MOLN Recommended Reading
Welcome to the MOLN Recommended Reading!
Discover our carefully curated collection of books that inspire, educate, and empower nursing leaders. Each book is selected to enrich your professional journey and personal growth. When you purchase through the links below, MOLN earns a commission from Amazon. These proceeds directly support our organization's efforts to advance nursing leadership, education, and advocacy across Minnesota.
Thank you for choosing to support MOLN through your book purchases. Happy reading!
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Book Details
In this instant New York Times bestseller, Angela Duckworth shows anyone striving to succeed that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent, but a special blend of passion and persistence she calls “grit.” “Inspiration for non-geniuses everywhere” (People).
The daughter of a scientist who frequently noted her lack of “genius,” Angela Duckworth is now a celebrated researcher and professor. It was her early eye-opening stints in teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience that led to her hypothesis about what really drives success: not genius, but a unique combination of passion and long-term perseverance.
In Grit, she takes us into the field to visit cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, teachers working in some of the toughest schools, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she’s learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers—from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll.
“Duckworth’s ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better” (The New York Times Book Review). Among Grit’s most valuable insights: any effort you make ultimately counts twice toward your goal; grit can be learned, regardless of IQ or circumstances; when it comes to child-rearing, neither a warm embrace nor high standards will work by themselves; how to trigger lifelong interest; the magic of the Hard Thing Rule; and so much more. Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that—not talent or luck—makes all the difference. This is “a fascinating tour of the psychological research on success” (The Wall Street Journal).
Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.
Book Details
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead.
Don’t miss the five-part Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart!
ONE OF BLOOMBERG’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential.
When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work.
But daring leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires skill-building around traits that are deeply and uniquely human. The irony is that we’re choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the exact same time as we’re scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines and AI can’t do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage, to start.
Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question:
How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture?
In Dare to Lead, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BSstyle that millions of readers have come to expect and love.
Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100 percent teachable, observable, and measurable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.”
Whether you’ve read Daring Greatly and Rising Strong or you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, this book is for anyone who wants to step up and into brave leadership.
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
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The #1 international best seller In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg reignited the conversation around women in the workplace. Sandberg is chief operating officer of Facebook and coauthor of Option B with Adam Grant. In 2010, she gave an electrifying TED talk in which she described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her talk, which has been viewed more than six million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with gusto. Lean In continues that conversation, combining personal anecdotes, hard data, and compelling research to change the conversation from what women can’t do to what they can. Sandberg provides practical advice on negotiation techniques, mentorship, and building a satisfying career. She describes specific steps women can take to combine professional achievement with personal fulfillment, and demonstrates how men can benefit by supporting women both in the workplace and at home. Written with humor and wisdom, Lean In is a revelatory, inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth that will empower women around the world to achieve their full potential.
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
Book Details
This New York Times bestseller and business classic has been fully updated for a world where skilled communication is more important than ever.
The book that revolutionized business communications has been updated for today’s workplace. Crucial Conversations provides powerful skills to ensure every conversation―especially difficult ones―leads to the results you want. Written in an engaging and witty style, it teaches readers how to be persuasive rather than abrasive, how to get back to productive dialogue when others blow up or clam up, and it offers powerful skills for mastering high-stakes conversations, regardless of the topic or person.
This new edition addresses issues that have arisen in recent years. You’ll learn how to:
- Respond when someone initiates a Crucial Conversation with you
- Identify and address the lag time between identifying a problem and discussing it
- Communicate more effectively across digital mediums
When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation poorly and suffer the consequences; or apply the lessons and strategies of Crucial Conversations and improve relationships and results.
Whether they take place at work or at home, with your coworkers or your spouse, Crucial Conversations have a profound impact on your career, your happiness, and your future. With the skills you learn in this book, you'll never have to worry about the outcome of a Crucial Conversation again.
