Here are 100 books that Yes to the Mess fans have personally recommended if you like
Yes to the Mess.
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I was born into a family and community of hardworking, service-oriented people with attraction to abundance, entertaining friends, and giving gifts. To earn money, I started selling gift wrap and greeting cards around eight years old, babysitting most of the kids in my small Iowa town at some point, and working summers in the fields at age 12.
As my career unfolded, I had a great seat at the table in multinational corporations, global business teams, private-equity-sponsored growth companies, and a disruptive innovation venture. My effectiveness as a colleague and a leader has been dramatically enhanced by the stories great writers share, and I only hope someone else is helped by the stories I’ve captured in Love Works.
I was very fortunate to have a coach from the Covey organization for a few years named Andy Cindrich, and I’m forever grateful for his help to shift my own paradigms around trust.
I’d been raised with the story ‘Losing trust is like a house burning down… you can try to rebuild it, but it takes 18 months and it’s never quite the same…’ Through The Speed of Trust, I learned managing trust is a skill. When we embrace trust falls courageously and sort through the gap and pain with care and intention, we end up grateful for the problems and issues that allow us to show our character, reinforce our values, and elevate relationships.
I wish for everyone to have these tools in their pockets, not to maintain perfect trust, but to fix things fast when they inevitably get messy between us humans.
From Stephen R. Covey's eldest son come a revolutionary book, now in handy B-format, that will guide business leaders, public figures and their organizations towards unprecedented productivity and satisfaction. Trust, says Stephen M. R. Covey, is the very basis of the 21st century's global economy, but its power is generally overlooked and misunderstood. Covey shows you how to inspire immediate trust in everyone you encounter - colleagues, constituents, the marketplace - allowing you to forego the time-killing and energy-draining check and balance bureaucracies that are so often relied upon in lieu of actual trust.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
My passion for leadership and aspiring women leaders comes from my own leadership experiences and working with women and men executives and aspiring executives, every day. I had to make some difficult work choices in my 20s and 30s (with four young children) and was wonderfully supported by some wise women. Many of my choices were different from my peers and we continue to have to make more difficult choices than our male colleagues. We need to help each other, every day. I lead a blended life co-leading an executive search and leadership advisory firm, while also being a mother, grandmother, wife, mentor, friend, and lover of good music, theatre, food, wine, and curious people.
For me, Sandberg’s book remains a major and critical contribution to how women lead, how we are perceived, and how we can improve as leaders.
It is also one of the most misquoted and maligned books which I find disappointing. Those who are overly critical probably have not read the book or are biased because of Sandberg’s employer. When I read Lean In, I thought, ‘Great, I don’t need to do all that research as it has been done.'
It inspired me instead to share my own story and that of others who inspire me every day. Sandberg reminds us that so much that is in our hands, to not be dissuaded, but to ‘lean in’ and create our own agendas at work, home, and everywhere.
Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In is a massive cultural phenomenon and its title has become an instant catchphrase for empowering women. The book soared to the top of bestseller lists internationally, igniting global conversations about women and ambition. Sandberg packed theatres, dominated opinion pages, appeared on every major television show and on the cover of Time magazine, and sparked ferocious debate about women and leadership.
Ask most women whether they have the right to equality at work and the answer will be a resounding yes, but ask the same women whether they'd feel confident asking for a raise, a promotion, or…
My passion for leadership and aspiring women leaders comes from my own leadership experiences and working with women and men executives and aspiring executives, every day. I had to make some difficult work choices in my 20s and 30s (with four young children) and was wonderfully supported by some wise women. Many of my choices were different from my peers and we continue to have to make more difficult choices than our male colleagues. We need to help each other, every day. I lead a blended life co-leading an executive search and leadership advisory firm, while also being a mother, grandmother, wife, mentor, friend, and lover of good music, theatre, food, wine, and curious people.
The Advantage lays out a compelling case that if an organization has strong organizational health it is well placed to succeed in its goals and in its industry.
Goodorganizational healthembraces great teamwork, clear and consistent company culture and goals, and how to have effective meetings. Lencioni brings together many pragmatic and practical perspectives through many years of working with executive teams.
The key element for me is his articulation of the ‘five dysfunctions of teams’ and then how to address these. That one chart has been pivotal to my facilitation of many challenging executive discussions with clients, particularly when paired with Covey’s approach to trust and trust building.
Modelling Trust is the first step in building effective executive teams.
There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. In this book, Lencioni brings together his vast experience and many of the themes cultivated in his other best-selling books and delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides. Simply put,…
Delve into this internationally best-selling series, now complete! A fast paced laugh-out-loud mix of Urban Fantasy and Mystery.
I can tell when you’re lying. Every. Single. Time. I’m Jinx, a PI hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar–yet my gut…
My passion for leadership and aspiring women leaders comes from my own leadership experiences and working with women and men executives and aspiring executives, every day. I had to make some difficult work choices in my 20s and 30s (with four young children) and was wonderfully supported by some wise women. Many of my choices were different from my peers and we continue to have to make more difficult choices than our male colleagues. We need to help each other, every day. I lead a blended life co-leading an executive search and leadership advisory firm, while also being a mother, grandmother, wife, mentor, friend, and lover of good music, theatre, food, wine, and curious people.
