I really rate the titles in the 'Overcoming' series. All are written by practising psychologists, yet in a highly accessible, practical style. Melanie Fennell’s book in the series is a great example. Dr Fennell is an experienced Cognitive Behavioural Therapy teacher and practitioner, and it’s the CBT approach that informs the thinking and exercises in this book. The thinking is robust, yet wears its provenance lightly, and the exercises are paced to encourage step-by-step progress. So this isn’t a ton of theory: it’s a practical workbook to guide the user through the necessary stages of dealing with what can be a crippling problem.

Just what low self-esteem is, its origins and its impact, are the subject of the early parts of the book. There’s a brief questionnaire to help you work out where your self-esteem may need a boost. The section on 'how low self-esteem develops' plots the path of 'how you got to here' in a way that makes total sense if only someone had said so earlier. We can then behave as if we have low self-esteem permanently installed on our hard drive, reinforcing our negative self-perception.

Once again, Mr Cook, he of ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock n Roll’, has me laughing out loud whilst underpinning his outrageous common sense with all the right theories, frameworks and models. And he makes it look so damned easy - if only!

Thirteen chapters, each one two pages long - what’s not to like about that? And Peter keeps it simple by grouping his ideas around three people management themes: Hiring, Inspiring and Firing.

There’s a lot to like in this book, whether you’re a technophobe or totally addicted to the stuff, or ‘edicted’ as Kevin puts it. Right upfront, he makes it clear that, “This book is not about hankering after the past. It’s about dealing with the present.”

In Part 1, we get the now well-chronicled ways in which the technology that was supposed to give us all heaps of leisure time is now often the cause of us not having enough time. We’ve got too much work, much of it using technology such as email. Technology eats our time at and outside work too: SMS, calls and fiddling about on social media. Kevin asks, “How did we get this way?” and tracks developments from the USB to iPhone and iPad. I liked the ‘are you edicted?’ test and have been recommending it.

I really like Jeremy’s down-to-earth approach to NLP: he wears his extensive NLP Master Trainer qualifications lightly yet thoroughly knows his stuff. Jeremy believes that NLP can help us ‘get better results, faster in all areas’ of our lives. He’s been a coach for ages as well as a NLP trainer, working with a range of clients from top athletes to business people. In ‘Successful NLP’ Jeremy provides an accessible introduction to the key principles underlying the phenomenon that is NLP (or Neuro Linguistic Programming), which will give the curious and sceptical alike a solid grounding in what it’s about and how to use it.

From how to set goals that are motivating and compelling (and truly aligned with who you are deep down), to building rapport with others, communicating effectively and influencing with integrity - there’s a really useful toolkit in here. Not only does Jeremy clearly explain the thinking behind what he says, he also has lots of ‘how to’s and exercises for you to build your knowledge and skills as you go. There are loads of ‘top tips’ and ‘action points’ to help the reader apply NLP to their own situation, whether professional or personal. I particularly liked the exercise on leadership alignment.

This book has been around for a while now, but it still has - can’t resist it - its strengths. Yes, there is a 'new and updated' title available from Gallup, but ‘Now, Discover…’ comes from the inventor of the StrengthsFinder tool. Donald O Clifton (1924 - 2003) was cited by the American Psychological Society as being the father of strengths psychology and the grandfather of positive psychology. He was Chairman of Gallup, where Marcus Buckingham worked for seventeen years. By the time you’ve read what they have to say, and completed your own StrengthsFinder Questionnaire online (there’s a one-off access code in the book), you will have a clear idea of your own strengths. Not only that, you’ll know what the strengths-based approach to development and talent management is all about.

Buckingham and Clifton, via Gallup, accessed huge amounts of data for a meta-analysis of how many people agreed in answer to this question: At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? They examined the extent to which employees strongly agreed, correlated with organisational performance. Where the majority of people were able to do what they do best every day, the organisation had lower staff turnover, greater productivity and higher customer satisfaction. According to Buckingham and Clifton, too many organisations operate on the basis of two flawed assumptions: that people can learn and improve at pretty much anything, and that addressing someone’s weaknesses holds the key to their growth opportunities. Think about that: how often have you sat in an appraisal where what you did well (and possibly with ease, if you were using your strengths) is glossed over and the conversation is mostly about your 'development opportunities'? I think B & C have a point: if we all rounded out our shortcomings to the same level as our strengths, then wouldn’t we all be the same? ‘Now, Discover Your Strengths’ asks us to flip the received wisdom on its head and explore how our strengths make us unique. It’s not all pink and fluffy about weaknesses: rather than ignoring them, we need to manage them.

