Curated Works for Your Learning & Development
Many books are published yearly on the subjects in our field of learning and development. Most are personal narratives from individual experiences. We have curated and organized selections in seven categories to invite further learning. Our selections have met at least one of these criteria:
- rigorous practice/mastery of craft,
- philosophical grounding, or
- scholarly research
Each of these books offers time-tested wisdom from scholars, artists, practitioners, and philosophers we’ve used to inform our designs, programs, and services. We organized each selection as follows:
Accessible Reading = introduces the topic/concept.
Intermediate Reading = presumes some knowledge to apply the topic/concept.
Advanced Reading = involves an extensive application of the topic/concept in various contexts.
We also offer the following booklist by Tony Zampella, which has informed his work.
1. Leadership Development
Leading From the Emerging Future: From Ego-system to Eco-system economies
Author: Otto Scharmer, Kartin Kaufer
Date: 2013
Intermediate Reading
Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box
Author: The Arbinger Institute
Date: 2000
See link to Video Clip
Accessible Reading
Building Trust: In Business, Politics, Relationship and Life
Authors: Robert Solomon and Fernando Flores
Date: 2001
See related blog post: Trust: Leadership Intelligence, part 2
Intermediate Reading
Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership
Author: Bill Torbert
Date: 2004
Intermediate Reading
Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness 25th Anniversary Edition
Author: Robert K. Greenleaf
Date: 2002
See related blog post: The Time is Right for Servant Leadership
Robert Greenleaf published these prophetic essays on servant leadership, a practical philosophy that replaces traditional autocratic leadership with a holistic, ethical approach. This highly influential book has been embraced by cutting edge management everywhere.
Accessible Reading
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success
Authors: Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, Kaley Klemp
Date: 2015
Accessible Reading
The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life
Author: Parker J. Palmer
Date: 1997
Accessible Reading
2. Learning Organizations
The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization
Author: Peter M. Senge
Date: 1994
See related blog post: Becoming the Heart of a Learning Culture, part 1
This Fieldbook provides notes from the field on Senge’s original best-selling text: The Fifth Discipline. The lessons learned present scenarios and experiences for building “learning organizations” of their own. Senge presents dialogues, lesson, connections and processes that support 1) personal mastery, 2) shared vision, 3) mental models, 4) team learning, and 5) systems thinking.
Advanced Reading
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
Author: Peter M. Senge
Date: Original 1992 / 2006 (revised)
See related blog post: Becoming the Heart of a Learning Culture, part 1
Senge’s best-selling original text, The Fifth Discipline was ranked one of the 50 best management books of the 20th Century. Here Senge’s offers executives a step-by-step guide to building “learning organizations” of their own. Senge defines his process as including 1) personal mastery, 2) shared vision, 3) mental models, 4) team learning, and 5) systems thinking.
Intermediate Reading
The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations
Author: Peter Senge
Date: 1999
Peter Senge’s follow up to the “Fifth Discipline” shared how changes work in the field enacting the five disciplines.
Advanced Reading
Reinventing Organizations: An Illustrated Invitation to Join the Conversation on Next-Stage Organizations
Author: Frederic Laloux
Date: 2016
Accessible Reading
Learning to Learn and the Navigation of Moods: The Meta-Skill for the Acquisition of Skills
Author: Gloria P. Flores
Date: 2016
Accessible Reading
Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values
Author: Fred Kofman
Date: 2006 (paperback, 2013)
Accessible Reading
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Author: Carol S. Dweck
Date: 2007
See related blog post: Which is it: Fixed or Growth?
Intermediate Reading
3. Ontological Coaching / Listening
Conversations for Action
Authors: Fernando Flores and Maria Flores Letelier (editor)
Date: 2013
This collection of essays from Philosopher Fernando Flores (his work appears in other areas of our Learning Center) has developed work over the last three decades to clarify how to use speech acts, and how to employ the creative properties in generative language.
