PF Book Club
At PF, continuous learning is extremely close to our hearts. As Adam Grant says, “Leaders who don’t have time to read are leaders who don’t make time to learn. Leadership development depends not on your level of knowledge, but on your level of motivation to keep expanding your knowledge.” As we journey into the future with an expansive mindset, we enjoy sharing the inspiration we find in the travels of others. Discover and dream with us each month as we share our #pfbookclub recommendations.
Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta
This month we are leaning into Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta, a regenerative exploration of Indigenous ways of being and thinking. A game-changer for the contemporary challenges facing leaders and organisations, here are our key takeaways:
- View global systems from an Indigenous perspective – This offers fresh insights into history, money, power, and learning.
- Embrace diversity of thought – Yunkaporta encourages us to think differently and find new ways to look at things.
- Symbols and shapes matter – They help us make sense of the world and can guide decision-making.
- Listen carefully – Effective communication involves talking to everybody and truly hearing their perspectives.
Take action today and together, let’s incorporate Indigenous wisdom into our leadership and organisational practices to create a more inclusive, regenerative, and harmonious world. Read the book here
The Versatility Factor by John Myers & Dr. Henning Pfaffhausen
This month we are discovering practical strategies for personal and organisational excellence in managing, selling, and teaming via John Myers and Dr Henning Pfaffhausen’s The Versatility Factor.
Our Key Takeaways:
- Building rapport with anyone, anytime – the secret to connection
- Conflict management and teamwork techniques for seamless collaboration
- Sales mastery for building outstanding customer relationships
- Bridging personal and professional lives for holistic success
- Versatility as the key to global leadership and business triumph
Supercharge your social intelligence and versatility today with this performance research-backed, must-read – read the book here
Working With Influence by Amanda Nimon-Peters
This month we are unlocking the power of professional communication and persuasion in the digital age with “Working with Influence” by Dr. Amanda Nimon-Peters.
Our Key Takeaways:
- Master the Art of Influence: Learn nine easy-to-apply principles based on robust behavioural science.
- Navigate the Digital Landscape: Gain crucial insights into leveraging technology to stand out and influence others.
- Future-Proof Your Career: Enhance your communication skills and qualitative skillset to thrive in today’s competitive and unpredictable job market.
- Practical Guidance: Benefit from first-hand research findings, workplace examples, and actionable tools to build your own action plans for success.
Enhance your communication. Amplify your influence. Dive into “Working with Influence” today – read the book here
The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson
This month we are talking about Harvard Business School Professor Amy C. Edmondson’s The Fearless Organization, which has quickly established itself as a classic in organisational studies. Based on almost 30 years of research, Edmondson brings together the threads on one of the theories which has come to be a true compass in the way we think about effective contemporary teams: psychological safety. In addition to making a case for this powerful theory and the scientific evidence supporting it and discussing the risks of a workplace ruled by fear, The Fearless Organization offers up practical examples and tips and tricks for leaders who are working to instil this characteristic deep in their ways of working and organisational life.
ChatGPT did NOT title this podcast - by Adam Grant
This month we are diverging from books; leaning into Adam Grant’s “ReThinking” podcast series and its episode entitled “ChatGPT did NOT title this podcast”. It features a robust conversation between Adam, AI entrepreneur Allie Miller, and innovation professor Ethan Mollick about artificial intelligence chatbots and their impact on the field of work and beyond.
Through a deep dive into the capabilities and a spirited debate or merits and downfalls, the trio highlight the potential of AI chatbots to revolutionise the way we learn and interact with information, but also emphasise the need for humans in the loop for accuracy, morality, and creativity.
A must for the playlists of all leaders, you will emerge from the dynamic discussion with a commitment to start (or continue) to explore the potential benefits and limitations of these technologies in the context of your own roles, that of your teams, and your greater ecosystems.
Remote Not Distant by Gustavo Razzetti
As we curiously question how we can improve our communication and collaboration skills and challenge traditional ways of working and communicating with our teams, we are leaning into Remote Not Distant by Gustavo Razzetti.
With his extensive experience in team building and leadership development, Razzetti offers practical solutions to help remote teams thrive and succeed, with meaningful takeaways around remote work, team building, leadership development, effective communication, collaboration, creativity and productivity.
