What pairs perfectly with a pumpkin spice beverage and a cozy fall night? Books, of course. As a team of voracious readers and lifelong learners, we love a good book recommendation list. We asked our team about their favourite books on leadership, business, and life. Here are the books that have helped shape, inform, and inspire our lives.
Leadership
Asking Great Questions: An Essential Companion for Every Leader
By Aileen Gibb
Recommended by Isabelle Daigneault, Senior Marketing Strategist. This book contains over 1,500 provocative statements and related questions to inspire you to step into leadership conversations. It will kick start conversation with your team, or in one-to-one conversations.
By Brene Brown
Recommended by Olga Krochak, Fundraising Strategist. Leadership is not about titles, status and power over people. Leaders are people who hold themselves accountable for recognising the potential in people and ideas and developing that potential. This is a book for everyone who is ready to choose courage over comfort, make a difference and lead.
Compassionate Leadership: How to do Hard Things in a Human Way
By Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter
Recommended by Amy Ansell, Fundraising Specialist. With rich stories and examples based on data from fifteen thousand leaders in more than five thousand companies spanning nearly one hundred countries, as well as practical tools, assessments, and advice for leaders and managers at any level, Compassionate Leadership is your indispensable guide to doing the hard work of leadership in a human way.
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
By Yvon Chouinard
Recommended by Isabelle: “One of my favourites on social impact, brand, culture and also living with purpose.” Let My People Go Surfing is the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business life-a book that will deeply affect entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts alike.
The Leader’s Guide to Unconscious Bias
By Pamela Fuller and Mark Murphy, with Anne Chow
Recommended by Jolene Livingston, Founder & Principal. Ideal for every manager who wants to understand and move past their own preconceived ideas, The Leader’s Guide to Unconscious Bias explains that bias is the result of mental shortcuts, our likes and dislikes, and is a natural part of the human condition.
By Kim Scott
Recommended by Jolene. Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly. This book shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people both love their work and their colleagues.
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business
By Gino Wickman
Recommended by Jolene. Inside Traction, you’ll learn the secrets of strengthening the Six Key Components of your business. You’ll discover simple yet powerful ways to run your company that will give you and your leadership team more focus, more growth, and more enjoyment.
Start with Why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action
By Simon Sinek
Recommended by Nicole Titterton, Fundraising Strategist. Drawing on a wide range of real-life stories, Sinek weaves together a clear vision of what it truly takes to lead and inspire. This book is for anyone who wants to inspire others or who wants to find someone to inspire them.
By Abby Wambach
Recommended by Nicole. Abby Wambach has created a new set of Wolfpack rules to help women unleash their individual power, unite with their Wolfpack, and change the landscape of their lives and world: from the family room to the board room to the White House.
Better Business
Birds of all feathers: Doing diversity and inclusion right
By Michael Bach
Recommended by our friend, Brian Lanier. This book is a timely call to action for employers, HR professionals, managers and employees to address diversity and inclusion―because it’s not just the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do.
By Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters
Recommended by Jolene. Visionaries have groundbreaking ideas. Integrators make those ideas a reality. This explosive combination is the key to getting everything you want out of your business.
That’s What She Said: What Men And Women Need To Know About Working Together
By Joanne Lipman
Recommended by Jessica Freeman, Fundraising Strategist. Filled with illuminating anecdotes, data from the most recent studies, and stories from Joanne Lipman’s own journey to the top of a male-dominated industry, it shows how we can win by reaching across the gender divide.
By Matt Abrahams
Recommended by Amy. In Think Faster, Talk Smarter, Stanford lecturer, podcast host, and communication expert Matt Abrahams provides tangible, actionable skills to help even the most anxious of speakers succeed when speaking spontaneously.
By Dan Pallotta
Recommended by Jolene. Dan Pallotta argues that society’s non-profit ethic creates an inequality that denies the non-profit sector critical tools and permissions that the for-profit sector is allowed to use without restraint. Uncharitable is an important, provocative, timely, and accessible book—a manifesto about equal economic rights for charity.
On life, our world, ourselves
21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act
by Bob Joseph
Recommended by Sky England, Marketing & Communications Strategist. Joseph explains how Indigenous Peoples can step out from under the Indian Act and return to self-government, self-determination, and self-reliance—and why doing so would result in a better country for every Canadian.
By Priya Parker
Recommended by Jolene. When we understand why we gather, Parker says—to acknowledge, to learn, to challenge, to change—we learn how to organize gatherings that are relevant and memorable.
Breath: the new science of a lost art
By James Nestor
Isabelle says, “Although this about breath/breathing, it’s changing how I approach every moment.” Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head.
by Michelle Good
Recommended by Jolene. With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward.
The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again
By Catherine Price
Recommended by Nicole. Price makes the case that True Fun—which she defines as the magical confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow—will give us the fulfillment we so desperately seek.
by Daniel Kahneman
Recommended by Isabelle. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities and faults and biases of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior.
By Michael A. Singer
Recommended by Sky. This book begins by walking you through your relationship with your thoughts and emotions. It then delves into what you can do to free yourself from habitual thoughts, emotions, and energy patterns.
