A Little Summer Reading

Do You need a recommendation for some summer reading?

Although our opportunities for enjoying the classic summer reading experience, whether poolside or on the beach, may be curtailed this year, if you’re like us, you’ll still use some of your time to stretch your mind and take in a different point of view.

We’ve asked our coaches for a few recommendations, and this is what we’ve come up with…

Think Again by Adam Grant - Recommended by Kim Gieske

Think Again encourages us to rethink and unlearn our old patterns of thinking. As a result we’ll more readily reassess our stances, admit when we’re wrong, when we don’t know the answer and seek critical feedback. It ties in nicely with the work that I’ve been doing on ‘Authentic leadership’.

Your Body is Your Brain by Amanda Blake - Recommended by Rachel Morris

This book has never been very far from my side over the last 18 months. It’s a story, reference book and valuable pot of insight all rolled into one.

If you want to know more about that ‘funny feeling’ you get when you are nervous, unsettled and on high alert – this is the place to really unpick it. If you want to know how to turn this feeling into something you understand and use to help you to build your personal resilience, look no further than the pages of this book. Who knew the power that is held in our Somatic nervous system!

Swamped in empathy and stories, Blake uses science to back up all her ideas in an interesting, informative and insightful manner. I intend to keep reading this book again and again for a long time to come.

How to Change by Katy Milkman - Recommended by Rakhee Patel

It’s science based and packed with super practical, easy to implement tools that can instantly help you elevate existing good habits, introduce new positive habits and overcome or eliminate the not so helpful ones. 

I especially like that Katy helps you approach habit change/development from a perspective of ‘what’s getting in the way’ and what are the proven tools/resources that help you overcome those potential barriers that are easy to experiment with.

This Too Shall Pass by Julia Samuel - Recommended by Sophia Taylor

I’m a massive fan of Julia Samuel and her work on grief and change.  Here she presents a series of short stories each describing deeply personal conversations with clients about their lives and struggles.  She describes why they had come to her, what they were struggling with and the work they did together to enable the client to navigate through their challenges.

The main sense of this book is that life is going to throw us curveballs and can sometimes be cruel and confusing and challenging.  But that we can navigate our way through these periods of grief or change and come out the other side.  And this really resonated with me from a coaching perspective.  I have previously found her work on change really helpful and this book puts that work into a context we can all relate to.  

I found myself dipping into the book and reading one or two case studies at a time.  I needed to reflect and digest each story before I went on to the next.  A fascinating read.  

Achieve Your Potential with Positive Psychology by Tim Lebon - Recommended by Howard Rich

What makes us happy, how do we assess and use our strengths, how can we be more resilient and mindful? All these and many other questions and topics are addressed in Tim Lebon’s book.

I dip in and out of this book all the time, both for professional and personal reasons, as it’s full of practical explanations, prompts and tools and techniques that make you think more and communicate smarter. It’s accessible and also thought provoking, and provides an introduction to the work of many of the key names in modern psychology - Martin Seligman on happiness obviously, but also Daniel Goleman on emotional intelligence, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow and Viktor Frankl on meaning.

It’s my best recommendation for a science and research based book that can enable you to consider and work on the most common challenges we all face.