BPI's 2021 Holiday Book Recommendations

BPI-2020-Book-Recommendation
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We at Best Practice Institute are giving you a prescription for the holidays. We are prescribing you take time to reflect, rest and reimagine. And, what better way to do this than a great book!

The following BPI holiday book recommendations will bring you out of your daily crazed mindset and into new possibilities. The authors have taken great time and investment to bring you different and new thinking that will expand your mind and imagination. Use this time to read our recommended book list.

You will be glad you did. You’re going to like the way you’ve rested and renewed your imagination!

Demystifying Talent Management

Demystifying Talent Management

Winner of the Axiom Book Award, Demystifying Talent Management is a must read for all leaders. In her frank, straightforward manner and at times, humorous way, Dr. Kimberly Janson – a world renown talent expert – shares the “inside scoop” of what it takes to be successful as a leader and employee. This book provides a clear roadmap of how talent management really works. Dr. Janson takes the complex subjects of talent management and development and makes them simple, insightful, and replicable in Demystifying Talent Management. The tools, quick assessments and reflection questions throughout the book combined with examples, specific instructions and stellar advice make this a book you will reference throughout your career. This book is a must read for anyone looking to attain superior business results and a roadmap to unleash the potential within you and those around you. Knowing how to do this work well is game changing and the results are extraordinary.
LEAD. CARE. WIN. How to Become a Leader Who Matters

LEAD. CARE. WIN. How to Become a Leader Who Matters

LEAD. CARE. WIN. How to Become a Leader Who Matters is a captivating 4th book from leadership strategist Dan Pontefract containing nine insightful yet super-practical leadership lessons to help you become a more caring and engaging leader. The nine leadership lessons center on your willingness to improve how you treat people. Some of the lessons include how to: be relatable and empathetic, act not out of ego but out of purpose, embrace change and the opportunity for growth it offers, as well as leading with humility and thoughtfulness. Harvard Business School professor Amy C. Edmondson calls it “an invaluable roadmap,” and London Business School professor Herminia Ibarra says the book is “a thoughtful field guide to transform yourself into a leader with a heart.” It’s a vibrant read in paperback format, accompanied by thoughtful questions, self-assessments, free online resources, and summarized easy-to-follow actions.
Leadership Agility

Leadership Agility

Richly illustrated with stories and written in an engaging, down-to-earth style, Leadership Agility by Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs is designed as a roadmap that shows you how to bring increased agility to the initiatives you take every day — whether you want to improve working relationships, develop your team, or improve your organization. Reading this book will confirm your best instincts and introduce you to new forms of leadership practiced by only a small vanguard of highly agile leaders.
Fit to Compete: Why Honest Conversations About Your Company's Capabilities Are the Key to a Winning Strategy

Fit to Compete: Why Honest Conversations About Your Company’s Capabilities Are the Key to a Winning Strategy

The Strategic Fitness Process really energized the transformation in multiple dimensions…The changes we made happened because of SFP…” (Vince Forlenza CEO, Becton Dickinson “Fit to Compete” provides a guide to a distinctive and time test Stratergic Fitness Process (SFP) employed by CEO Forlenza CEOs and business unit leaders in over 150 corporations across the globe who have employed SFP and it’s underlying principles to accerate stratergic change. SFP enabled these sebior executives to lead an completely honest, collective and internally public conversation involving the whole orgnaization. They learned about ther company’s strengths and hidden normally unsicussible barriers that are standing in the way of greater effectivenssand performance. The book provides multiple rich examples of how differewnt orgnaizations in different industries and countries applied SFP with often dramtic results. Fit to Compete” will be helpful to CEOs, senior leaders, and senior HR professionals who are needed to facilitate SFP and the changes that follow.
Connection Culture

Connection Culture: The Competitive Advantage of Shared Identity, Empathy, and Understanding at Work