Gillard and Okonjo-Iweala both have stellar careers in political and community leadership in their own countries and now globally.
They share their experience and that of other amazing and high-profile leaders they interviewed, such as Jacinda Ardern, Hillary Clinton, and Christine Lagarde. They share their passion for gender equality and their concerns that we ‘aren’t there yet’. The authors introduce themselves and the eight other leaders and their ‘pathways to power’.
They posit a series of hypotheses and lessons in a very relatable and accessible way. It is both educative and informative to realize that no matter how resilient they seem, high-profile women leaders have faced many of the same issues – and often more – as the rest of us females. Learn how to deal with it and turn it to your advantage!
A powerful call-to-action for gender equity that offers 10 key lessons for women aspiring to a leadership role—be it in politics, business, law, or their local community.
Featuring words of wisdom from female leaders like Hillary Clinton and Theresa May, this empowering study reads like a You Are a Badass volume on world leadership.
Women make up fewer than 10% of national leaders worldwide. Behind this eye-opening statistic lies a pattern of unequal access to power. Through conversations with some of the world’s most powerful and interesting women—including Jacinda Ardern, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Christine Lagarde, Michelle Bachelet, and Theresa…
I’m on a mission to cultivate creativity at work! After starting my career in the performing arts, I made a pivot to corporate life over 20 years ago and haven’t looked back. What I’ve discovered is how essential creativity is in any workplace, and how its impact on organizational culture is underrated. Effective leaders prioritize connection, creativity, and make culture a strategic priority. After learning from hundreds of artists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, I wrote this book to highlight their stories—unpacking how they bring creativity to life in their work. My hope is readers leave with tools to spark more meaningful connection and creative work experiences.
Many of us are looking for the secrets to a happy life, so I was delighted to discover Shawn Achor’s book, Big Potential, include a bundle of them.
Combining ample scientific research and compelling narrative, this book is packed with memorable stories and strategies to immediately apply to work environments. I often return to its dog-eared pages to get inspired and isolate the behaviors that lead to greater connection.
For readers who aim to develop talent in others or are looking to tap into their own potential, this is a thoughtful and generous read.
Forget everything you thought you knew about being your best. It's not about your own skills or talents. Instead, real success in work and life comes from your connections and relationships - the teams you build around you, the friends you make - and getting the best out of them. You hugely amplify your own potential by helping others around you to realise theirs.
A TED talk star with over 16 million views, Shawn Achor is one of the world's leading experts on happiness and personal success - and author of the positive psychology classic The Happiness Advantage. Now, in…
Ever since my teenage self stumbled into the world of computer programming, I’ve been fascinated by how technology is built. This isn’t limited to just how the software or hardware is architected; I’m just as fascinated by how teams and companies work together in order to get the job done. I’m currently Director of Engineering at Shopify, and previously I helped grow Brandwatch from start-up to scale up to successful acquisition. Along the way I’ve blogged what I’ve learned and have published two books: one being the subject of this list, and the other being Effective Remote Work. I live in Cumbria, UK.
It heartens me to see that more and more excellent material is being produced about how to be an effective senior individual contributor, and Tanya’s book is a fantastic guide for growth-minded engineers that want to become technical leaders in their organization.
More importantly, as a manager, you get a blueprint of how to turn your senior engineers into true leaders and partners.
I almost see this book as a sibling of my own that I wrote for managers: it skillfully dances between making yourself better, making your team better, and making your company better. Essential reading for any senior engineer to understand what lies ahead.
For years, companies have rewarded their most effective engineers by suggesting they move to a management position. But treating management as the default (or only) path for an engineer with leadership ability doesn't serve the industry well. The staff engineer path allows you to contribute at a high level, with more free time to drive big projects, determine tech strategy, and raise everyone's skills.
With this in-depth book, author Tanya Reilly shows you ways to master strategic thinking, manage difficult projects, and set the standard for technical work. You'll learn how to be a leader without direct authority, how to…
On the morning of December 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. The resulting tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people across fourteen countries, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to Thailand to the Maldives to India and all the way to East Africa.…
Art, technology, and science…I have been seamlessly traversing domains all my life. I grew up with twin interests in physical sciences and visual arts, finding beauty in math and art and seeing creativity as being one thing rather than something living in compartments. Art influenced my research in chaos and complexity, and blurring boundaries characterized my work as dean of engineering when creating educational/research initiatives in design, art, entrepreneurship, energy, and sustainability. I also received visible external recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow and member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
This book will capture your imagination and dazzle your senses with deep scholarship.
Deep exploration of creative outputs at their maximum states, the state of “flow”, condensing Csikszentmihalyi’s thirty years of research and nearly one hundred interviews with exceptionally creative people, spanning science, business, and art, in all of their dimensions. Creativity in art, technology, and science, perceived by many as being different types of creativity, revealed, at its core, to be the same.
