Top 20 Career Books for your Reading List of 2020

Top 10 Career Books (2)

We do a lot of research and read reviews of people and career coaches to come up with the top 10 list of books.

Our previous book recommendations got a great response from the reading enthusiasts and so we have come up with this new recommendation for the year 2019.

Get 2 audiobooks + 2 Audible Originals, when you try Audible free. For a limited time, 3 additional titles, “Finding Ultra”, “Good Calories, Bad Calories”, and “Do Over” will be added to your library automatically at no additional cost to you.

1. Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges By Amy Cuddy

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Amy Cuddy has galvanized tens of millions of viewers around the world with her TED talk about “power poses.” Now she presents the enthralling science underlying these and many other fascinating body-mind effects, and teaches us how to use simple techniques to liberate ourselves from fear in high-pressure moments, perform at our best, and connect with and empower others to do the same.

Brilliantly researched, impassioned, and accessible, Presence is filled with stories of individuals who learned how to flourish during the stressful moments that once terrified them. Every reader will learn how to approach their biggest challenges with confidence instead of dread, and to leave them with satisfaction instead of regret.

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2. The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know by Katty Kay

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Working women today are better educated and more well-qualified than ever before. Yet men still predominate in the corporate world. In The Confidence Code, Claire Shipman and Katty Kay argue that the key reason is confidence.

Combining cutting-edge research in genetics, gender, behavior, and cognition – with examples from their own lives and those of other successful women in politics, media, and business – Kay and Shipman go beyond admonishing women to “lean in”. Instead, they offer the inspiration and practical advice women need to close the gap and achieve the careers they want and deserve.

3. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich By Timothy Ferriss

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Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, or earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.

The new expanded edition of Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek includes:
• More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled income, overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point
• Real-world templates you can copy for eliminating e-mail, negotiating with bosses and clients, or getting a private chef for less than $8 a meal
• How Lifestyle Design principles can be suited to unpredictable economic times
• The latest tools and tricks, as well as high-tech shortcuts, for living like a diplomat or millionaire without being either.

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4. Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less By Robert I. Sutton

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Sutton and Rao have devoted much of the last decade to uncovering what it takes to build and uncover pockets of exemplary performance, to help spread them, and to keep recharging organizations with ever better work practices. Drawing on inside accounts and case studies and academic research from a wealth of industries– including start-ups, pharmaceuticals, airlines, retail, financial services, high-tech, education, non-profits, government, and healthcare– Sutton and Rao identify the key scaling challenges that confront every organization.  They tackle the difficult trade-offs that organizations must make between whether to encourage individualized approaches tailored to local needs or to replicate the same practices and customs as an organization or program expands. They reveal how the best leaders and teams develop, spread, and instill the right mindsets in their people– rather than ruining or watering down the very things that have fueled successful growth in the past. They unpack the principles that help to cascade excellence throughout an organization, as well as show how to eliminate destructive beliefs and behaviors that will hold them back.

Scaling Up Excellence is the first major business book devoted to this universal and vexing challenge and it is destined to become the standard bearer in the field.

5. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ  By Daniel Goleman

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Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman’s brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our “two minds”—the rational and the emotional—and how they together shape our destiny.

Through vivid examples, Goleman delineates the five crucial skills of emotional intelligence, and shows how they determine our success in relationships, work, and even our physical well-being. What emerges is an entirely new way to talk about being smart.

The best news is that “emotional literacy” is not fixed early in life. Every parent, every teacher, every business leader, and everyone interested in a more civil society, has a stake in this compelling vision of human possibility.

6. Excellence Everyday: Make the Daily Choice – Inspire Your Employees and Amaze Your Customers by Lior Arussy

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Addressing all levels of the corporate ladder, from customer service to the CEO, this business-savvy handbook explores “The Excellence Myth,” revealing a new philosophy of excellence to help individuals and organizations reach their performance potential. Including both personal anecdotes as well as the results of a 23,000-participant study, the book details the keys to expanding leadership skills, improving employee satisfaction and job performance, and securing customer loyalty. The guide also explains how making “The Daily Choice” will empower employees to reach new heights of excellence, creating delightful customer experiences and achieving results from the bottom up.

7. Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition by Jay Abraham

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A trusted advisor to America’s top corporations and recognized as one of today’s preeminent marketing experts, Jay Abraham has created a program of proven strategies to help you realize undreamed-of success! Unseen opportunities face each of us every day. Using clear examples from his own experience, Jay explains just how easy it can be to find and/or create new opportunities for wealth-building in any existing business, enterprise, or venture.

In Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition, the program focuses on helping you spot the hidden assets, overlooked opportunities, and untapped resources around you, and gives you, and gives you fresh eyes with which to see and capitalize on them. You’ll also learn how to adapt and apply these tools to your unique circumstances to maximize your income, influence, power, and success.

8. Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant

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9. Get a Life, Not a Job: Do What You Love and Let Your Talents Work For You by Paula Caligiuri

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You can design your own career, so you love what you do! You only have one life: why settle for anything less? Whether you’re an entrepreneur or working within a company, Get a Life, Not a Job shows how you can make it happen for yourself. You’ll learn how to move towards a fulfilling career that offers greater work-life balance, financial security, and personal control over your future — and more sheer pleasure and inspiration from the work you do. You’ll learn how to allocate more time to roles you enjoy, and shed roles you can’t stand… identify career choices you’ll be passionate about, and build your skills and abilities to match them… improve your career without leaving your employer, and make your position more resistant to downsizing… define a mix of several stimulating and liberating wealth-building activities that keep your life engaged and balanced… keep personal relationships healthy while you pursue work you’ll love. This book doesn’t just teach you powerful career techniques: it profiles people in all walks of life who’ve used these them to build truly inspiring careers. With greater workplace uncertainty than ever, you can no longer afford to let anyone else control your destiny — or to maintain outdated “psychological contracts” with your employer. You need to take control of your own career and future. With this book’s help, you can do just that — and make work more fulfilling than you ever dreamt possible.

10. Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie

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Creativity is crucial to business success. But too often, even the most innovative organization quickly becomes a “giant hairball”–a tangled, impenetrable mass of rules, traditions, and systems, all based on what worked in the past–that exercises an inexorable pull into mediocrity. Gordon McKenzie worked at Hallmark Cards for thirty years, many of which he spent inspiring his colleagues to slip the bonds of Corporate Normalcy and rise to orbit–to a mode of dreaming, daring and doing above and beyond the rubber-stamp confines of the administrative mind-set. In his deeply funny book, exuberantly illustrated in full color, he shares the story of his own professional evolution, together with lessons on awakening and fostering creative genius.

Originally self-published and already a business “cult classic”, this personally empowering and entertaining look at the intersection between human creativity and the bottom line is now widely available to bookstores. It will be a must-read for any manager looking for new ways to invigorate employees, and any professional who wants to achieve his or her best, most self-expressive, most creative and fulfilling work.


11. The Alchemist

By Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist              amazon buy now

The book’s main theme is about finding one’s destiny. It is about a journey of a young shepherd named Santigo and his journey to the Pyramids after having a recurring dream of finding treasure there. An old king tells Santiago that “when you really want something to happen, the whole universe will conspire so that your wish comes true”. 

12. The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team: A Leadership Fable 

By Patrick Lencioni

Five dysfunctions                  amazon buy now

The book describes the many pitfalls that teams face as they seek to “grow together”. It also explores the fundamental causes of organizational politics and team failure. The best part about the book is the quiz section at the end of each chapter that helps you to grade yourself and helps towards the path of improvement.

13. The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

By Michael Bungay Stanier

the coaching habbit                        amazon buy now

In Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit, coaching becomes a regular, informal part of your day so managers and their teams can work less hard and have more impact.
Drawing on years of experience training more than 10,000 busy managers from around the globe in practical, everyday coaching skills, Bungay Stanier reveals how to unlock your peoples’ potential. He unpacks seven essential coaching questions to demonstrate how–by saying less and asking more–you can develop coaching methods that produce great results.

14. Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence

By Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Annie McKee

primal-leadership                 amazon buy now

The  book explores the consequences of emotional intelligence for leaders and organizations. The authors argue that a leader’s emotions are contagious, and must resonate energy and enthusiasm if an organization is to thrive. Through analyses and examples, the authors show that resonant leaders excel not just through industry savvy but by leveraging emotional intelligence competencies like empathy and self-awareness. They also adopt varying leadership styles―from visionary to coaching to commanding―as the situation demands.

15. The Next Generation of Women Leaders: What You Need to Lead but Won’t Learn in Business School

By Selena Rezvani

The next generation of women leaders                     amazon buy now

A groundbreaking, empowering collection of advice-richly illustrated with the stories of women at top echelons of their fields-that advances the leadership outlook for Generation X and Y women like no book before it. It includes 30 interviews with highly accomplished business women. Offers a foreword by Gail Evans, the highest-ranking woman executive ever at CNN and provides a far-reaching bibliography of significant materials combining works examining gender dynamics in addition to business classics.

16. The One Minute Manager

By  Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson

one min manager                   amazon buy now

The book teaches the quickest way to increase productivity, profits, job satisfaction, and personal prosperity. It is a revolutionary new management method that is already producing very real results for top managers and Fortune 500 companies nationwide.

17. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

By Steven R. Covey

7 habbits                  amazon buy now

In this book, the author presents an approach to being effective in attaining goals by aligning oneself to what he calls “true north” principles based on a character ethic that he presents as universal and timeless.  He defines effectiveness as the balance of obtaining desirable results with caring for that which produces those results.

18. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

By Daniel Pink

drive                      amazon buy now

Motivation is one of the key characteristics of leadership. The book shares an insight on how to motivate the people. It also suggests that the conventional Carrots & Sticks are so last Century. For 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery and purpose.

19. The Slight Edge: Secret to a Successful Life

By Jeff Olson

the slight edge               amazon buy now

The Slight Edge is a way of thinking, a way of processing information that enables you to make the daily choices that will lead you to the success and happiness you desire. Learn why some people make dream after dream come true, while others just continue dreaming and spend their lives building dreams for someone else. It’s not just another self-help motivation tool of methods you must learn in order to travel the path to success. It shows you how to create powerful results from the simple daily activities of your life, by using tools that are already within you.

20. Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results 

By Judith E. Glaser

conversational                  amazon buy now

 

Get 2 audiobooks + 2 Audible Originals, when you try Audible free. For a limited time, 3 additional titles, “Finding Ultra”, “Good Calories, Bad Calories”, and “Do Over” will be added to your library automatically at no additional cost to you.

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