Leaders will walk away equipped with the practical tools and strategies needed to transform their remote work experiences and create successful teams for the future.
Stories That Stick by Kindra Hall
As we immerse ourselves in the power of storytelling in modern leadership and its ability to captivate, influence and transform, we are leaning into Kindra Hall’s Stories That Stick.
Hall reveals four unique stories for all leaders to have at their disposal:
- the Value Story, for need
- the Founder Story, for persuasion
- the Purpose Story, for alignment and inspiration
- the Customer Story, for advocacy
Supporting these story types with a clear framework of ideals, original research, case studies and a concise set of actions, you will walk away empowered to find, craft, and leverage the stories you already have to transform.
Extreme Listening with Deeyah Khan
This month we wanted to switch things up a bit and share a podcast which has been resonating with us. Deeyah Khan is an award-winning documentary film maker who has created several transformational documentaries, often examining some of society’s most troubling and extreme groups. In this podcast, she speaks about the experience of radical listening and the incredible possibilities when we really, deeply connect.
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
The start of a new year is always filled with plans to best manage our time – yet there never seems to be enough of it! In fact, assuming we live to be eighty, the average human lifespan is just over four thousand weeks. So, this month, we are rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done”, furthering our commitment to great transformation starting with self, and leaning into the entertaining, humourous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time that is Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks.
Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, this must-read reveals why modern society’s “life hacks” and time management tips often prove futile in practice, and suggests that what is required instead is a fundamental shift in how we view time itself which embraces our limitations and empowers us to focus on what truly matters.
With much to contemplate, challenge, and amuse, the reader will surface with a new vantage point to observe (and ideally let go of) addictions to incessant productivity, impatience, worry, attention, distraction, and procrastination.
Deeply inspired, we will be sharing some of our own insights around life, productivity, efficiency, and success in the coming months. Watch this space! ✨
Generation Dread by Britt Wray
The Power of Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf
This month we are leaning into The Power of Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf, stimulated and inspired by the wisdom, rather than the formulas, to be found in his collection of essays, and supportive of the move towards a practice of a more caring, serving kind of leadership.
Deeply profound, it contains the best of his insights around:
- The nature and practice of servant-leadership
- The continual refinement of the servant-as-leader concept
- Related issues of spirit, commitment to vision, and wholeness.
Leaders will surface from the pages motivated to put serving others, including employees, customers, and community, first; more deeply understanding the cultural transformation taking place around us.
Read the book here 🔍 https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/kjrX9L
How Creativity Rules The World by Maria Brito
This month we are inspired by How Creativity Rules the World by Maria Brito; deeply supportive of its revelation that anyone can cultivate the habits, actions, and attitudes that inspire creativity and foster innovation.A powerful playbook that guides you to strike gold with ideas, it explores how to:
✔️Overcome limiting thoughts and dispel myths about creativity
✔️Understand creativity through concrete data, historical passages, and examples of modern entrepreneurship
✔️Develop timeless habits, principles, and tools that worked six centuries ago and continue to work today
✔️Employ creativity in an everyday context to produce extraordinary results
Learn how to make creativity work for your career here 📖 https://lnkd.in/gx2rJVsP
Scaling Up Excellence by Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao
This month we are leaning into Scaling Up Excellence by Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao and the vivid examples, deep research, and practical advice it provides on one of the toughest challenges leaders confront: how to spread success from a few small pockets of an organisation to its entire fabric.
A powerful playbook that belongs on the desk of every scaling supporter, it:
- Identifies the key scaling challenges that confront every organisation;
- Tackles the difficult trade-offs that must be made between tailoring and replicating;
- Reveals how to develop, spread, and instill the right mindsets;
- Shares ways to eliminate destructive beliefs and behaviours; and
- Unpacks the principles to cascade excellence through ecosystems.
Read the book here 📖 https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/2rzWqA
The Body Keeps the Score by Dr Bessel van der Kolk
This month we are transforming our understanding of trauma and being offered a bold new paradigm for healing via Dr Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps The Score. One of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, Dr van der Kolk leverages both his 30 years of experience and recent scientific advances to reveal how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. This must-read exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal–and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.
