What I’ve Been Reading

This book caught my attention, as one of the mindset shifts we work on in REAL Conflict Coaching is the shift from certainty to uncertainty. Jackson acknowledges the natural human tendency to want to avoid uncertainty. She explores the perils of certainty, explaining how our drive for knowledge and certainty actually reduces the very cognitive […]

This book was written in 2017, but a colleague recommended it to me, so I bought a copy. It’s a short and easy to read book, with the most beautiful illustrations and lots of excellent advice about how to listen deeply. I wholeheartedly agree with one of the first paragraphs in the preface to the

The subtitle of this book is “The art of seeing others deeply and being deeply seen”. In many ways, this book is the result of a personal journey by the author, who recognised that he was living his life in a kind of detached way, without vulnerable emotional connections with others and who worked hard

Brené Brown made shame accessible in her work on shame and vulnerability, and this book continues the exploration of that emotion but in a slightly different way.  This book focuses on the harm that shame and shaming can do, and how shame is manipulated in social and political contexts.  It also considers the problem of

This book describes a fairly simple premise – that we often miss people’s hidden potential. It also provides some ideas for how to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to reach their potential. Grant explains that high achievers often vary dramatically in their initial aptitude, so early success is not necessarily an indicator of later

I met Sarah Federman when I was a visiting scholar at the Centre for Narrative and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University in Washington DC (now part of the Carter School of Peace and Conflict Studies). We shared an office and many fascinating conversations, including some while paddleboarding on the Potomac River! At the time

Amy Edmondson is best known for pioneering the concept of psychological safety. In her latest book, she explores the upsides of failure, and how to fail well (one condition to do this in an organisation is, not surprisingly, psychological safety). The book is in two parts – the first explores the concept of failure, and

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know I love a bit of provocation (in the nicest interpretation of that word)! I love to be challenged to think differently and deeper about things, and I love to positively provoke others to do the same. This is exactly my kind of book! The book

This book, subtitled “the power of thinking outside the brain” caught my attention! It complements other books I’ve reviewed recently like Mind in Motion and Thinking With Your Hands. This book is in three parts – thinking with our bodies (sensations, movement, gesture), thinking with our surroundings (natural and built spaces, the space of ideas),

This recently released 5th Edition is an enormous book – 881 pages in total! That in itself is a compliment to the field of dispute resolution, in that it demonstrates the wealth of resources that are now available to inform and support our practice. Chapters cover topics including understanding conflict, conflict resolution processes (negotiation, mediation,