In Connection Culture, selected as an “Editor’s Pick” by getAbstract as one of the “best of the best books,” leadership expert Michael Stallard uses a compelling mix of diverse leader profiles, scientific research and concrete examples to make the case that effective leaders cultivate work cultures of human connection to produce sustainable superior results. Engaging profiles of Lin-Manuel Miranda, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Oprah Winfrey, basketball star Steph Curry, and CEO Tricia Griffith of Progressive, among many others, demonstrate connection in action. “Making It Personal” questions, best practices and a 5-step process to operationalize connection culture equip the reader to apply the material personally and professionally. Updated and expanded during the Covid-19 pandemic, Connection Culture addresses remote work and the challenges of today’s changing workplace.
Make Courage Contagious: How Great Business Leaders Power UP Brilliance to Profit Through Turbulence

Make Courage Contagious: How Great Business Leaders Power UP Brilliance to Profit Through Turbulence

What happens when you see what’s possible to make a difference and profit through turbulence – and key people around you freeze, complain, obstruct, twist facts or impune your motives? Do you PowerUP, Puff Up or Go Along? In this practical how-to leadership book, Klein + Klein show you how to lift teams out of risk-averse traps and Make Courage Contagious – to get the support, funding and traction you need. They show you how to take, “No, Not now, Not that way. Not you” – and start a dialogue that sharpens your team’s thinking and upgrades their best ideas. They show you how to make diversity an asset, even when it’s hard to understand or rubs some team members the wrong way. Make Courage Contagious gives you a proven 5-part formula to raise your Encourage Quotient (EnQ) when you face Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity + Adversity. With a higher EnQ, you’ll step up, open up and include diverse contributors, rather than shut them down or push them aside. The authors illustrate courage-building with dozens of success stories, based on decades of experience as business psychologists equipping innovation leaders to achieve disruptive breakthrough success.
Saving Face: How to Preserve Dignity and Build Trust

Saving Face: How to Preserve Dignity and Build Trust

Successful organizations must attract, retain, and motivate teams and employees across distance, time zones, and cultural differences. Building authentic and lasting human relations may be the most important calling for leaders in this century. In her new book, Saving Face: How to Preserve Dignity and Build Trust, author and executive coach, Maya Hu-Chan explains how “Face” represents a person’s self-esteem, self-worth, identity, reputation, status, pride, and dignity. This book illustrates how we can “honor Face” to create positive first impressions, avoid causing others to “lose Face,” and, most importantly, help others “save Face” to build trust and lasting relationships in the workplace and beyond.
Virtual Teams for Dummies

Virtual Teams For Dummies

“Written by award-winning leadership expert, Tara Powers, Virtual Teams For Dummies is every team’s go-to resource for creating and sustaining successful virtual teams. Packed with rock-solid guidance, in-depth interviews and relevant case studies from well-known companies that have institutionalized working from home,Virtual Teams For Dummies provides the essentials for building, leading, and sustaining a highly-productive virtual workforce. Plus, this must-have manual helps executives understand key strategies that lead virtual teams to success and offers practical information and tools to support leaders and their teams in bridging communication gaps created by geographical separation, all while achieving peak performance and maintaining essential connection. Readers of Modern Talent Magazine who purchase Virtual Teams for Dummies receive this FREE discussion guide; to augment their virtual team integration. “
Fear your Strenghs

Fear Your Strengths

Based on decades of helping top executives improve, including the CEOs of major corporations, leadership experts Robert Kaplan and Robert Kaiser warn leaders of the danger in taking their strengths too far. Published in partnership with the Center for Creative Leadership, Fear Your Strengths draws on Kaplan and Kaiser’s wealth of experience consulting to senior leaders and their program of published research using an innovative way to measure leadership—a 360 assessment tool that captures when leadership strengths have turned into leadership weaknesses through overuse. Loaded with practical tips for raising self-awareness and techniques for reining in strengths overused, Fear Your Strengths helps leaders adjust both their behavior and the mindset behind it so they can make the most of their strengths—without overdoing it.
B State

B State: A New Roadmap for Bold Leadership, Brave Culture, and Breakthrough Results

In business and life, there are often moments when one simply can’t seem to find a way forward. Searching in the past for solutions to persistent problems results in frustration and confusion. Issues in corporate teamwork and individual relationships can feel overwhelming and even insurmountable. B State provides a clear roadmap from point A to point B to rapidly achieve measurable, breakthrough results. It’s about a true transformation that removes old mindsets and silos, while replacing inefficient behaviors with desired habits for groundbreaking outcomes.
Why SImple WIns

