Here are 100 books that The Essentials of Theory U fans have personally recommended if you like
The Essentials of Theory U.
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I’ve founded companies, shut them down (then rebuilt my life), and coached hundreds of executives and founders through their own turning points. Those experiences taught me that resilience isn’t about bouncing back after hard things happen to you. It’s about being open to what can happen through you, including growth, clarity, curiosity, and conviction. That’s why I wrote Rethinking Resilience and why I return to these books often. Each one has helped me see strength, adaptability, and curiosity as intentional and sustainable traits—not something we summon only after crisis. I’m passionate about helping leaders move from reaction to intention and turn pressure into power, and I think this list captures that shift perfectly.
I recommend this book because it redefined what “conviction” means for me.
Grant’s idea of “confident humility”—holding strong beliefs lightly—challenged how I think about certainty. Real conviction isn’t about defending what you know; it’s about being grounded enough to stay curious.
This book reminds me that confidence and openness aren’t opposites—they fuel each other. Every time I read it, I’m reminded that clarity comes from questioning, not clinging.
It’s one of the most practical guides I know for staying adaptable and steady in a fast-changing world.
"THIS. This is the right book for right now. Yes, learning requires focus. But, unlearning and relearning requires much more-it requires choosing courage over comfort. In Think Again, Adam Grant weaves together research and storytelling to help us build the intellectual and emotional muscle we need to stay curious enough about the world to actually change it. I've never felt so hopeful about what I don't know." -Brene Brown, Ph.D., #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead
The bestselling author of Give and Take and Originals examines the critical art of rethinking:…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I want to live in a future where all life can thrive. Toward that end, I spend my days teaching and writing about how we can solve the problems we face in our communities and world and build such a future. No surprise then that I read extensively about solutions to problems, looking for those that are visionary while being practical and which truly strive to do the most good and least harm for everyone. As a systems thinker, I’m always looking for books that recognize how interconnected our political, economic, production, food, legal, energy, and other systems are and that offer ideas that will have the fewest unintended negative consequences.
I’m not a fan of either Doomsday or Pollyanna-ish books, especially in relation to climate change. I’ve read lots of books on this subject, and this is my favorite.
It doesn’t shy away from explaining what’s at stake and what is likely to happen if we don’t stop the escalation of climate-heating gases in our atmosphere, but it offers us a path toward solving this potential catastrophe that we can and must take together.
'Everyone should read this book' MATT HAIG 'One of the most inspiring books I have ever read' YUVAL NOAH HARARI 'Inspirational, compassionate and clear. The time to read this is NOW' MARK RUFFALO 'Figueres and Rivett-Carnac dare to tell us how our response can create a better, fairer world' NAOMI KLEIN
*****
Discover why there's hope for the planet and how we can each make a difference in the climate crisis, starting today.
Humanity is not doomed, and we can and will survive. The future is ours to create: it will be shaped by who we…
I’m a civil rights attorney, author, and lifelong educator. My work has focused on addressing racial disparities in education and criminal justice. I worked on the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice and created restorative justice programs in schools. As a leadership scholar, I read books on remarkable sheroes and heroes. This provides me with keen insights into the leadership characteristics of changemakers while developing the tools to better understand how to build and sustain social change.
This book is a roadmap on how to be an inclusive leader. It explores the history of race in America through a firsthand account of Dr. Kendi.
In addition, the book explores the interpersonal and intrapersonal dimensions of cultural engagement. By doing so, it offers the tools needed to understand how to challenge your own biases, stereotypes, and prejudices. It also provides the invitation to pause, reflect, and grow by encouraging self-reflection.
NOT BEING RACIST IS NOT ENOUGH. WE HAVE TO BE ANTIRACIST.
'Transformative and revolutionary' ROBIN DIANGELO, author of White Fragility
'So vital' IJEOMA OLUO, author of So You Want to Talk About Race
In this rousing and deeply empathetic book, Ibram X. Kendi, one of the world's most influential scholars of racism, shows that neutrality is not an option: until we become part of the solution, we can only be part of the problem.
Using his extraordinary gifts as a teacher and story-teller, Kendi helps us recognise that everyone is, at times, complicit in racism whether…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I teach sustainability at the MIT Sloan School of Management and get to know hundreds of passionate executives and young professionals every year. They are out to change organizations, disrupt markets, build social movements, and advance public policy to make the world a better place. As I coach and connect these leaders throughout their careers, I get a front row seat to their personal development. I get to observe - what makes for an effective agent of change or social entrepreneur? How can we enact social and environmental values in organizations that seem to ignore those concerns? How do we change ourselves to be more effective in changing the world?
