Books that make me better

I love a great inspirational book. This obsession for me began while I was working for FMPSD and one of my mentors passed me a copy of Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset. Instantly upon reading it I realized I had a lot of work to do on how I viewed success and failure. From there I found Seth Godin’s Icarus Deception which put me on a mission to collect rejections (but actually resulted in opening the doors to incredible opportunities). It was around this time I realized I was in love with marketing and branding, and couldn’t get enough of the books from these great thinkers and storyteller. I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on the books, or what you think we should read next! Below are some quick reviews of a few of the books I’ve read most recently.

Start with Why – Simon Sinek

This book is a great one if you’re starting to feel lost or a little burnt out. It does a great job to bring you back to your core values and does it in a very entertaining story. Any business owners or executive leadership should definitely have this one on their list of books to read if they haven’t gone through it already. It’s one of the rare books I might actually read again every couple of years.

Creativity Inc. – Ed Catmull

THIS IS THE BOOK TO READ! This is my favourite of the month by far. The storytelling is fantastic as Ed takes you on a journey through the history of Pixar and the creative process focussing on the necessity of the journey. This is the best book I’ve read in years, and I rate it right up there with Seth Godin’s Icarus Deception.

Getting to Yes – Roger Fisher

Negotiation is not a strength of mine, however I listened to this book with my husband for his MBA negotiation class on a road trip. While I do not plan on investing significant time developing my negotiation skills, I do greatly appreciate the awareness of strategies in order to identify when I may be dealing with someone trying to use them on me. The beauty of operating a well established sole proprietorship is that I am now at a place where I get to work with only the amazing people that I want to work with, and that means those hard style positional negotiation tactics are a warning sign the client might not be a good match for me and values I stand behind.

Ask For It – Linda Babcock & Sara Laschever

This one was recommended by NAABA ED Michelle Toner, thanks Michelle!

This book highlights the disadvantages women face because of their unlikeliness to ask for what they want and/or need. At first I had a hard time with some of the way women were framed as passive pushovers in the book, but being an evidence based and providing the data meant it didn’t really matter how I felt about it, or my own biases, the facts were the facts. As I progressed through the author actually addresses how it’s natural to feel frustrated by what seems like old fashioned ways of thinking, and how they too were very frustrated by the findings. There are many actionable takeaways in this one thought and I highly recommend it as a reminder that sometimes those manners you were taught are a gender based societal construct you need to shake!

Give and Take – Adam Grant

This book is a great follow up to Ask for It. While it’s not focussed on gender it certainly reinforces the differences between how men and women tend to approach reciprocity and self value differently. However this book explores the approaches of giver, taker and matcher thinking and how these styles work in a variety of environments, in the short and long term.