepen relationships and build trust as well as what actions break trust.
- The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer– Palmer describes that Brene Brown has been influential her work. In some ways, she considers her writing an applied version of Daring Greatly. Brene writes from a research perspective while including some of her own stories, Amanda’s writing is simply her own story. Asking for help is one of those things that I personally struggle with, yet I, like Amanda have experienced over and over the power of asking for help. Reading Amanda’s story as she learned to lean on others was thought provoking for me and a reminder of how more often than not, when we ask for help, we find collaborators who want to help us.
- Impro by Keith Johnstone – This book is hard to describe. Johnstone is considered a father of improv. He created many of the improv games that are popular now. Traditional descriptions will tell you this book is about Improv, and it is, but it is about so much more. Johnstone has a depth of understanding about humans that is rare. This book is both fascinating and useful. For me, his work on status was life changing. Reading Impro was the start of a journey in learning about body language and how others played up or down status without ever saying a word.
- Presence: Bringing Your Biggest Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges by Amy Cuddy– My adventures in learning about body language and status after reading Impro continued with Amy Cuddy’s work. She also has a great Ted Talk on the topic. Cuddy’s is a psychologist by trade and thus her book is research based. This fascinating work delves in to the variety of ways your body posture impacts both how others react to you and even how body language can change your own biochemistry.
I hope this lists gives you some new ideas and helps you to become a better collaborative leader. Do you have a book you think is essential for powerful collaboration? Comment below with any book suggestions you have or thoughts on these books as you read them.
I keep track of the books I have read and those I want to read on goodreads.com. If you enjoy this list, hit me up on Goodreads. I am always glad to have more people to discuss books with.
Or if you are local, join me on the second Weds of the month at 6pm for the Guilt Free Book Club. We meet at Gangplank, a local collaborative workspace in Chandler. This month we are discussing Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior. The book club is guilt free, so no need to read the book. You just need to be interested in the topic. The book covers a variety of social psychology topics and is another good one for collaborative leaders.