BOOKS
Recent Books
Changing on the Job, Second Edition
- Adult development
- Changing on the Job
- Coaching
Changing on the Job, Second Edition
The leaders we need to solve our complex, unprecedented problems can only be developed in the workplace, and they require personal transformation, not just some new leadership skills. The second edition of Jennifer Garvey Berger’s influential Changing on the Job explains the advanced perspective, maturity, and personal evolution leaders need to make a powerful difference in their organizations and in the world. The book offers practical tools and deep insights based on adult development theory to help leaders turn their greatest challenges into growth and personal transformation. Berger explains the four predictable stages of leadership maturity and wisdom, and how to accelerate growth toward the third and fourth stages. Whether you’re a seasoned leader or an emerging coach, Changing on the Job is a roadmap to cultivating courageous, wise, and steady leadership in an uncertain world.
Human Work
A human workplace is one that supports everyone to be at their best, whatever that means to them, for the benefit of every aspect of their lives.
Leaders around the world are transforming workplaces into spaces for people to do work they care about, with people they care about, in organisations that care for them in return.
We are nurturing a paradigm shift with the potential to reshape society: imagining a world where workplaces support us to bring our gifts more fully to those we care about – both at work and beyond.
What Is Water?
We live in a world that feels increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). For young people, the sense of unease this world creates comes with serious difficulties. Many are asking: how can you lead, grow, and thrive in today’s world?
In What is Water?, Kayvan Kian shifts the focus away from this overwhelm and toward ways of thinking that will help you grow stronger through it all. Drawing on everything from ancient Stoic philosophy to contemporary examples, Kayvan delivers an approach for dealing with our VUCA world that is simple, pragmatic, and easily transferable to teams, families, and communities. You are not alone in this struggle, and with this book, you’ll be empowered with a strong sense of choice in life, no matter what kind of situations come your way.
What Is Wisdom?
Life is full of important decisions, and they all have consequences. Large or small, positive or negative, intended or unintended. Would you consider yourself wise when it comes to the choices you make?
With room to write down your own thoughts and ideas, What Is Wisdom? invites you to practice many ways of thinking developed by philosophers throughout history, helping you make better decisions in an uncertain world.
The ability to switch between these ways of thinking will lead you to clearer distinctions between what matters and what doesn’t and guide you toward regret-free decisions. It will give you the courage to take action when the opportunity arises, the prudence to pause when perspective is needed, and the diligence to follow through to get closer to where you want to be.
May you enjoy with each step the sense of mastery, freedom, and wonder that awaits you.
Unleash your Complexity Genius
- Complexity
Unleash your Complexity Genius
It feels like the world is spinning off its axis right now, and this underscores what’s always been true: there’s much about life, work, and the world that we just can’t control. But, as Jennifer Garvey Berger and Carolyn Coughlin show in their insight-packed new book UNLEASH YOUR COMPLEXITY GENIUS: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead (Stanford University Press, August 2022) there are methods—both mental and physical—to manage the confusion that paralyzes us in the face of unpredictability and compounding challenges. The authors explain how to tap into our innate human ability to handle the unknown and the overwhelming by using a genius that lies within all of us, and which is often switched off just when we need it most.
Bringing together research about human development and the science and wisdom of the body, as well as decades of experience coaching CEOs and industry leaders on how to hone their leadership skills, UNLEASHING YOUR COMPLEXITY GENIUS offers those who are overwhelmed and exhausted—most of us these days—an array of easy-to-implement practices for living and leading well in stressful times.
Return on Ambition
This book won the Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal Award and was among the five finalists for the GetAbstract International Book Award.
Nicolai Tillisch is a colleague at Cultivating Leadership, while Nicolai Chen Nielsen was previously a consultant at McKinsey & Company and is now independent.
Their motivation for writing the book came from the observation that executives’ ambitions tend to limit their effectiveness as leaders. Their striving for success hurts the chances that they will succeed and thrive.
The title emerged from the two Nicolais’ finding that 43 percent of ambitious people doubt their efforts will pay off. Metaphorically speaking, that is almost like betting decades of work on red in a single round of roulette at the casino.
The book substantiates possibilities for succeeding better in a sounder and safer way. It presents analyses and options which build on extensive research and experience from the practical application of ideas.