Discover more here 🔍 https://lnkd.in/dqR_nmJE
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialised World by David Epstein
This month we are reading David Epstein’s Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialised World – a book that challenges the ‘mastery myth’ which has come to dominate our understanding of careers and excellence. Looking at some of the world’s top performers in a range of different arenas, Epstein makes the argument that generalists, rather than highly niched professionals, are more successful in the long run due to increased creativity, agility, and problem-solving capabilities.
Strategic thinking requires us to be generalists: to be able to recombine ideas from different spaces, to have a curiosity about the world and to think through the power of analogy. While specialisation can grow our competitive advantage, it is not enough at the higher levels to create transformative results. And in a market where data science and artificial intelligence is increasingly providing all the specialist answers we might need, it is the ability to think more broadly which really counts.
It’s time to start thinking about your range, and how it can enlarge your strategic possibilities.
Discover more here 🔍 https://lnkd.in/dsxGmBHQ
Together by Vivek H. Murthy
This edition of #pfbookclub sees us shining a light on loneliness, health, and what happens when we find connection in Vivek H. Murthy’s Together.
When he accepted the role of Surgeon General under Obama, Vivek Murthy did so during an age steeped in disconnection, discovering a health crisis that connects the sick and the seemingly well: loneliness. So how can we treat it, and what does it mean to live in this lonely age? This book traces Murthy’s journey to find the answers, examining:
- global proportions of this epidemic;
- root causes and effects;
- social support groups;
- mentoring circles;
- community efforts; and
- lessons for combating loneliness in our own lives.
Part medical exploration, part social toolkit, Together shows how we can collectively learn to let go of our loneliness so we can let come our connectedness.
Discover more here 🔍 booktopia.kh4ffx.net/MXVVJY
Belonging by Owen Eastwood
This month we are leaning into the beautifully expressed, powerful lessons for nurturing long term, high performing teams in Owen Eastwood’s Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness.
“Whakapapa” is a Maori idea which embodies our universal human need to belong. It represents a powerful spiritual belief – that each of us is part of an unbroken and unbreakable chain of people who share a sacred identity. Drawing on his own Maori ancestry, Owen places this concept at the core of his methods to maximise a team’s performance. Shining a light on where these powerful ideas are applied around the world in high-performing settings encompassing sport, business, the arts, and military, aspects of Owen’s unique approach include:
✔️ finding your identity story;
✔️ defining a shared purpose;
✔️ visioning future success;
✔️ sharing ownership with others;
✔️ understanding the ‘silent dance’ that plays out in groups;
✔️ setting the conditions to unleash talent; and
✔️ converting our diversity into a competitive advantage.
Discover more here🔍 http://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/Kev3mN
Better Allies by Karen Catlin
Calling all allies! This month we are discovering everyday actions we can all take to create more inclusive, engaging workplaces via Better Allies by Karen Catlin.
Demystifying allyship in an actionable, approachable, and blame-free way, the reader is equipped with straightforward advice around:
✅Attracting and hiring a diverse workforce;
✅Cultivating a welcome, respectful and supportive environment;
✅Amplifying and advocating for others;
✅Giving effective and equitable performance feedback;
✅Using more inclusive language; and
✅Running inclusive conferences and events.
Serving as both invitation and roadmap, Better Allies will surely inspire every person and organisation to use their ally superpowers to create a culture where everyone can do their best work and thrive. ✨
Discover more here 🔍https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/QOG7OY
The Data Imperative by Henri Schildt
This month we are discovering how digitalisation is reshaping management, organising, and work via The Data Imperative by Henri Schildt.
Offering an integrative and balanced account of ongoing changes in our modern world, Schildt explores how artificial intelligence, algorithms and other data-driven pursuits are shaping the future of work for everyone – from executives and professionals through to frontline workers.
You will walk away equipped with a broad framework for understanding digitalisation not as a technological change, but as a new normative mindset. 💻💡
Discover more here 🔍booktopia.kh4ffx.net/Zdmo1z
Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
This month, as we explore regeneration and reconnect with ourselves and each other, we are lovingly leaning into Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. Examining the 87 emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human, it is a must-read for anyone yearning to become more emotionally fluent and connected in this life.
Jam-packed with Brené’s extensive research and her extraordinary skills as a storyteller, you will walk away empowered to share and steward your most personal stories – armed with the foresight that accurately naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding, meaning and choice.
