Accessing information on a topic can be either the start of a learning journey or it can enrich the journey you are already on.

On this page Kemp Street Partners offers some reading suggestions about leadership, organisations and teams, personal effectiveness and behavioural change.

Please get in touch for more information on any of these topics or to provide suggestions on additional resources/topics for this site and check back from time to time as new resources and recommendations are added.

LEADERSHIP

  • Reciprocal Peer Coaching Supported by a Professional Coach: The Future of Sustained Leader Development? Liane Kemp (2019). Philosophy of Coaching: An International Journal, 4 (1), 57-75. Leader development requires learning new ways of behaving, which takes sustained practice over time, yet organisations continue to focus their efforts in traditional classroom style workshops, spending billions of dollars in the process. This paper describes and interrogates a contemporary approach to leader development, that includes reciprocal peer coaching to embed skill development, increase goal attainment, and enable learning transfer into the wider organisational system for positive impact (http://dx.doi.org/10.22316/poc/04.1.05.)
  • Life and Leadership: Addressing the challenges of being a 21st century leader. Liane Kemp (2016). The 21st century is challenging even the best leaders; old leadership models are increasingly ineffective and yet the pressure for even greater performance is relentless. Presented to the Columbia International Coaching Conference in New York, this paper describes the lived experiences of three senior leaders in diverse business sectors, and discusses the impact of a holistic approach to leadership development.
  • How You Lead Matters. Liane Kemp (2016). Effective 21st century leadership styles and their impact on organisational climate.
  • Primal Leadership. Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee (2013). Still one of my ‘go-to’ texts on leadership. Written as the concept of emotional intelligence was becoming one of a leader’s ‘must haves’ and highly practical and relevant today.
  • Leadership. Peter Northouse (2021). A seminal leadership text that presents an academically robust account of the major theories and models of leadership with a focus on how theory can inform practice. Each chapter outlines a different approach that allows you to easily compare and contrast different theories. 
  • Care to Dare. George Kohlrieser, Susan Goldsworthy and Duncan Combe (2012). An inspiring look at leadership through the eyes of attachment theory.
  • Dare to Lead. Brené Brown (2018). Brené Brown takes the best from her prior books together with new research, and pivots it into an organisational setting.
  • Mastering Leadership. Robert Adams and William Adams (2015). Offers an integrated model of leadership that marries competencies correlated with effective leadership (our outer world) with our underlying beliefs and assumptions (our inner world).

 

ORGANISATIONS AND TEAMS

  • Coaching Systemically. Paul Lawrence (2021). The term systems and systemic coaching has gained widespread use, but what is a system and are all coaches really systemic coaches? This book provides an accessible and clear description of key theories of systems and systemic coaching and how they can be applied to coaching practice.
  • The Advantage. Patrick Lencioni (2012). Author Patrick Lencioni presents a widely used model for team effectiveness, the foundational layer of which is building trust. 
  • The Wisdom of Teams. Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith (1993). Still a great go-to text on the definition of a team and how to create high-performance teams in any organisation. 
  • Conscious Business. Fred Kofman (2014). Kofman postulates that consciousness is the main sources of organisational greatness and that conscious businesses seek to promote the intelligent pursuit of happiness for all stakeholders. It produces sustainable, exceptional performance through the solidarity of its community and the dignity of each member.

 

COACHING

  • Distinguishing Coaching. Liane Kemp (2015). How does coaching differ from other ‘helping’ professions?
  • The Role of Coaching in Enabling Resonant 21st Century Leaders. Liane Kemp (2015) – Leadership today looks very different today compared to last century. New leadership skills are required. This paper looks at how coaches can help.
  • Coactive Coaching. Henry Kimsey-House, Karen Kimsey-House, Phillip Sandahl, and Laura Whitworth (2012). Used as the definitive resource in dozens of professional development programs.

 

PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS AND BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE

  • The Ideal Self as the Driver of Intentional Change. Richard Boyatzis and Kleio Akrivou (2006). Explores how creating a vision of our future self can help us drive and sustain behavioural change. A great read for those contemplating a career move.
  • Resilient. Rick Hanson (2018). Hanson is known for his blend of neuroscience, positive psychology and contemplative practices. In Resilient, he talks about how to build the foundations of well-being by harnessing the power of positive experiences. 
  • Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind. Kristin Neff (2011). Kristin Neff is one of the leading researchers and writers on the power of self-compassion. Check out her website for a self-compassion self-assessment.
  • The Mindful Path to Self Compassion. Christopher Germer (2009). A great read on the power of self-compassion, that offers creative, scientifically grounded strategies for putting it into action. 
  • Reinventing Your Life. Jeffrey Young, Janet Klosko, Aaron Beck (1994). A practical approach to help you identify your internal narratives (those stories we have about ourselves that we hold as truths) that the authors call life traps. They draw on principles of cognitive therapy to help you recognise and change negative thought patterns.
  • Schema Therapy. Jeffrey Young, Janet Klosko and Marjorie Weishaar (2006) for those interested into a deeper dive into internal narratives.
  • Our Inner Conflicts. Karen Horney (1945). Horney, a contemporary of Freud, questioned some of his views. She described three human coping strategies, “moving towards”, “moving away” and “moving against” that underpin a considerable body of current thinking.
  • Mindsight. Daniel Siegel (2012). A excellent text for those interested in how insight and empathy allows us to make positive changes in our brain structure – and in life.
  • The Body Keeps the Score. Bessel Van Der Kolk (2015). A seminal book that looks at how trauma, of all types, can lodge in our bodies, and what we might do about it.
  • The Brain That Changes Itself. Norman Doidge (2010). For those interested in neuroplasticity.
  • Thinking Fast and Slow. Daniel Kahneman (2010). Kahneman explains two systems that drive the way we think and make choices. One system that is fast, intuitive, and emotional; the other that is slower, more deliberative, and more logical and the consequences of using each.
  • The Ladder of Inference. Adapted from Chris Argyris (1990) and detailed in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. The ladder shows us just how easily we build from limited data and add our own meaning and take action and the consequences of doing so.

 

CAREER TRANSITION