Why Simple Wins: Escape The Complexity Trap And Get To The Work That Matters

“Imagine what you could do with the time you spend writing emails every day. Complexity is killing companies’ ability to innovate and adapt, and simplicity is fast becoming the competitive advantage of our time. Why Simple Wins helps leaders and their teams move beyond the feelings of frustration and futility that come with so much unproductive work in today’s corporate world to create a corporate culture where valuable, essential, meaningful work is the norm. By learning how to eliminate redundancies, communicate with clarity, and make simplification a habit, individuals and companies can begin to recognize which activities are time-sucks and which create lasting value.”
Inclusive Leadership

Inclusive Leadership

Inclusive Leadership examines the urgency for inclusive practices in the workplace, provides practical steps for leaders and employees to foster inclusion and outlines five critical change levers necessary to create an inclusive work culture. Dr. Gundling and Dr. Williams take a critical look at inclusion trends such as avoiding “bias fatigue”, the importance of psychological safety, and why local knowledge is necessary for any successful global inclusion initiative.
How Woman Rise

How Women Rise

In How Women Rise, renowned women’s leadership expert Sally Helgesen teams with legendary executive coach Marshall Goldsmith to examine the 12 habits or behaviors most likely to hold successful women back from moving higher in their careers. Habits covered include Reluctance to Claim Your Achievements, Overvaluing Expertise, Putting Your Job Before Your Career, The Perfection Trap and Ruminating. How Women Rise emphasizes simple actions women can take to cultivate more effective habits and techniques for enlisting others in their own development. Coaches and trainers around the world also find the book invaluable, as do men seeking to serve as more effective mentors, supporters, champions and allies for talented women.
Change Thrive

Change and Thrive: A Modern Approach to Change Leadership

“As a leader in an organization, you face many challenges and critical decisions to successfully navigate change. The very essence of change is that it can happen quickly, right before your eyes. By its nature, change is disruptive and can throw even the most skilled leaders and individuals off balance. Fortunately, with proper planning and preparation leaders can not only handle change but also, thrive! Change and Thrive offers a breakthrough approach to managing and leading change! Rooted in the principles of emotional intelligence and organizational psychology, Change and Thrive present practical and adaptable concepts, applicable to any organization or situation. Drawing from the time-tested and research-based 5C’s of Transition Leadership(R) framework, the author provides readers with a systematic methodology successfully used in multiple organizations and settings. This powerful handbook will enable you to navigate any change initiative with the confidence and skills necessary for success!”
Mastering the Cube

Mastering the Cube

Mastering the Cube offers practical wisdom to help readers develop a shared perspective on organization design and achieve positive business results. Comparing today’s complex organizations to a Rubik’s Cube, the authors explain how focusing improvement efforts on just one or two facets of the organization is akin to concentrating on just one side of the cube. Doing so is bound to jumble the other areas needed to generate a healthy and sustainable organization. Instead, the authors advocate stepping back and taking a systems-wide, comprehensive view of change and bringing all elements into alignment with strategy. Noted author and Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen called Mastering the Cube “a great step-by-step manual on defining and changing the design of your company.”
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In Great Company

In Great Company offers a practical plan to help leaders at all levels make the commitment to ongoing improvement and organizational change. This is an approach that, with practice, can elevate performance, improve retention, and have a positive impact on business outcomes. By practicing the prescriptions in this book, people can be their best at work, become emotionally connected to each other and truly feel like they are in great company.”–from the foreword by Marshall Goldsmith “In Great Company explores the humanity of an organization and the importance of emotional connectedness. It offers a set of frameworks and a plethora of practical examples and approaches that can help unleash the power of the people and extraordinary performance.”- Hubert Joly, Chairman and CEO, Best Buy “Louis’ process for In Great Company really works. It develops the greatest culture, with the greatest people in place, and the greatest systems for collaboration. It is absolutely the best way to transform and generate real results. “- Brian Fishel, Chief Human Resources Officer, KeyBank “An incredibly important book that will change the way we lead and manage today. Carter distills the essence of what it takes to be a truly great leader.”- Frances Hesselbein, Chairman, Frances Hesselbein Leadership Forum, and Editor-in-Chief, Leader to Leader Journal
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