A Professor’s Top 15 Book Recommendations

One of the hardest things I had to do when I moved was to get rid of some of my books. My house was starting to look like a Barnes & Noble. I kept the textbooks I use for my courses and a few others that I found especially useful or interesting. The following list is in no particular order. It contains some of my favorite books that I kept. I often recommend them to my students:

Emotional Intelligence: Why it can Matter More than IQ by Daniel Goleman – Goleman is one of the main thought-leaders in emotional intelligence. This book is easy to read and explains the importance of emotional intelligence.
The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shaw Achor – This book included some interesting information about how to be happy. I liked the author’s style. It is entertaining and interesting.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. This book is required reading in many courses. Although some students hesitate to pick up “self-help” books, this one is a classic for good reasons.
Emotional Intelligence in Action by Marcia Hughes, Bonita Patterson, James Terrell, and Reuven Bar-On. This book is a helpful tool to develop emotional intelligence in teams.
The Pig That Wants to be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher by Julian Baggini. This strange little book was required reading for a course I taught about foresight. My technology students love it. It is filled with short stories. It is not for everyone. However, it is a book that will make you think.
Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice by Howard Gardner. Gardner’s work in multiple intelligences is an important foundation for anyone studying personality assessments.
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done by Peter Drucker. Drucker’s book is often required in management and leadership courses.
The Bugaboo Review: A Lighthearted Guide to Exterminating Confusion about Words, Spelling and Grammar by Sue Sommer. This is a fun book to teach spelling and grammar.
Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English by James Cochrane. This is helpful book to teach grammar.
Eats, Shoots, & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. This is another fun book to explain the importance of punctuation.
It’s Not You It’s Your Personality: Skills to Survive and Thrive in the Modern Workplace by Diane Hamilton and Toni Rothpletz. This is a book written by my daughter and me. It explains all of the top personality assessments and helps readers understand how to get along with other people at work.
The Elements of Style by William Strunk. This is a classic book on how to write correctly. Most authors keep a copy of this.
On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zessner. I like how Zessner teaches writers to write in a simple way.
The Online Student’s User Manual: Everything You Need to Know to be a Successful Online Student by Diane Hamilton. This book will help new and continuing students to be successful in online classes.
Entreleadership: 20 Years of Practical Wisdom from the Trenches by Dave Ramsey. This book contains a compilation of things that managers or entrepreneurs should know but may have never learned.

Importance of Being Proactive vs. Reactive

Many good foresight or business courses teach students to be proactive vs. reactive to change. Anyone who has read The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People will tell you that the very first habit Covey lists is to be proactive. Covey explained that to be proactive “means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.”

When a person is in control of an expected or anticipated occurrence, they have taken proactive measures. When a person is reactive, they are responding to something that they had yet to have anticipated.

In leadership courses, they often give examples of a proactive vs. a reactive leader. The following chart gives an example of the different mindset of these two styles of leaders. Click on the picture for more information.

Carol Shultz’s article Proactive vs. Reactive Approaches to Your Business and Talent explained two cases that demonstrated how reactive companies lost employees for different reasons, and the associated costs.

There are a number of theoretical models for change that include the importance of being proactive. Some of these include:

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