Recommended Reading
People ask what I’m reading. This is my answer.
It’s a living list — not a fixed canon, but a record of what has shaped my thinking over the past few years and what I find myself returning to most often in the work. Some of these books are foundational texts I’ve been in conversation with for decades. Others are recent arrivals that are actively changing how I see things.
All of them have earned their place by being genuinely useful — not just intellectually interesting, but practically alive in the room when the work gets hard.
01
Learning to Be
The leader’s inner work
These books go to the root of what the Flourishing Framework begins with: the interior condition of the leader. Not technique. Not strategy. The ground from which everything else grows.
● Cashman, K. (2008) Leadership from the Inside Out: Becoming a Leader for Life
The book that most directly names the inside-out premise of this entire practice. Kevin Cashman's definition of leadership as 'authentic influence that creates value' has been a touchstone for twenty years. Start here if you start anywhere.
● Kegan, R. and Laskow Lahey, L. (2009) Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization
The most important book on why change fails — not because of bad intentions, but because of hidden commitments that protect existing ways of making meaning. Referenced explicitly throughout Module 1. Essential reading.
● Quinn, R. E. (1996) Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within
One of the foundational texts in transformative leadership. Quinn’s distinction between deep change and slow death is a reference point for how this practice frames what’s actually at stake when a leader chooses to stay the same.
● Brooks, D. (2023) How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
A meditation on the most underrated leadership capacity: the ability to truly see another person. Directly connected to the relational foundation of Module 2 and the extraordinary listening that makes co-creation possible.
● Hawkins, D. R. (2020) The Map of Consciousness Explained: A Proven Energy Scale to Actualize Your Ultimate Potential
A more challenging and distinctly personal book about the energetic dimensions of leadership and inner development. Not for every reader — but for leaders doing serious inner work, it opens territory that more conventional leadership books don’t touch.
● Ewing, J. (2024) Braving Uncertainty: Maps for the Journey
A quiet, reflective guide for leaders navigating conditions that don’t resolve neatly. Particularly useful for those who are between certainties — which, in my experience, is where most mission-driven leaders actually live.
● Mlodinow, L. (2018) Elastic: Unlocking Your Brain’s Ability to Embrace Change
The neuroscience behind what I call opening mind, heart, and will — how the brain actually accommodates novelty, ambiguity, and creative thinking. Useful for leaders who want to understand the biology of curiosity, not just practice it.
02
Learning to Be Together
The conditions leaders create
The intellectual lineage of appreciative inquiry, psychological safety, and co-creation. These are the books that shaped how this practice thinks about the soil in which other people’s agency takes root.
● Cooperrider, D., Whitney, D., and Stavros, J. M. (2008) Appreciative Inquiry Handbook for Leaders of Change
The definitive practitioner’s guide to AI — the methodological backbone behind every appreciative summit, SOAR process, and strength-based inquiry in this practice. If you want to understand the intellectual foundation, this is the text.
● Barrett, F. and Fry, R. E. (2005) Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Approach to Building Cooperative Capacity
The most accessible entry point into appreciative inquiry as a practical organizational methodology. Where the theoretical foundations of co-creation and strength-based inquiry become concrete tools for leaders.
● Thackenbery, T. and Metzker, C. (2006) Appreciative Intelligence: Seeking the Mighty Oak in the Acorn
A practical extension of AI principles into everyday leadership — specifically, the capacity to see the potential in what already exists and cultivate it forward. The title says it well.
● Golden-Biddle, K. (2024) The Untapped Power of Discovery: How to Create Change That Inspires a Better Future
A current, research-grounded look at how discovery — asking the right questions rather than having the right answers — drives organizational change. Directly relevant to the shift from problem-solver to facilitator of conditions.
● Edmondson, A. (2023) Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well
Amy Edmondson’s most recent work on psychological safety and intelligent failure, grounded in decades of research. Referenced explicitly in Module 2 of The Flourishing Framework. Her failure spectrum — from blameworthy to praiseworthy — is one of the most practically useful frameworks in the practice.
03
Learning to Know
Systems, patterns, futures, and the shape of the transition
The books that shape how this practice thinks about planning, complexity, and navigating the transition from the world as it is to the world being called into being.
● Sharpe, B. (2020) Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope
The foundational text for the Three Horizons framework that anchors Module 3 of The Flourishing Framework. Read this before anything else on futures thinking. Sharpe’s insight — that all three horizons are alive in the present moment — is one of the most orienting ideas I’ve encountered in forty years of practice.
