In Work Rules!, Lazlo Bock systematically relays how Google’s approach to people and work pushes the boundaries of traditional human resource protocols. You will learn why instincts actually impede the hiring process, why focusing on the two tails of a distribution is most valuable, why salary scales are in fact problematic, and why nudges are better than just providing information or making decisions for others.

If you’ve ever outsourced work you didn’t want to do, then you understand the joy of freeing up your time while knowing the work was still being done. That theme…applied to all aspects of your life, is the basis of Who Not How. A great read for anyone looking to dramatically expand their influence on the world.

Have you ever caught yourself ruminating about “What ifs…?” Or have you been paralyzed by fear, unable to make decisions? In Emotional Agility, Susan David provides a guidebook grounded in psychological research to help us embrace all of our emotions, even the most uncomfortable ones, discover our “why”, and align our lives with our values.

Patrick Lencioni spends the first two-thirds of The Ideal Team Player explaining the three most important virtues of employees: humble, hungry, and smart. The final third is dedicated to understanding and applying those virtues to optimize teamwork in any organization.

In The Power of Moments, the Heath brothers piece together research, personal anecdotes, history, and psychology to clarify something that affects us all… moments in our lives. They clarify the conditions that increase the chances they are memorable, like creating “peak moments”(eg. college acceptance communication), “leveling up” your pride (e.g. Boy Scout levels), and connections (e.g. team-building exercises) all enhance the moments of our lives

Uberland is a great read for anyone interested in how data/algorithms are being used to change the world we live in. It is also fun to extrapolate what algorithms could mean for more efficient leading and reporting out on learning.

In Thanks for the Feedback Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen address an incredibly important, yet rarely written about, concept: how we receive feedback from those around us. The three types of feedback: appreciation, coaching, and evaluation are teased out and concepts such as “wrong spotting” help us to understand how our natural tendency to protect our ego/identity gets in the way of evaluative feedback.

If you do dive into this book, be prepared for Simon Sinek to walk you through many examples of organizations in which Why was the main driver and served as the tipping point for success (e.g., Southwest Airlines, Harley-Davidson, Apple). A great example of this phenomenon is Costco, who is so grounded in Why that they have a zero dollar budget for advertising and don’t have a single person devoted to public relations.

In Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em, Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans walk the reader through the process of appreciating, learning from, and retaining top employees. Employers who are more interested in retaining quality rather than retraining quantity are sure to find a handful of nuggets to get them thinking about continuously “re-recruiting” their best people.

In The Tyranny of Metrics, Jerry Muller warns all leaders to be wary of overemphasizing data to make decisions/set policy. He provides examples from medicine, the military, education, and philanthropy to drive home the message that we often misuse data in a way that derails the mission of organizations.