Balance

Becoming a Changemaker

This motivational guide provides all “the tools you need to step up, play bigger and increase your impact” (New York Times bestselling author Liz Wiseman) as you move into a leadership role—wherever you are in life.

Hailed by CNBC as a “top 5 non-fiction book everyone should be reading about work,” Becoming a Changemaker is a call to action, showing how leading change from where you are can transform your career, community and even the world. Alex Budak, a celebrated UC Berkeley faculty member, distills the essence of successful changemakers in this accessible guide, unveiling the essential mindsets and leadership skills needed to spark change and create impact across roles, sectors, and hierarchies. Through a powerful blend of data-driven insights and diverse, relatable case studies, Budak builds a compelling case, one that frames being a changemaker as an inclusive, aspirational identity for everyone.

Inspired by the lessons and philosophies from Budak’s wildly popular course of the same name, which he created at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Becoming a Changemaker will show you how to.

Develop your own unique voice as a changemaker, to lead effectively, empathetically, and authentically in any setting.

Transform setbacks into stepping stones and uncover the art and science of turning failures into powerful catalysts for growth and innovation

Influence without authority to inspire and mobilize others towards your vision – even when you're not in charge.

Create a sustainable action plan to turn your aspirations for change into reality with the Changemaker Canvas tool and its tangible, manageable steps.

Pursue Your Purpose and learn to harness your individual strengths and passions to drive meaningful change from wherever you are, in a way that’s true to who you are.

To begin leading change, you don’t need a fancy title, or a perfectly polished idea. But you do need to start. This book is your first step.

Imposter No More

A personal and professional guide to the latest research on imposterism and psychological flexibility, this book is the professional’s handbook to combating “impostor syndrome” and overcoming self-doubt to achieve career success.

Dr. Jill Stoddard is a recovered imposter. For years, she was convinced that the only reason she was accepted into a competitive grad school program was because her father knew the program director. Dr. Stoddard isn't alone in this: deep down, the majority of successful people question their professional legitimacy a good amount of the time.

Why do we do this, and how can we stop? Although she's in recovery, Dr. Stoddard still struggles with feelings of imposterism. She works through them with psychological flexibility, the ability to be present with all thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and urges, fully and without defense, while making conscious, deliberate choices based on what deeply matters to a person. Essentially, we're not attempting to change the substance of the thoughts and feelings that naturally occur to us; instead, we change the way we relate to those thoughts and feelings, so we aren't caught up in constant battle to control them.

Throughout Imposter No More, Dr. Stoddard lays the groundwork for understanding the imposter phenomenon; she outlines the traps professionals often fall into regarding their imposter feelings, and provides actionable steps for cultivating psychological flexibility to be able to choose bold career moves despite self-doubt and imposterism.

Deeper Mindfulness

Use the hidden foundations of mindfulness to rediscover calm and reclaim your life in our chaotic world.

There are moments in life that decide your fate. They ripple into the future and dictate how you experience the world in the moments that follow; either positive and uplifting, dark and chaotic, or flat and dull.

What if you could recognize these moments before they seized control of your life? What if you could use them to set sail for a better future? What if all moments, big and small, could be harnessed this way?

In Deeper Mindfulness, Oxford Professor Mark Williams and Dr Danny Penman reunite to present a new eight-week guided meditation program that takes mindfulness to the next level. Deeper Mindfulness reveals how the latest advances in neuroscience, combined with millennia old wisdom, can be used to transform your life. These discoveries open the doors to a deeper layer of mindfulness known as the 'feeling tone'. This sets the 'background color' that tinges your entire experience of life. It is also the tipping point from which you can reclaim your life in an increasingly stressful and chaotic world.

Proven effective at treating anxiety, stress and depression, the practices in Deeper Mindfulness offer a new and more fruitful direction for both novice and experienced meditators. It also allows the rest of us to approach life with renewed strength, vigor and equanimity.

The Five Talents That Really Matter

A former Gallup Global Leadership Research and Development leader and the New York Times bestselling coauthor of Strengths-Based Leadership demystifies the aura and complexity surrounding high performing leaders through original research and interviews with high-performing global leaders.

The leadership space is rife with myths, such as the belief that anyone can be a leader with enough effort or that a leader's strengths can be their greatest weaknesses. According to Barry Conchie and his business partner Sarah Dalton, these statements are complete BS. The Five Talents That Really Matter dispels the fluff in leadership literature, unveiling the traits and characteristics that truly determine high-performance leadership.

This book serves as a guide, stripping away misconceptions and providing a template against which career-driven managers and leaders can assess and develop their capabilities. The five evidence-based talent dimensions are.

Setting Direction: High-performing leaders guide their organizations through complex situations and articulate the value that so many employees find motivational and engaging.

Building Energy: Driven by a burning work ethic, Talented leaders set an exacting example. They measure progress, and recognize that the most Talented employees beneath them demand their greatest attention and support.

Exerting Pressure: Talented leaders assert a clear point of view and persuasively drive change and improvement, never settling for average outcomes.

Controlling Traffic: High performing leaders understand their organizations, driving superior performance by establishing protocols and guardrails while showing agility and flexibility when circumstances change.

Through meticulous research, assessment, and testing, Conchie and Dalton have built a database that predicts the talents and behaviors of the most successful leaders. In this book they present for the first the first time a scientific model that demystifies the aura and complexity surrounding high performing leaders.

The Portfolio Life

You are more than your job. Optimize your happiness, bank account, personal growth, with this practical playbook to achieve sustainable work-life balance—perfect for readers of The Good Enough Job and What Color Is Your Parachute?

"An actionable guide to leading a balanced life." — Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Potential and Think Again

Pouring yourself into a single full-time job is the riskiest move you can make. Your parents’ advice to focus on one career path? It doesn’t work anymore, for reasons ranging from recessions to student loan debt, the gig economy, climate disasters, and a global pandemic (to name a few). We need a dramatically different relationship with work, one that allows us to define ourselves beyond our paid labor.

The answer? A Portfolio Life. An anti-hustle, pro-rest approach to work-life balance, a Portfolio Life is built on three tenets:

You are more than any one role or opportunity.

Diversification will help you navigate change and mitigate uncertainty.

When (not if) your needs change, you can and should rebalance.

In The Portfolio Life, Harvard professor, serial entrepreneur, and self-described "human Venn diagram" Christina Wallace adapts tried-and-true practices from the business sector to help you eschew the cult of ambition and experience the freedom of building the flexible, fulfilling, and sustainable life you want. Drawing on research, case studies, and her own experience, she walks you step-by-step through the process of designing a strategy for the long haul. Because you deserve rest, relationships, and a rewarding career—not someday, but today. After all, you only live once.