This is a riveting account of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and biography of abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. Clarkson committed himself to ending the slave trade in 1785 and pursued this objective until his final speeches in the 1840s. The book is an incredible lesson in persistence and perseverance, as Hochschild follows the advancement and setbacks of a century-long social movement. While racial domination and modern slavery are still very real, abolition represented the awakening of global civil society, and a significant transformation toward a socially just global economy. For anyone feeling a lack of hope about change, there is real inspiration here.
The author of King Leopold's Ghost offers a stirring account of the first great human rights crusade, which originated in England in the 1780s and resulted in the freeing of hundreds of thousands of slaves around the world.
As an innovation expert for over 30 years, I've been cautioning about
the "dark side" of innovation and emphasized the importance of
sustainability. Though in light of the urgency of our planet's
situation, we need to shift our focus from sustainability to
regeneration. The unprecedented complexity and
connectedness of today’s world demand thinking in systems,
and the kind of innovation that leads to the transformation of our
current social and economic systems so we can live in harmony
with nature. This requires us to question who we collaborate
with, what we value, and how we create value. We need to work
together differently, with different leadership, and to change our own ways of thinking.
If the first two books provide the general context and rationale for systemic approaches, the following three will offer some guidance for the other necessities for thriving in the 21st century: achieving transformational change, shifting towards urgently needed regeneration, and the twin path of developing as a person and as a leader in order to facilitate the transformational change we need.
By now (almost) everyone will have realized: we cannot continue on the trajectories we are currently on, there is just not enough planet left. But how do we go about introducing the transformative change we so urgently need?
We all know how challenging change is, be it at the personal or organizational level. Otto has developed a systemic approach that is based on collaboration and co-creation, considers systems and has been proven to work (which he illustrates through case studies from around the world).
Access the deepest source of inspiration and vision
We live in a time of massive institutional failure that manifests in the form of three major divides: the ecological, the social, and the spiritual. Addressing these challenges requires a new consciousness and collective leadership capacity. In this groundbreaking book, Otto Scharmer invites us to see the world in new ways and in so doing discover a revolutionary approach to learning and leadership.
In most large systems today, we collectively create results that no one wants. What keeps us stuck in such patterns of the past? It’s our blind spot, that is,…
Jeff has been a UX designer, team leader and product manager for over 20 years. His work in the field helped define some of the key practices product managers use today. Building a customer-centric practice is key to successful products and services and Jeff has demonstrated that not only in the products and companies he’s helped build but in the writing and thinking he’s contributed to the product managaement community.
We can only learn new things if we unlearn old things. The only way we get better is through reexamining our old ways of working and discarding those that are irrelevant. In a series of fun, well-written case studies and discussions Barry makes it clear how this approach to thinking, personal and product development redefines success in any field.
The transformative system that shows leaders how to rethink their strategies, retool their capabilities, and revitalize their businesses for stronger, longer-lasting success. There's a learning curve to running any successful business. But once you begin to rely on past achievements or get stuck in outdated thinking and practices that no longer work, you need to take a step back-and unlearn. This innovative and actionable framework from executive coach Barry O'Reilly shows you how to break the cycle of behaviors that were effective in the past but are no longer relevant in the current business climate, and now limit or may…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I've been fascinated throughout my career by what makes an effective leader. I read about leadership; I carefully observed effective leaders; and I worked hard to become a leader. After a 40-year career, I concluded that nonprofit leaders required a leadership model that met the unique challenges of leading a nonprofit organization and that I was the right person to write the book. I'm proud of The 5 Truths for Transformational Leaders. I believe the book addresses the unique challenges of leading a nonprofit organization. I hope you discover how to use its principles to make a bigger difference in achieving your organization’s mission. Nothing could be more important for the future of our nation.
I’ve had the good fortune to work with Noel to develop a leadership program for Boys & Girls Clubs leaders that is based largely on the content of The Cycle of Leadership.
Noel believes the most successful leaders are teachers. To succeed they need a teachable point of view about how the organization will succeed. The teachable point of view is shared relentlessly shared at every opportunity with all stakeholders.
