Our Christmas Book Recommendations

Hopefully at some point over the coming holiday season you’ll have the opportunity to rest, recuperate and if, like us, you love a good book, read!

We asked the team to offer some thoughts and suggestions for good books this winter, based upon what they’ve been reading. Here’s the typically varied selection:

Coaching the Team at Work by David Clutterbuck - Recommended by Kim Gieske 

A goal for this year was to improve my knowledge of team coaching and I chose to do this with the master of team coaching – David Clutterbuck!

So why are people starting to talk about team coaching? 

Well, you may coach a leader on their leadership skills however this can’t be done in isolation when it is the team of people this person leads who are the ones with real insight into their performance.

However, team coaching isn’t straightforward; teams are highly complex social entities and according to ‘multiplicity theory’, individuals are composed of many selves and so are teams.

Clutterbuck identifies key areas of a team’s performance: purpose/motivation, external and internal processes, systems and structures, relationships, learning and leadership and this provides a structure for how to coach a team alongside excellent questionnaires that support the process with provocative titles such as ‘Is this a real team?’ and ‘How much of a team player are you?’

I now feel that I have a good foundation for coaching and some useful tools to support me.

The Comfort Book by Matt Haig - Recommended by Rakhee Patel

This is a hug in a book! Matt Haig’s beautifully written advice, anecdotes and insights never fail to give me a positive boost and a useful perspective. Every offering nudges you to pause and be here in the moment - appreciating it for what it is and what to take from it, especially in the tough moments and we’ve had a fair few of those in the last 18months.

The Silent Guides by Steve Peters - Recommended by Rachel Morris

How to understand and develop children’s thinking, emotions and behaviours.

So this is a bit of an unusual one, as it’s a book aimed specifically at helping parents, teachers or carers or children. However I believe it’s a book that has relevant messages to a much wider audience, and be able to relate the material as much to the boardroom as you will to the bedroom. 

Many of you will know Professor Steve Peters as the creator of the Chimp Management Mind Model. Massively popular principles, offering insight into adult behaviour. He’s widened out his core research to help us understand the neuroscience in relation to supporting the development of emotion and thinking in children. Whether you’ve a 9 year old at home who needs some help or a 49 year old at work who needs some support this book is one valuable asset!

PS: If you like this, then grab a copy of ‘My Hidden Chimp’ which is the cartoon version for children themselves and leave it on their pillow one night. Mine loved it and now we’ve a shared language we can all use. Hope you find it as powerful both personally and professionally as I do!

Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson - Recommended by Sophia Taylor

An epistolary novel beginning with a letter from a lonely lady in Suffolk who writes to a Danish museum, not expecting a reply. The letter was an expression of her regret at having never visited the museum at a reflective time in her life. The curator of the museum reads it and, also lonely having lost his wife, responds.

Although total strangers, they continue to correspond and a friendship develops based upon shared interests and passions and eventually blossoms into something deeper. It’s an absolutely charming novel and a great one to listen to on Audiobook too.

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell - recommended by Sam our Admin guru

Inspired by the all-too-short life of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell expertly transports you to 16thcentury England with heart-breaking lyricism; the depth of research is palpable and her writing is truly exquisite.

At its heart, Hamnet is a study of unimaginable grief and of the resilience of a family in dealing with it.  Whilst that may sound depressing, the novel is so beautifully written that you can’t fail to be uplifted by its magnificence.

I devoured it in three days and, at several points, wept uncontrollably.  I love to be moved.

Devastatingly beautiful.

Stoner by John Williams - recommended by Howard Rich

William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet, and after his death his colleagues remember him rarely. Yet with truthfulness, compassion and intense power, this novel uncovers a story of universal value. Stoner tells of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history, and reclaims the significance of an individual life.

Written in the 1960s and then almost forgotten, before a revival of interest and sales in the last ten years, Stoner is beautiful and melancholic; it really moved me and, having finished it, my initial three word summation was ‘a quiet masterpiece’.