“Although the benefits of this study to scholars are obvious, this thought-provoking mixture of scholarly and colloquial will enlighten inquisitive general readers, too.” — Library Journal (starred review)
The classic study of the creative process from the bestselling author of Flow.
Creativity is about capturing those moments that make life worth living. Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (“The leading researcher into ‘flow states.’” — Newsweek) reveals what leads to these moments—be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab—so that this knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on nearly one hundred…
I’m a professor of cognitive psychology at UCLA, and also a poet. Growing up on a dairy farm in British Columbia, I immersed myself in the world of books. My mother showed me her well-worn copy of a poetry book written by her Scottish great-great-aunt, and I longed to create my own arrangements of words. Later, as a student at the University of British Columbia and then Stanford, my interest in creativity was channeled into research on how people think. I’ve studied how people use analogies and metaphors to create new ideas. In addition to books on the psychology of thinking and reasoning, I’ve written several volumes of poetry.
What is creativity, and what makes it possible? If a new idea came from nothing, would it be magic? If a new idea were generated by recombining old ones, would it really be “creative”? In this book, Margaret Boden, a distinguished philosopher of science, thinks through what creativity really is, whether it takes the form of a world-altering advance in science or a novel jazz improvisation. To help understand human creativity, the book compares it to the workings of computer programs—ones capable of generating art or music that at least appears creative. Readers who have followed more recent developments in artificial intelligence will be able to consider for themselves whether machine creativity is, or could be, a reality. The book helped me think about what it means to create an “authentic” poem.
How is it possible to think new thoughts? What is creativity and can science explain it? And just how did Coleridge dream up the creatures of The Ancient Mariner?
When The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms was first published, Margaret A. Boden's bold and provocative exploration of creativity broke new ground. Boden uses examples such as jazz improvisation, chess, story writing, physics, and the music of Mozart, together with computing models from the field of artificial intelligence to uncover the nature of human creativity in the arts.
The second edition of The Creative Mind has been updated to include recent…
As a writer, I love words and am continuously fascinated by the way they work. In terms of writing manuals, I particularly value the work of writers who combine knowledge and understanding of writing techniques while also providing inspiration and keys to freeing the imagination. I’ve found these books brilliantly complement my professional interest in story structure and how story works, and match my own approach to combining theory with practice; craft with art in my work on story. I hope you find they inspire creativity in you, too.
If you’re in need of inspiration, this book will either make you fall in love with writing or fall back in love with it again. Although it’s a book for the younger writer (aged 9-12), it’s a perfect book for the young-at-heart, grown-up kid. It’s full of energy and verve – just the thing to boost creativity and confidence. Although it’s one of the shortest books on my list, its content packs a punch. It contains exercises to spark the imagination, helpful hints and tips from established authors, and plenty of advice on writing both fiction and nonfiction.
A lively and humorous self-help book for children aged 9-12 on being a writer. It shows them how to develop writing practice as part of their everyday lives, rather than just in the classroom. The book offers advice on avoiding unhelpful feelings such as anxiety, impatience and self-rejection and shows how writing is a brilliant tool for building self-confidence, understanding and effectiveness throughout life. "Aimed at schoolchildren, here is a book that should capture their imagination, make them realise that writing can be fun, and inspire them to create their own written material." Writing Magazine
Nelson West, a former Chicago homicide detective, is hired by wealthy heir Lionel Bing to discreetly help “fix” scandals and legal problems for his father’s wealthy friends.
Bing, a brilliant but troubled investigator, suffers from PTSD symptoms as a result of being kidnapped and witnessing the murder of his mother…
My passion is helping women write the stories they need to write. I’ve spent the last twenty-some years helping women write, polish, and publish the hard, gritty, beautiful, and awe-inspiring in their lives. I teach Motherhood & Words and lead retreats and women’s writing circles. I am also a writing coach and developmental editor. I’m the author of Ready for Air: A Journey Through Premature Motherhood and co-author of Silent Running, a memoir. I’m currently working on a rom-com.
This latest book by poet Maggie Smith is writing guide meets cheerleading section. I love the way readers get to see her poet's mind at work. And I love the way that this book gives us all, any reader, permission to claim the titles of poet and writer.
There are helpful tips here about the craft of writing, but for me, this book is, at its heart, about encouraging each of us to tap into the power of our own creativity. I love that.
New York Times bestselling author and poet Maggie Smith distills creativity and the craft of writing with a practical guide perfect for fans of Elizabeth Gilbert'sBig Magicand Anne Lamott'sBird by Bird.
Drawing from her twenty years of teaching experience and her bestselling Substack newsletter, For Dear Life, Maggie Smith breaks down creativity into ten essential elements: attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope. Each element is explored through short, inspiring, and craft-focused essays, followed by generative writing prompts. Dear Writer provides tools that artists of all experience levels can apply to their…