Part of this conversation is inviting feedback. Thus, the cycle, leaders teach, they receive feedback, and their teachable point of view evolves. One of my greatest learnings from this book was a deeper understanding of how the mission of an organization needs to be the basis for decisions and actions. This provided me with the courage and conviction to act.
In The Leadership Engine, Noel Tichy showed how great companies strive to create leaders at all levels of the organization, and how those leaders actively develop future generations of leaders. In this new book, he takes the theme further, showing how great companies and their leaders develop their business knowledge into "teachable points of view," spend a great portion of their time giving their learnings to others, sharing best practices, and how they in turn learn and receive business ideas/knowledge from the employees they are teaching.
Calling this exchange a virtuous teaching cycle, Professor Tichy shows how business builders from…
The World Economic Forum has identified systems thinking as one of the most important skills humankind must adopt to manage the complex global challenges we are facing. Peter Senge (one of the recommended authors) said systems thinking is the discipline that integrates the disciplines. I love systems thinking because it explains so much about the world. In the 1960s, my father gave me all of the early systems thinking literature, and I have been on a mission to educate people about systems thinking ever since. I know it has helped me immeasurably.
Quite honestly, I have a love/hate relationship with the book! I love it because it is so inciteful in how and why organizations and managers struggle with clarity.
Senge reveals why the system is so powerful and directs so much of the behavior, good and bad. However, it is dense, and you really have to pay attention, but it is worth it.
One of the seminal management books of the past 75 years, The Fifth Discipline is an international multi-million-copy bestseller. Written in an engaging and accessible way, with diagrams and illustrations, it will change the way you think and therefore way you and your team grows and develop. In the long run, the only sustainable source of competitive advantage is your organisation's ability to learn faster than its competitors....
'Senge explains why the learning organization matters, provides an unvarnished summary of his management principals, offers some basic tools for practicing it, and shows what it's like to operate under this system.…
I was born, raised, and living in Iceland, the country that has been number 1 in the world for gender equality for decades. I am a leadership & personal branding coach, mentor, and Ambassador for the New Paradigm for Gender Equality. My mission is to empower people to become better, bolder, and brighter as the leading light in their industry by branding their x-factor, that gift what they were born to be.
When I read Coaching for Performance, I was in the early days of my coaching career. The book opened my eyes to the power of coaching. Not only as a tool for professional coaches but, more importantly, a tool that can help the average Joe and Jane to become the leader in their own lives. Make a difference by using proven tools and techniques to better understand themselves and others around them.
Coaching for Performance is the #1 book for coaches, leaders, talent managers and professionals around the world. This is the definitive, updated and expanded edition.
"The proven resource for all coaches and pioneers of the future of coaching." Magdalena N. Mook, CEO, International Coach Federation (ICF)
An international bestseller, featuring the powerful GROW model, this book is the founding text of the coaching profession. It explains why enabling people to bring the best out of themselves is the key to driving productivity, growth, and engagement. A meaningful coaching culture has the potential to transform the relationship between organizations and employees…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
My grandfather was a labour activist in Hull in the UK and my father had many classic labour texts such as the book by Tressell, listed below. That got me interested in the world of work and later more specifically in managing people. I moved from studying economics to employment relations /human resource management. Given that most of us (workers) spend 80,000 hours of our lives at work - more time than we are likely to spend on any other activity during our lifetimes - how we spend these lives has remained a source of fascination
Much work on management talks of talent and people being the most important asset, whose ideas and skills should be fully utilized.
This book points to another side of organizations, where stupidity and idiocy reign despite the presence of smart workers (think of people who have important information to convey but are quiet at meetings as they are worried about not being seen as team players). This can help organisations in the short run (less conflict and everyone getting on with the job) but in the long run is problematic.
The authors point to how top-down management marginalizes critical voices and reinforces conformity to existing practices, and in so doing can embed stupidity.
Functional stupidity can be catastrophic. It can cause organisational collapse, financial meltdown and technical disaster. And there are countless, more everyday examples of organisations accepting the dubious, the absurd and the downright idiotic, from unsustainable management fads to the cult of leadership or an over-reliance on brand and image. And yet a dose of stupidity can be useful and produce good, short-term results: it can nurture harmony, encourage people to get on with the job and drive success. This is the stupidity paradox.
The Stupidity Paradox tackles head-on the pros and cons of functional stupidity. You'll discover what makes a…