Start mapping with an adventurous heart here 🗺️💕
Discover more here 🔍http://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/MXk1R2
The Kindness Code by Magnus Wood
This month we’re diving into The Kindness Code: Seven Keys to Unlocking the Power of Kindness at Work by Magnus Wood. It is a must-read for anyone yearning for more kindness in their professional ecosystems.
Jam-packed with recent research, the reader is taken by the hand and led through seven highly practical ways to begin practicing kindness immediately and influence the environment around them.
Full of compelling advice no matter where you are on the career ladder, you will walk away fuelled with science-based information, insights, and practical tips to instantly ignite kindness within your organisation.
Discover more here 🔍
Leadership is Language by L. David Marquet
This month we’re reading Leadership is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and What You Don’t by L. David Marquet. It reveals how leaders can bring out the best in their teams through better communication.
You’ll gain a refreshing and actionable framework to help empower your teams to:
✔ take responsibility; and
✔ address challenges without waiting to be told what to do.
Full of compelling advice, this book highlights how small changes in language can lead to dramatic changes in a team’s success and happiness
Discover more here 🔍
Agile Leadership for Turbulent Times by Sharon Oliver, Frederick Hoelscher and Colin Williams
This month we’re reading Agile Leadership for Turbulent Times by Sharon Olivier, Frederick Hoelscher and Colin Williams. It reveals how to become a more agile leader through understanding and integrating your three key intelligences – ego, eco and intuition.
You’ll gain a deeper understanding of:
✔Your unique leadership blend through diagnostic inventory;
✔Your strengths and interferences;
✔Developing your ability to use the three intelligences to expand your leadership repertoire; and
✔Enabling teams to be more flexible, responsive and autonomous.
Thought-provoking and engaging, if you are curious about the role and purpose of leadership in a turbulent world then regardless of your sector or seniority, this one’s for you!
Discover more here 🔍
Creative provocateur and Global Changemaker, Dr Hayley Linthwaite, is a program designer, facilitator and coach with Performance Frontiers. She empowers individuals, organisations and communities through creative collaboration, social innovation and practical exploration to envision and enable a better future. Hayley has extensive experience in theories, forms, and conventions of applied performance, behavioural and systemic change, strategic conflict analysis, and experiential learning honed within extensive roles as an arts educator, researcher, director and performer.
A dynamo designer and problem-solving prodigy, Kate applies her design expertise and passion for visual learning to our graphic, instructional and product design department.
As a principal, lead facilitator, process designer, writer and executive coach at Performance Frontiers, Dr Martin Challis is dedicated to utilising his creativity and insight as powerful catalysts for facilitating learning and transformational change in organisations, teams and individuals.
Backed by over a decade of national and international experience in education, corporate management and consultancy, Taya’s work as an impassioned facilitator designer, educator and coach at Performance Frontiers expertly balances content and process to elicit powerful learning outcomes and cultivate meaningful change.
Dr Georgia Seffrin is supported by over 15 years’ experience in transformational change and leadership in organisations. She has built a productive career in learning design and facilitation across a diversity of professional sectors including education, health, government, corporate and arts organisations.
As Performance Frontier’s lead graphic and instructional designer, Jason breathes life into complex theory and unlocks new ways of thinking through the production of captivating tools and designs.
Jocelyn utilises her expertise in relationship management, knowledge of integrated marketing communications and skills in word wizardry to establish, maintain and enrichen PF’s professional relationships.
Ed recognises the partnering role finance has in realising an organisation’s strategy. Over six years, Ed has responded to manifold challenges of our rapidly evolving business and has helped Performance Frontiers thrive. His skillful management and refinement of our financial processes and systems help to ensure that we remain agile, responsive and successful. His financial expertise has been built through decades of financial consultation, dedicated bookkeeping, financial reporting and accounting both locally and nationally.
Lowanna uses her 20 years’ experience as a program designer, facilitator, arts educator and academic to help our clients make meaningful change in a way than inspires transformational growth.
Kylie uses her high-level relationship skills, expertise in coaching psychology and facilitation prowess to co-create transformative learning experiences and build human potential.
Dr Jane Austin brings over 20 years’ experience as a registered clinical psychologist to guide organisational and individual development in her work as a designer, coach and facilitator with Performance Frontiers team.
Olga is our office all-rounder and administration superstar. She applies her design acumen and super organisational skills to the task of designing efficient systems processes behind the scenes at Performance Frontiers.