Nudge is a great book for teachers and administrators to read as we want to guide children towards learning a bit easier. If we see ourselves as “choice architects” more and purveyors of knowledge less, our students will certainly be better off. This is a great read for any educator looking to set up relevant choices for their students and/or teachers.

Wondering what the value of hiring young teachers and administrators might be? Looking to give a shot to someone switching careers? In Rookie Smarts, Liz Wisman will take you through all of the variables of giving those with a fresh perspective the chance to do new work. This book will change the way you hire, promote, and evaluate… three critical components to all leadership positions.

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.

Written as sort of a group workbook, The Power of a Positive Team by Jon Gordon is 90% inspirational and 10% solid examples of ways to create positive teams. The reader travels from athletic fields to boardrooms while Gordon illustrates how positivity has made the difference for various team experiences.

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

Did you know the greatest potential for memorable moments at an event happens at the beginning, end, and a peak moment in between? In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker unpacks each component of a gathering from invitation to intentional ending with the perfect combination of research and anecdotes.

Have you ever been involved in a negotiation or disagreement and been frustrated by the resolution process or outcome? If so, Fisher, Ury, and Patton have the solution for next time in Getting to Yes. The reader will learn why stating interests rather than positions is key, why where you sit matters, and why acknowledging the worth of the other party are all keys to success.

Will Richardson makes it clear from the get-go in From Master Teacher to Master Learner that the model teacher needs to now be a learner first and foremost. He reinforces the idea that our students no longer need teachers who have encyclopedic knowledge, but rather those who can model learning and guide students through what learning should look like in the digital age.

Are you a Giver, Taker, or Matcher? In Give and Take, Adam Grant explains how our style of interacting with others shapes us and our organizations. One of his main claims is that Takers achieve short-term, individual success, but Givers are inherently better leaders.

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.

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.