RESOURCES LIST
Resources list
This page contains resources I use in my work:
- Books
- Podcast
- A download with journal articles and research reports
This list isn't exhaustive, and I add to it as I find new things. There are some comments around some resources, why they've been included and what they contain where it might not be obvious.
General psychology and neuroscience
- Behave by Dr Robert Sapolsky
- A General Theory of Love
by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon - this is quite an old book, but quite poetic at times - contains one of my favourite quotes about the every part of the brain not being amenable to logic and will, and not taking orders
- Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us by Daniel Pink
- Flow: The Psychology of Happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Fortitude: The Myth of Resilience, and the Secrets of Inner Strength
by Bruce Daisley - this provides a challenge to the concept of individual resilience that I talk about in my trauma-informed training, and emphasises that resilience happens primarily in groups, not individually
- How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk
by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish - this might seem a strange book to put on a work reading list, but it taught me so much about how to attune to people's feelings, and help them to name them - useful to kids, but lots of adults also are not very good at recognising feelings, particularly if they have experienced developmental trauma or broken attachment
- Mindsight by Daniel Siegel
- Self-Determination Theory: basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness
by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci - I talk about this quite a lot across various areas of work, this is people's need for autonomy, competence and purpose.
- Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain
by
Lisa Feldman Barrett - this is perhaps the most up to date book I've read about the structure or the brain and talks about why some previous theories such as the triune brain are oversimplified.
- The Burnout Challenge: managing people's relationships with their jobs by Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter
- The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
- Thinking, Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman - this is the classic book about fallacies in our thinking and the difference between fast intuitive thinking and more slower considered thinking.
- When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink
- Bird by Bird: Some instructions on writing and life
by Anne Lamott - this came up in a training session I was delivering in relation to implementing trauma-informed processes a bit at a time. Although the book is a classic on writing (Anne Lamott coined the phrase "shitty first draft") it is also about life, insecurities, and coping with emotions.
Trauma
- In an Unspoken Voice, How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
by Dr Peter Levine - this is really interesting about the impact of trauma on the body.
- In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Dr Gabor Maté
- The Body Keeps the Score
by Dr Bessel van der Kolk - if I were to recommend one book about trauma, this would be it. From memory, some of the explanations of the structure of the brain might be a bit out of date, but it's generally comprehensive and describes how PTSD came to be recognised to be caused by relational trauma as well as the more common miliary trauma after the Vietnam war.
- The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture by Dr Gabor Maté
- Trauma and Recovery by Dr Judith Herman
- When the Body Says No, the Cost of Hidden Stress by Dr Gabor Maté
- Woman of Substances: A Journey into Drugs, Alcohol and Treatment
by Jenny Valentish - this is part memoir and part educational - her experiences of the impact of trauma and healing. It has another one of my favourite quotes from Dr Ben Sessa, a Bristol psychiatrist who in response to medical staff saying that a suicidal 15-year old girl was “a manipulator, an attention seeker said, “I go up to this kid and say, ‘Good for you seeking attention. You deserve attention. You have my attention.’ It’s a recognition that they’re not bad people, they’re the most vulnerable people. These are natural adaptive responses to pain.”
Management and organisational development
- First, Break all the Rules
by Marcus Buckingham - this talks about the development of the Gallup Q12, which I use in my training
- Good to Great by Jim Collins
- Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean by Kim Scott
- Radical Respect: How to work better together
by Kim Scott
- Radical Help – how we can remake the relationships between us and revolutionise the welfare state
by Hilary Cottam - this looks at taking a relational approach to public services, including looking at how patterns replicate across a system, for example identifying parallel process in workers and the families they are working with
- Strengthsfinder 2.0: by Tom Rath
- The Fearless Organisation by Amy Edmondson - it was Amy Edmonson's PhD that started her contribution to her work around psychological safety
- The Right Kind of Wrong
by Amy Edmondson - and an extension to her psychological safety work is this book about the kind of mistakes it's okay to make because it's part of the learning and innovation process.
Productivity and effectiveness
- Better Than Before
by Gretchen Rubin - strategies for forming better habits
- The Four Tendencies
by Gretchen Rubin - thinking about outer and inner accountability for getting things done
- Deep Work
by Cal Newport - I find some of this impractical if you've got caring responsibilities of any description, but it is a classic
- Essentialism by Greg McKeown
- 4-Hour Work Week
by Timothy Ferriss - this has got some bad press I think because of the title, and it can come across badly to people, but there's some really good stuff in here about thinking through what sort of life you want, it's not just basic productivity advice.
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity by David Allen
- Make Time: How to focus on what matters every day by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
- Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg
- Work Less, Make More by Jennifer White
Please let me know if there are other books that you've found useful that I can add to my list for other people.
Podcasts
Here are some Podcasts I listen to - many of them have had the writers above on as guests - search for individual names in your podcast app to check - you can often get as much from a Podcast as you can from the book:
Radical Candor
and Radical Respect
from Kim Scott and colleagues
Eat Sleep Work Repeat
by Bruce Daisley
The Tim Ferriss Show
- I used to always listen to this, now I tend to just listen for specific guests because they're great when there's someone you really want to listen to - some of this unpacks issues around trauma
The Psychology Podcast
Speaking of Psychology - the American Psychological Association podcast
Speaking of Psychology - the American Psychological Association podcast
Hello Monday
by LinkedIn
Fixable
- solving people's workplace problems
No Stupid Questions
from Freakonomics - a range of psychology topics
The Anxious Achiever
- mental health and work
Work Life
and Re:Thinking
by organisational psychologist Adam Grant
Working It
from the Financial Times
Women at Work
from HBR
Coaching Real Leaders
from HBR
Psychology in Seattle
- mix of things here, some more interesting than others, but has a psychotherapy focus
Happier
and Happier in Hollywood
- mix of work and domestic content, all around happiness, habits, wellbeing etc. I actually think Gretchen Rubin is massively under-rated as a thinker, perhaps because she appeals more to a female audience.
IdeaCast
from HBR
Journal articles mentioned in training courses
This
pdf download
contains information about the journal articles and research reports that I've used to develop my training
Affiliate links are used when highlighting books. These are all books that I’ve either read or heard the author speak about and have found useful. The links do not mean any extra cost to readers but help to support my free content.