As I’m about to read Prof Linley’s 2010 publication, ‘The Strengths Book’, I dipped back into ‘Average to A+’ and refreshed the memory on all the wonderful things inside.  OK, need to fess up: I’m a HUGE fan, and no I’m not on commission (though I probably should be!).  When I first heard Alex speak at a conference, his plain-English approach to positive psychology was a standout joy compared to some of his fellow podium pontificators.  For one thing, he refers to ‘strengths’ – OK so far – and yes, ‘weaknesses’, saying he believes we should call it like it is.  As we all pussyfoot around ‘development areas’, ‘challenges’ and ‘action points’, how refreshing is that? 

Dedicated ‘to all those who are striving to realise strengths in themselves and others’ Average to A+ is full of ‘aha’ moments, insights, and inspirational examples of strengths in practice.  If you’re new to this aspect of Positive Psychology, this book will give you a highly accessible route in, with tools and tips you can apply right away.  If you’re more experienced with the theory and practice around strengths, this book will enhance and extend your working knowledge, as well as being a really good read.  If you’re a manager, parent, teacher, coach, talent manager, HR professional or any permutation of the above, you will find heaps of valuable learning here.

I was initially pretty wary of this book: the sub-title, ‘conquer your fear and take life to the next level’ had me wondering if I’d wandered into snake-oil territory.  But actually, I hadn’t.  Hendricks promises much and delivers it very simply.  So I recommend keeping an open mind (unlike mine when I started reading!), as what he says draws from many well-tested psychological approaches.  He has just filleted out the jargon, and added a little of his own, that’s all.

Hendricks’s view is that all of us can make big leaps once we take two steps: identify when we’re in our ‘Zone of Genius’ and recognise, then overcome, our unconscious ability to get in our own way.  Self-sabotage keeps us in our comfort zone – we can’t rise too high, nor can we fail or displease others.  We feel secure.  He calls this placing ‘upper limits’ on ourselves, or ‘upper-limiting’.  When we push at our limits, we can experience ‘two paces forward, three back’ in different forms, depending on what put the sabotage instinct there in the first place.  This is often an early experience of being criticised or hurt, which prompts our protective and resourceful psyche to come up with obstacles and distractions to avoid the criticism or hurt happening again.  But will it?  Here’s where Hendricks is very practical: he identifies typical obstacles, such as worry, squabbling, getting sick and more.  Then he goes on to provide no-nonsense self-coaching questions and techniques for us to test the worry, squabbling or whatever, to determine if it is indeed something to worry about (and if so, how to handle it) or if it is a form of upper-limit self-sabotage. (and how to handle that). 

You can find all the titles on my resources page

1.Who are your best people? by Robin Stuart-Kotze and Chris Dunn.  Because it’s based on sound experience and research, and is highly practical.  The message to focus on observable behaviour is very forcefully driven home with examples and illustrations.  

Kevin Duncan reckons that we could make life – and particularly our working life – so much simpler and easier if we just learned from children.  Children are constantly learning, naturally curious and always asking questions.  Yet as we grow older, we can become hesitant about asking questions, in some cases to the point of giving up altogether.  And asking fewer questions can condemn us to a working life of directionless drudgery.   So what?  provides a handy toolkit of questions to get us back in the habit.  Questions force people to stop and think, something we can all do a good deal more of. 

No surprise then that the first question in Duncan’s ‘So what? cycle of questions’ is... so what?  Other fairly obvious contenders – who? how? where? and when? – are dealt with next, often in ways that might not be so obvious.  These questions are followed by the potentially brilliant (or potentially career-limiting, depending on how you handle it) ‘do we really need to do this?’ and ‘something must be wrong if...’  I particularly liked ‘are we there yet?’ the juvenile refrain heard from many a back seat on many a long drive, applied to checking if a project is on track. 

The sub-title to this book is ‘leadership lessons from the great Antarctic explorer’ – and they’re not kidding.  I’d preface the sub-title with ‘massively inspirational’.  This is first and foremost a ripping yarn, a stirring true story of determination, loyalty, teamwork and extraordinary human courage in enormous adversity.  Even better, the authors draw out the lessons we can learn today to be the best leaders we can be. 

Quick recap: Shackleton and his crew set off for the South Pole just as World War II broke out, in 1914.  Six months later, their ship, the Endurance, became trapped in the ice twelve hundred miles from civilisation, with no means of communication.  They were only a day’s sail from their destination. Crushed by ice, the ship sank, leaving the crew to camp on the ice for months.  As the ice thawed, they took to three small boats and made land – but it was uninhabited.  Shackleton took a small crew and sailed eight hundred miles in treacherous seas to reach a whaling station from where he launched attempts to rescue his men – succeeding at the fourth attempt.  The crew of the Endurance returned to civilisation almost two years after setting off. Whilst they had failed to reach their goal, they had succeeded in many other ways. Not one life was lost.  What’s more, the resilience of the men undoubtedly got them through their ordeal, and each one of them attributed this to their leader.