Bounce Forward (The Extraordinary Resilience of Nurse Leadership)
Book Details
Its time to become an extraordinary nurse one who grows stronger in the face of adversity, helping oneself and others to transform negative experiences into positive ones. Bounce Forward: The Extraordinary Resilience of Nurse Leadership uses real-life stories to provide nurses in all practice settings with a model and methods to cultivate the personal, professional and organizational resilience they need to achieve nursings vision of a transformed 21st-century health care system. The book is broken into four sections, each illuminating the concept of leadership resilience, what it takes to become a resilient leader, how to put your leadership resilience into action and how to foster resilient organizations. The ideas presented here focus on the extra requirements of leadership resilience during disruptive change. You can put them into practice immediately, meaning you'll become more resilient and will inspire resilience in others. This book gives you: Five reasons to increase your leadership resilience A personal resilience, renewal, resonance and relationship inventory exercise Seven key things that leadership resilience produces And much more! Bounce Forward: The Extraordinary Resilience of Nurse Leadership will arm you with the personal and professional resilience tools needed to close the gap between the complex demands of your organization and the skills you need to meet those demands.
Complexity Leadership Nursing's Role in Health Care Delivery
Book Details
Lead effectively in today's complex health systems! As hospitals and healthcare organizations strive to meet standards to achieve status in the Magnet Hospital Recognition Program and address the issues in the Institute of Medicine’s Nursing Work Force Issues Initiative, they must be able to respond in ways that embrace rapid change.
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know
Book Details
Number One New York Times Best Seller
“This. This is the right book for right now. Yes, learning requires focus. But, unlearning and relearning requires much more - it requires choosing courage over comfort. In Think Again, Adam Grant weaves together research and storytelling to help us build the intellectual and emotional muscle we need to stay curious enough about the world to actually change it. I’ve never felt so hopeful about what I don’t know.” (Brené Brown, PhD, number one New York Times best-selling author of Dare to Lead)
The best-selling author of Give and Take and Originals examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your opinions and open other people's minds, which can position you for excellence at work and wisdom in life
Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We think too much like preachers defending our sacred beliefs, prosecutors proving the other side wrong, and politicians campaigning for approval - and too little like scientists searching for truth. Intelligence is no cure, and it can even be a curse: being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own limitations we can become.
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people's minds - and our own. As Wharton's top-rated professor and the bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, he makes it one of his guiding principles to argue like he's right but listen like he's wrong. With bold ideas and rigorous evidence, he investigates how we can embrace the joy of being wrong, bring nuance to charged conversations, and build schools, workplaces, and communities of lifelong learners. You'll learn how an international debate champion wins arguments, a Black musician persuades white supremacists to abandon hate, a vaccine whisperer convinces concerned parents to immunize their children, and Adam has coaxed Yankees fans to root for the Red Sox. Think Again reveals that we don't have to believe everything we think or internalize everything we feel. It's an invitation to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don't know is wisdom.
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Book Details
The New York Times bestseller that gives readers a paradigm-shattering new way to think about motivation from the author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose-and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.
FYI: For Your Improvement - Competencies Development Guide
Book Details
Based on the Korn Ferry Leadership Architect™ Global Competency Framework (38 competencies). FYI for your improvement is an easy-to-use competencies development guide based on the Korn Ferry Leadership Architect™ Global Competency Framework.
IDENTIFY DEVELOPMENT NEEDS. CREATE TARGETED DEVELOPMENT PLANS.
Each chapter is dedicated to one of the 38 Korn Ferry Leadership Architect™ Competencies, as well as chapters on 10 Career Stallers and Stoppers. In these chapters you’ll find:
Competency definitions
Stallers and Stoppers definitions
(CARS) – skilled, less skilled, talented, and overused skill content
Possible causes of lower skill
Tips to develop each competency
Job assignments
Suggested readings and deep dive learning links and recommended search terms
The competency chapters include:
- A context-setting introduction explaining the significance of that competency. It gives you the lay of the land, describing how it operates and why it’s important.
- Possible causes of lower skill – the reasons you might have a need to develop this competency.
- A short case study to bring the competency to life.
- A variety of practical tips to help you select the most appropriate methods for developing your competence.
- Suggested job assignments that provide great opportunities for on-the-job skill development.
- Additional learning resources covering a range of media including websites, blogs, videos, articles, books. However you learn best, there are references to help you.
- Questions to help you take time to reflect and to inspire you as you develop the competency.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap & Others Don't
Book Details
To find the keys to greatness, Collins's 21-person research team read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project. The findings will surprise many readers and, quite frankly, upset others.
The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning.
But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?
The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?
The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.
The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?
The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:
Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.
Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great
Book Details
Building upon the concepts introduced in Good to Great, Jim Collins answers the most commonly asked questions raised by his readers in the social sectors. Using information gathered from interviews with over 100 social sector leaders, Jim Collins shows that his "Level 5 Leader" and other good-to-great principles can help social sector organizations make the leap to greatness.