● O’Hara, M. and Leicester, G. (2019) Dancing at the Edge: Competence, Culture, and Organization in the 21st Century
The book that most directly addresses what it takes to lead at the boundary between the old world and the new — the liminal space that the Three Horizons framework is designed to navigate. Dense and rewarding.
● Leicester, G. (2020) Transformative Innovation: A Guide to Practice and Policy for System Transition
A rigorous guide to navigating system transition from one of the key architects of the Three Horizons framework. Essential background for the Reimagine module and for anyone doing serious futures work.
● Fazey, I. and Leicester, G. (2022) Archetypes of System Transition and Transformation: Six Lessons for Stewarding Change
Academic in register but essential in content — a rigorous framework for understanding how systems actually change, and what different types of change require from leaders at different phases of a transition.
● Hodgson, A. (2020) Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World: A Search for New Perspectives
A grounding text in the International Futures Forum intellectual tradition. Useful both as an introduction to systems thinking and as a reminder of what conventional organizational thinking routinely misses.
● Rickard, K. and Little, J. (2024) The Six Big Ideas of Adaptive Organizations: From Frameworks to Sensemaking
A current, practical synthesis of what adaptive capacity actually requires at the organizational level. Recent enough to address the complexity leaders are navigating right now, not the complexity of ten years ago.
04
Learning to Do
Organizational transformation in practice
Books about what organizational flourishing actually looks like when it’s working — and what it takes to get there. These are the practice texts: less about why, more about how and what next.
● Quinn, R. E. (2015) The Positive Organization: Breaking Free from Conventional Cultures, Constraints, and Beliefs
Quinn’s later work, applying positive organizational scholarship to the practical work of culture change. More directly actionable than Deep Change and a natural companion to it — if Deep Change names the territory, The Positive Organization helps you navigate it.
● Laloux, F. (2014) Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness
The canonical text on evolutionary organizational development. Laloux’s vision of Teal organizations — self-managing, wholeness-seeking, purpose-driven — is the aspirational horizon that gives this practice its direction.
● Hutchins, G. and Storm, L. (2019) Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of Life-Affirming 21st Century Organizations
Leadership for organizations that want to do more than sustain themselves — organizations that want to contribute to the regeneration of the systems they’re part of. A genuinely different frame for what organizational success can mean.
● Cooper, G. (2024) The Responsive Nonprofit: 8 Practices That Drive Nonprofit Innovation and Impact
A practical, current look at what innovation and adaptability actually require in the nonprofit context. Useful for leaders who want concrete practices, not just a conceptual frame.
● Hiscox, H. (2023) No More Status Quo: A Proven Framework to Change the Way We Change the World
A practical framework for leaders who want to create systemic change rather than incremental improvement. Current, action-oriented, and directly applicable to mission-driven organizations navigating resistance.
● Holliday, M. (2016) The Age of Thrivability: Vital Perspectives and Practices for a Better World
An expansive, visionary look at what individual and organizational flourishing could look like at scale. Holliday’s framing of ‘thrivability’ — flourishing that enables more flourishing — is a concept I return to often.
05
The World We’re Navigating
Context, complexity, and the forces shaping our moment
Understanding the world leaders are operating in is itself a leadership practice. These books don’t tell you how to lead — they help you see what you’re leading into.
● Friedman, T. L. (2016) Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Acceleration
The contextual book that explains why everything feels so accelerated — and why adaptive capacity has become the primary leadership challenge of our era. Friedman’s ‘age of acceleration’ thesis is the environmental argument for everything this practice is built around.
● Rosling, H. (2018) Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
An essential antidote to deficit thinking — a rigorous, data-grounded case for why the world is measurably better than our cognitive biases lead us to believe. Directly connected to the positive imagery principles of the framework. Also just a genuinely good book.
● Zakaria, F. (2024) Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present
A sweeping historical perspective on the forces driving current disruption. Essential context for leaders who want to understand the patterns and the arc of the moment they’re navigating — not just react to its daily turbulence.
● Twenge, J. M. (2023) Generations: The Real Difference Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents — and What They Mean for America’s Future
Important context for leaders working across generational cohorts — what actually differentiates how different generations think, work, and find meaning. Useful for board dynamics, staff culture, and philanthropic relationship development alike.
If something on this list sparks a question —
I’m happy to talk about any of it.
The best conversations I have often begin with a book someone has just finished and doesn’t quite know what to do with.
