One of my favourite hobbies is reading. And now, it became a great source of inspiration for my job. Therefore, I want to recommend you some interesting books for this 2021 that has just started: 4 books for its 4 quarters.
And, I actually selected these four ones because I think they could be useful for you during this year.
What could we need this year?
Be resilient and responsive to change.
Already immerse in a big crisis and without a clear exit, we need to understand how we can deal with what is happening. A threat could become an opportunity when we can take perspective and focus on what really matters.
In this book, The infinitive game from Simon Sinek, he presents this concept: finite and infinite games.
In infinite games, there are no winners or losers only ahead and behind. There are not finishing lines neither fixed rules; players just come and go. Just like life is.
Having this mindset when leading allows us to play stronger and more innovative to face the future.
Think about the future.
I must confess Yuval Harari is one of my favourite authors and therefore he must be here with his great 21st lesson for the XXI century.
Some say it is worth to know about the past to be able to deal with the future, and it is also true we need to question ourselves about things happening today to open a debate about the future: the coming challenges we have to face to survive.
Develop our emotional intelligence (EI).
During the years, we thought the secret of success (whatever that means) was our IQ. Time ago, this proved wrong. What matters most is not how smart you are but how high you have developed your emotional intelligence.
Good news is that you can actually develop it.
Daniel Goleman presents the concept and how you can boost your EI in two books: Emotional intelligence and Working with emotional intelligence.
Being able to understand and being understood is not only about words. It is about reading and managing feelings and emotions: ours and from others. The more we work on knowing, understanding and managing ourselves, the better we will be prepared to know, understand and manage the others. Working together is the only way to face the future.
Be able to work anyplace with anyone.
How many times you need to work with someone coming from other country or other culture? And how many times you are not truly sure how to make the most of that collaboration?
That’s why I strongly recommend this book from Erin Meyer: The culture map.
In these times of globalization, we need to know how to deal with cultural complexity. This book provides some insights for working effectively with people across the globe, full of examples and real cases to make easy your understanding.
Hope you find them interesting and give you food for thoughts for these coming months.
I’m sure we will have ahead a year full of opportunities.
The question is: are we ready? We’ll find very soon…