Mentoring 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know
Book Details
Through this essential and easy-to-read reference book, international leadership expert John C. Maxwell gives you the bottom line on mentoring--what it is, why you should do it, and how you can do it most effectively.
In Mentoring 101, Maxwell guides you in the art of mentoring by explaining:
how to choose the right person to mentor,
how to create the right environment for leaders to thrive and grow,
how to help people become better,
and how to overcome the most intimidating hurdle of all: getting started.
What if you spent your entire life achieving but never shared your wisdom with anyone else?
Mentoring is the key to creating a lasting legacy, and Mentoring 101 is your personalized key to seeing that journey through.
Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time
Book Details
Fully revised and updated—the national bestselling communication skills guide that will help you achieve personal and professional success one conversation at a time.
The master teacher of positive change through powerful communication, Susan Scott wants you to succeed. To do that, she explains, you must transform everyday conversations at work and at home with effective ways to get your message across—and get what you want. In this guide, which includes a workbook and The Seven Principles of Fierce Conversations, Scott teaches you how to:
- Overcome barriers to meaningful communication
- Expand and enrich relationships with colleagues, friends, and family
- Increase clarity and improve understanding
- Handle strong emotions—on both sides of the table
- Connect with colleagues, customers and family at a deep level
Includes a Foreword by Ken Blanchard, the bestselling co-author of The One Minute Manager
The Nurse Leader Coach: Become the Boss No One Wants to Leave
Book Details
Whether you are just beginning your leadership career or are a seasoned expert, leadership in nursing today is challenging. Staff turnover is on the rise. What nurses expect from their leaders has changed. Being an effective manager is no longer enough. Staff expects more than an annual performance evaluation. To win the talent war and become the boss that no one wants to leave, you need to add individualized coaching to your leadership toolbox. Effective coaching is strengths-based, engagement focused and performance-oriented. Wise leaders recognize that when the needs of the workforce change, they must adopt new leadership strategies to become employers of choice. The author, a nationally known leadership development expert, breaks down the essential skills and behaviors that leaders need today to develop a coaching mindset and let your staff thrive. The book includes coaching examples and practical strategies that can quickly move you from feeling stressed and overwhelmed to feeling confident in your role. You will learn how to build a coaching foundation, develop your coaching skills and coach your team to higher levels of performance. The Nurse Leader Coach gives you the tools you need to change from being a manager to a leader coach. Let it be your roadmap and practical guide to becoming the boss that no one wants to leave.
Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life... And Maybe the World
Book Details
Based on a Navy SEAL's inspiring graduation speech, this #1 New York Times bestseller of powerful life lessons "should be read by every leader in America" (Wall Street Journal).
If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.
On May 17, 2014, Admiral William H. McRaven addressed the graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin on their Commencement day. Taking inspiration from the university's slogan, "What starts here changes the world," he shared the ten principles he learned during Navy Seal training that helped him overcome challenges not only in his training and long Naval career, but also throughout his life; and he explained how anyone can use these basic lessons to change themselves-and the world-for the better.
Admiral McRaven's original speech went viral with over 10 million views. Building on the core tenets laid out in his speech, McRaven now recounts tales from his own life and from those of people he encountered during his military service who dealt with hardship and made tough decisions with determination, compassion, honor, and courage. Told with great humility and optimism, this timeless book provides simple wisdom, practical advice, and words of encouragement that will inspire readers to achieve more, even in life's darkest moments.
"Powerful." --USA Today
"Full of captivating personal anecdotes from inside the national security vault." --Washington Post
"Superb, smart, and succinct." --Forbes
Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life
Book Details
* One of Inc.com's "6 Books You Need to Read in 2020 (According to Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, and Adam Grant)"
* Adam Grant's # 1 pick of his top 20 books of 2020
* One of 6 Groundbreaking Books of Spring 2020 (according to Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, and Adam Grant).
A former rocket scientist reveals the habits, ideas, and strategies that will empower you to turn the seemingly impossible into the possible.
Rocket science is often celebrated as the ultimate triumph of technology. But it's not. Rather, it's the apex of a certain thought process -- a way to imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. It's the same thought process that enabled Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind, that allows spacecraft to travel millions of miles through outer space and land on a precise spot, and that brings us closer to colonizing other planets.
Fortunately, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to think like one.
