Good Books

In Crucial Conversations, Joseph Grenny and his cohort of authors tackle the topic of difficult conversations and methods for navigating them. The authors explain how to recognize when a casual discussion becomes a crucial conversation, reasons this happens, and how to create resolution. The book gives good things to think about and lots of acronyms to help you navigate communication when it's hard. However, buyer beware. There are some crucial elements missing in this book. 

Grenny and his fellow authors coach the reader to take on the complete burden for navigating these conversations. The book fails to address mutual accountability. It also ignores some people's realities by assuming that at some point, people will let you talk and actually listen to what you have to say. It never addresses the possibility that this is not always the case and may not be the case for you. As a black woman in America reading a book originally penned by four white men, I have my own guesses as to why this particular reality might have been overlooked.

Either way, pick up this book to learn how to check yourself and develop a few helpful methods to approach difficult discussions. Just remember that there may be some parts missing from this book that you may need to gain somewhere else if you find yourself in a position of being overlooked, ignored, or dismissed the way that many marginalized people often are in the workplace. 

~Tiffaney McClendon

In Fixing Fairness, Lily Zheng speaks on the topics of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Specifically, how the traditional approach to DEI has become a profitable business complex that has been milked by well-meaning opportunists, exploited by organizations, and now, become mistrusted by nearly all those who are supposed to benefit from it. Lily invites us to take those traditional thought patterns, approaches, and training models for DEI and update them. The goal? To move away from good intentions and create real, tangible, impactful action instead. This book offers tools to accomplish that goal and a new way to think about DEI as something much more FAIR (fairness, accessibility, inclusion, and representation). 

~Tiffaney McClendon

In No Ego, Cy Wakeman introduces the concept of emotional waste, illustrates the damage it does to organizations and teams, then helps develop skills to eliminate it. While some of Cy's ideas can seem a bit rigid, she does give a name to a phenomenon to which most of us can definitely relate. And she gives solutions for overcoming it. So even if you choose to modify some of her stricter rules or soften some of her hard-line boundaries, it's worth checking out this book to discover how to identify and overcome emotional waste within yourself, your team, and your organization. 

~Tiffaney McClendon

In Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek tells stories of real people to highlight how great leaders care for those they lead, build trust, and inspire. He explains that team members will follow leaders who inspire them. And he gives a roadmap for how to be that leader that others willingly choose and genuinely want to follow, instead of being simply a manager that they have to take orders from in order to avoid being fired. 

Sinek is one of my favorite thought-leaders, authors, and speakers on the subject of leader development. Because he and I agree that great leaders inspire, and those who are inspired are better able to succeed and become inspiring themselves. 

~Tiffaney McClendon

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni weaves the story of a team and their new leader. Taking place from the office to the retreat center and spanning a window from the leader's first day through several weeks into their tenure, the reader is introduced to this leader and the characters that make up their team. As the story unfolds, the reader is able to learn and understand the lessons Lencioni has to teach about how to lead a team well. This is a relatively quick and easy read. For those who enjoy fiction, this is a terrific book that blends the storytelling of fiction with the leadership development that is often tucked away in much dryer non-fiction tombs. 

~Tiffaney McClendon