Advanced Reading
The Art of Communicating
Author: Thich Nhat Hanh
Date: 2014
Accessible Reading
Language and the Pursuit of Happiness
Author: Chalmers Brothers
Date: 2004
Accessible Reading
On Dialogue
Author: David Bohm
Date: original, 1996, 2nd edition, 2004
Advanced Reading
How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work
Authors: Robert Kegan and Lisa Lakow Lahey
Date: 2001
Intermediate Reading
The Four Conversations
Authors: Jeffrey D. Ford and Laurie W. Ford
Date: 2009
Jeffrey Ford (whose papers are posted in other areas of our Learning Center), illustrates how most conversations to get things done at work are of one of four types-initiative conversations, conversations for understanding, performance conversations, or conversations for closure — but they are often done poorly or misused. This book shows managers and employees how to use each conversation.
Intermediate Reading
Coaching to the Human Soul, Volume I
Author: Alan Sieler
Date: 2005
Alan Sieler publishes the first of his 3-volume approach to Ontological Learning.
Ontological Coaching is based on a new understanding of human beings and human interaction. Grounded in a substantive and robust theoretical framework, the method and practice of Ontological Coaching enables people being coached to connect with their souls and experience deep positive change. In this first of three volumes on Ontological Coaching, he presents a new practical understanding of language and communication, and its coaching applications.
Advanced Reading
Coaching to the Human Soul, Volume II
Author: Alan Sieler
Date: 2007
In this second volume of Coaching to the Human Soul Alan Sieler breaks more ground in the coaching literature, as well as in the study of emotions. By addressing the nature of genuine personal transformation Alan skillfully demonstrates the centrality of moods and mood management for profound shifts in our perceptions of what is possible in life and our behavioral effectiveness. Drawing on significant developments in philosophy and biology he articulates the ideas of major thinkers in a way that is comprehensible and applicable. In this process Alan adds important intellectual and practical depth to the concept of Emotional Intelligence.
Advanced Reading
Coaching to the Human Soul, Volume III
Author: Alan Sieler
Date: 2012
In this third volume, author Alan Sieler connects the complexity of Biology, Body and Congition with language, culture, structures and social change to co-create transformation.
Advanced Reading
Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future
Authors: Peter M. Senge
Date: 2008
Intermediate Reading
4. Meta-Theories / Systems Thinking
The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications
Author: Otto Scharmer
Date: 2018
Accessible Reading
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition
Authors: Ken Wilber
Date: 2001
See related blog post: Integral Theory: From Behaving to Belonging, Part 1
In this tour de force of scholarship and vision, Integral Philosopher, Ken Wilber, traces the course of evolution from matter to life to mind and describes the common patterns that evolution takes in all three of these domains. From the emergence of mind, he traces the evolution of human consciousness through its major stages of growth and development. He particularly focuses on modernity and postmodernity: what they mean; how they impact gender issues, psychotherapy, ecological concerns, and various liberation movements; and how the modern and postmodern world conceive of Spirit. This second edition features forty pages of new material, new diagrams, and extensively revised notes.
Advanced Reading
The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a LearningOrganization
Author: Peter M. Senge
Date: 1994
See related blog post: Becoming the Heart of a Learning Culture, part 1
Senge’s best-selling The Fifth Discipline was ranked one of the 50 best management books of the 20th Century. Here he offers executives a step-by-step guide to building “learning organizations” of their own. Senge defines his process as including 1) personal mastery, 2) shared vision, 3) mental models, 4) team learning and 5) systems thinking.
Intermediate Reading
The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations
Author: Peter Senge
Date: 1999
Peter Senge’s follow up to the “Fifth Discipline” shared how changes works in the field enacting the five disciplines.
Advanced Reading
Leading From the Emerging Future: From Ego-system to Eco-system economies
Author: Otto Scharmer, Kartin Kaufer
Date: 2013
Intermediate Reading
Spiral Dynamics in Action: Humanity’s Master Code
Author: Prof. Don Edward Beck
Date: 2018
Advanced Reading
5. Cultural Awareness / Learning
Mindful of Race, Transforming Racism from the Inside Out
With this evolutionary view of race and being, Ruth King combines Eastern wisdom and practice with Western concepts and knowledge. She offers this inquiry: Tend first to our suffering, listen to what it is trying to teach us, and direct its energies most effectively for change.