In this accessible and practical book, Ozan Varol reveals nine simple strategies from rocket science that you can use to make your own giant leaps in work and life -- whether it's landing your dream job, accelerating your business, learning a new skill, or creating the next breakthrough product. Today, thinking like a rocket scientist is a necessity. We all encounter complex and unfamiliar problems in our lives. Those who can tackle these problems -- without clear guidelines and with the clock ticking -- enjoy an extraordinary advantage.
Think Like a Rocket Scientist will inspire you to take your own moonshot and enable you to achieve liftoff.
Who Says Elephants
Can't Dance
Book Details
Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? sums up Lou Gerstner's historic business achievement, bringing IBM back from the brink of insolvency to lead the computer business once again.Offering a unique case study drawn from decades of experience at some of America's top companies -- McKinsey, American Express, RJR Nabisco -- Gerstner's insights into management and leadership are applicable to any business, at any level. Ranging from strategy to public relations, from finance to organization, Gerstner reveals the lessons of a lifetime running highly successful companies.
Hardwiring
Excellence
Book Details
Hardwiring Excellence offers a road map and practical how-to guide for creating and sustaining a culture of service and operational excellence. In this book, author Quint Studer, CEO of Studer Group, draws on his personal experience as a former hospital executive who led two organizations to the top 1% in patient satisfaction and his experience coaching hundreds of healthcare organizations since.
Studer, a nationally acclaimed educator, coach, and thought leader in healthcare today, is a master storyteller, mixing stories with personal insight, simple tools, and in-depth recommendations on how good organizations can become great ones.
Based on Studer Group's Nine Principles, Quint Studer shows how to retain more employees; ensure better customer service; build strong leadership, align organizational values, goals, and results; increase communication; reward and recognize individual success while also requiring accountability; and move operational performance for better financials, market share, and growth.
At the core of the journey, he says, is a sense of purpose, worthwhile work and making a difference. When organizations learn how to harness this passion in their employees, they create a success spiral with ever increasing momentum.
In fact, Richard L. Clarke, FHFMA, President and CEO of Healthcare Financial Management Association says, Quint Studer's Nine Principles of service and operational excellence provide the missing link between people power and strong financials. It's about courageous leadership.
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Book Details
The book Lifehack calls "The Bible of business and personal productivity."
"A completely revised and updated edition of the blockbuster bestseller from 'the personal productivity guru'"—Fast Company
Since it was first published almost fifteen years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era, and the ultimate book on personal organization. “GTD” is now shorthand for an entire way of approaching professional and personal tasks, and has spawned an entire culture of websites, organizational tools, seminars, and offshoots.
Allen has rewritten the book from start to finish, tweaking his classic text with important perspectives on the new workplace, and adding material that will make the book fresh and relevant for years to come. This new edition of Getting Things Done will be welcomed not only by its hundreds of thousands of existing fans but also by a whole new generation eager to adopt its proven principles.
Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change
Book Details
An INFLUENCER leads change.
An INFLUENCER replaces bad behaviors with powerful new skills.
An INFLUENCER makes things happen.
This is what it takes to be an INFLUENCER.
Whether you're a CEO, a parent, or merely a person who wants to make a difference, you probably wish you had more influence with the people in your life. But most of us stop trying to make change happen because we believe it is too difficult, if not impossible. We learn to cope rather than learning to influence.
From the bestselling authors who taught the world how to have Crucial Conversations comes the new edition of Influencer, a thought provoking book that combines the remarkable insights of behavioral scientists and business leaders with the astonishing stories of high powered influencers from all walks of life. You'll be taught each and every step of the influence process including robust strategies for making change inevitable in your personal life, your business, and your world. You'll learn how to:
- Identify high leverage behaviors that lead to rapid and profound change
- Apply strategies for changing both thoughts and actions
- Marshal six sources of influence to make change inevitable
Influencer takes you on a fascinating journey from San Francisco to Thailand to South Africa, where you'll see how seemingly "insignificant" people are making incredibly significant improvements in solving problems others would think impossible. You'll learn how savvy folks make change not only achievable and sustainable, but inevitable. You'll discover breakthrough ways of changing the key behaviors that lead to greater safety, productivity, quality, and customer service.
No matter who you are or what you do, you'll never learn a more valuable or important set of principles and skills. Once you tap into the power of influence, you can reach out and help others work smarter, grow faster, live, look, and feel better and even save lives. The sky is the limit... for an Influencer.