The language used invites any ambitious adult to read. Plenty of case stories carry the reader forward. A simple, practical toolbox offers suggestions for what to do in practical terms.
It remains an insightful source for executives and HR professionals seeking inspiration for how to support ambitious people in achieving, growing, and being well.
Published by Fast Company Press
Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps
- Mindtraps
Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps
Author and consultant Jennifer Garvey Berger hears a version of the same plea from every client in nearly every sector around the world: “I know that complexity and uncertainty are testing my instincts, but I don’t know which to trust. Is there some way to know what to do when I can’t know what’s next?”
Her newest work is an answer to this plea. Using her background in adult development, complexity theories, and leadership consultancy, Garvey Berger discerns five pernicious and pervasive “mind traps” to frame the book. These are: the desire for simple stories, our sense that we are right, our desire to get along with others in our group, our fixation with control, and our constant quest to protect and defend our egos. In addition to understanding why these natural impulses steer us wrong in a fast-moving world, leaders will get powerful questions and approaches that help them escape these patterns.
Simple Habits for Complex Times
When faced with complex challenges or uncertain outcomes, many leaders believe that if they are smart enough, work hard enough, or turn to the best management tools, they will be able to find the right answer, predict and plan for the future, and break down tasks to produce controllable outcomes. But, what are leaders to do when this isn’t the case?
In complex situations, prediction, control, and the right answer are illusions. Rather than offering one-size-fits-all tips and tricks in pursuit of these mirages, Simple Habits for Complex Times provides three integral practices that enable leaders to navigate the unknown. By taking multiple perspectives, asking different questions, and seeing more of their system, leaders can better understand themselves, their roles, and the world around them. They can become more nimble, respond with agility, and guide their organizations to thrive in an ever-shifting business landscape. The more leaders use these simple habits, the more they enhance their performance and solve increasingly common, sticky business issues with greater acumen.
Changing on the Job
Listen to people in every field and you’ll hear a call for more sophisticated and thoughtful leadership—for leaders who can solve more complex problems than the human race has ever faced before. But these leaders won’t simply come to the fore; we have to develop them, and we must cultivate them as quickly as is humanly possible. Changing on the job is a means to this end.
Leadership discussions often begin with tips and toolkits that take for granted the readiness of our leaders to face the challenges of today. Changing on the Job builds on sophisticated theories of adult growth and development. As opposed to showing us how to play the role of a leader in a “paint by numbers” fashion, this book helps readers to become individuals who are capable of leading and are ready to do so in any scenario. Moving from the theoretical to the practical, it shows how organizations can grow the complex and agile workforce that they need while maintaining and improving performance.
Using real-world examples which bring concepts to life, author Jennifer Garvey Berger invites readers to change the way they think about leadership and adult growth, while offering a set of building blocks, so that readers and the talent that they support can realize their fullest potential.
Coaches, HR professionals, thoughtful leaders, and everyone who wants to support others to grow—or to grow themselves—will find this book good company for their journeys.
Based on the book, Jennifer has designed the Growth Edge Coaching series of courses.
Why Purpose Matters
Each of us has a desperate yearning for meaning and purpose but very few of us find it or are able to live it out in the organisations we work for.
In Why Purpose Matters, Rodney Howard and co-author, Nicholas Barnett, explain how organisations can discover their purpose and then through an authentic and sustained leadership commitment, embed it in their culture and make it their new way of organisational life.
Ultimately, this book is about transformation that shapes a whole new organisational identity from the inside out and adds new focus and energy to employee endeavours.
Choose Your Stories
Being found to be incompetent (imposter syndrome), underachieving, showing vulnerability and appearing foolish are common fears held by many leaders. These fears drive unhelpful behaviours that can be hard to change. Author and consultant, John Sautelle, understands these fears and supports leaders around the world to overcome them.
Drawing on the latest research in psychology, neuroscience, adult development theory and 20 years’ experience as an executive coach, Sautelle helps leaders use their “embodied wisdom” to surface and rewrite fear-based stories, freeing them to make the changes they want to make. Through rich case studies which explore Purpose, Identity, and Values stories we inherit, adopt, create and sometimes disown, in Choose Your Stories, Change Your Life Sautelle brings this change process to life.