Drawing on her expertise as a meditation teacher and diversity consultant, King invites us to explore who we are as racial beings. She invites us to use mindfulness to expand to an interdependent awareness and understanding of these issues. Her work and practices support increasing racial awareness and navigating racial tensions, while teaching us how to learn together in racial affinity groups.
Intermediate Reading
Between the World and Me
This raw and penetrating personal narrative by Ta-Nehisi Coates invites inquiry and conversations and confronts many of our myths around race and racism.
Accessible Reading
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
Educator/Academic Robin DiAngelo defines concepts that constitute what she terms White Fragility, a complex dynamic that fuels the defensiveness that maintains whiteness as an ideology of systemic bias. If you allow it, this book can open us to so many hidden ways we avoid dealing with our own guilt and pain around racism.
Intermediate Reading
How to Be an Anti-racist
This pedagogical testimony, by historian/academic Ibram X. Kendi, weaves together personal narrative and historical context to deliver concepts in an anti-racist paradigm. The author carefully explores the Anti-Racist paradigm via specific — often overlooked — foundations. Kendi weaves together a new understanding that pays special attention to the assimilation trap that many of us – some Black and most Whites — have been socialized into as Americans.
Intermediate Reading
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
This personal narrative by Tim Wise. Wise is effective at presenting experiences for becoming aware of how Whiteness shows up in everyday situations from early childhood, in school, and adulthood.
Accessible Reading
6. Buddhist Psychology / Eastern Wisdom
Mastery, The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
Author: George Leonard
Date: 1992
George Leonard’s classic book offers sage wisdom to begin a life of continuous learning. He identifies practices and principles that can move us beyond our Western training to bring joy and pleasure to learning and practicing. This book of wisdom is a must-read for anyone who wishes to unlearn concealed assumptions that can impede true learning.
Accessible Reading
Mindfulness in Plain English
Author: Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
Date: 2011
Accessible Reading
Integral Buddhism: And the Future of Spirituality
Author: Ken Wilber
Date: 2018
Intermediate Reading
The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching
Author: Thich Nhat Hanh
Date: 1999
Intermediate Reading
How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind
Author: Pema Chödrön
Date: 2013
Accessible Reading
Buddhism Plain and Simple
Author: Steve Hagen
Date: 1998
Accessible Reading
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Author: Shunryu Suzuki
Date: original, 1970, (hardcover, 2006 / paperback, 2011)
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
So begins this most beloved of all American Zen books. Seldom has such a small handful of words provided a teaching as rich as has this famous opening line. In a single stroke, the simple sentence cuts through the pervasive tendency students have of getting so close to Zen as to completely miss what it’s all about. An instant teaching on the first page. And that’s just the beginning.
Intermediate Reading
Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening
Author: Joseph Goldstein
Date: 2013
Intermediate Reading
Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening
Author: Stephen Batchelor
Date: March 1, 1998
A primer on the practices and insights of Buddhism that avoids the use of foreign words, technical terms, lists or jargon while retaining much of the original wisdom.
Accessible Reading
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Author: Pema Chödrön
Date: December 24, 1996
Pema Chödrön’s radical and compassionate advice for what to do when things fall apart in our lives goes against the grain of our usual habits and expectations and confronts us with traditional Buddhist wisdom.
Accessible Reading
Going on Being: Buddhism and the Way of Change
Author: Mark Epstein
Date: February 12, 2002
Going on Being is an intimate chronicle of the evolution of spirit and psyche, and a highly inviting guide for anyone seeking a new path and a new outlook on life.
Accessible Reading
The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology
Author: Jack Kornfield
Date: May 19, 2009
A guide to the transformative power of Buddhist psychology—for meditators and mental health professionals, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike.
Accessible Reading
The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness
Author: Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Date: May 27, 2008
Accessible Reading
Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom
Author: Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Date: March 2, 2010
Accessible Reading
What Makes You Not a Buddhist
Author: Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
Date: December 5, 2006
Accessible Reading