Sally M Evans

Leaders don't fail because they lack frameworks. They fail because nothing they learned stayed with them when it mattered most. Once Upon a Leader solves that problem in the most unexpected way possible - by returning to the stories leaders first encountered as children. Through the Leadership Compass - Vision, Integrity, Adaptability, and Influence - readers gain a practical, memorable framework for their most pressing leadership challenges, supported by nine integrated tools designed for real teams and real decisions.

But the deeper transformation is personal. This book invites leaders to reconnect with the values, instincts, and stories already inside them - and to lead from that place with clarity and courage. The result is leaders who communicate more powerfully, build cultures people want to belong to, navigate change without losing trust, and make decisions grounded in meaning rather than pressure.
Once Upon a Leader doesn't just improve leadership skills. It restores leade

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Barbara Kellerman

This groundbreaking book investigates the human tendency to follow, as well as the occasional defiance of this norm. This is the first work to focus not on why people with power and authority behave as they do, but on why people without respond as they do. Leadership is a relationship. There is no leader without at least one follower. Still, notwithstanding their essential importance – especially to leaders – followers are largely ignored. This book is a corrective: followers are placed in the foreground, and leaders in the background.

First, Barbara Kellerman focuses on the rewards and punishments that prompt us to go along with the leader and conform to the group. Next, she highlights what motivates some individuals some of the time to do the opposite. Finally, she demonstrates that the human condition is submission: obedience is typical, while resistance is atypical. Drawing upon the latest research in business, government, psychology, philosophy, religion, education, and the scie

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Mary C. Kelly

Peter B. Stark

Leadership is Tough: What Great Leaders Do Differently helps leaders navigate today’s increasingly complex workplace with greater clarity, confidence, and resilience. The book provides practical strategies for leading through uncertainty, managing change, building trust, improving communication, strengthening accountability, and developing stronger teams. The book delivers actionable tools, real-world examples, and practical frameworks leaders can immediately apply in their organizations and communities. Readers learn how to make difficult decisions under pressure, lead people through change fatigue and burnout, improve workplace culture, and mentor future leaders. Drawing from decades of experience in military leadership, economics, executive coaching, and organizational consulting, the authors provide realistic guidance for senior leaders facing workforce challenges, rapid technological change, and economic uncertainty.

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Steve Spangler

Most leadership books describe engagement. This one teaches it. The Engagement Effect gives leaders, educators, and communicators a practical framework for designing moments that earn attention, build trust, and move people to action — drawn from 30 years in classrooms, boardrooms, and television studios. Readers aren't walking away with theory. A teacher applies the strategies in a professional development session the same week she finishes the book. A corporate leader finally understands why his team isn't engaged and what to do about it Monday morning. The science is real, the stories are honest, and the methods have been tested in front of millions of people across every imaginable context. This isn't a book about what engagement looks like. It's a book about how to create it.

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Michael Adam Gips

Leadership is often presented as a tidy set of models and best practices. Real leadership, though, begins when the models stop working. It’s Not in the Manual helps professionals lead when there is no script: when information is incomplete, pressure is high, and getting it wrong can be tragic. Drawing on decades of experience in security, law, journalism and risk management, Michael Gips brings these moments to life through dozens of vivid real-world stories, from crises and organizational turning points to everyday leadership dilemmas, showing how leaders actually navigate difficult decisions. Rather than offering formulas, talismans, or cant, he encourages readers to think critically about leadership clichés and management fads. Gips's writing ranges from humorous to poignant, incorporating references from the quotidian to the erudite (Monster.com and Montaigne, Ted Lasso and teleology). It's been called "A handbook for navigating chaos, complexity, and humanity at the same time."

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Jack Myers

Readers of The Tao of Leadership gain a navigational compass for becoming effective leaders built on 3,000-year-old Taoist principles. With accelerating technology overwhelming traditional structures, the book offers a practical Blueprint for Leadership in the AI Era, focused on embracing AI without becoming subservient to it and pursuing innovation without losing empathy, ethics, or purpose. The Tao of Leadership is grounded in the Taoist principles of harmony, flexibility, balance, simplicity, and integrity, translating them into the FusionFlow Process, a tutorial for breaking down organizational silos, accelerating ideas into action, and building cultures of continuous learning. Readers who are navigating the role and influence of AI in their own lives, their organizations, and in civilization will learn that leadership in the AI age is not about mastering machines. It is about understanding how to embrace change and remain grounded in human judgment, empathy, purpose, and integrity

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Katie Sheketoff

The leadership frameworks that served us for decades were written for a world that no longer exists. That world of certainty is gone, and the frameworks built for it are failing people at work, at home, and in their communities. "Uncharted Leadership" starts from a different premise: disruption isn't a phase we're passing through. It's the permanent condition we're leading in. Drawing on 20 years of leadership development work, including award-winning programs that reached 30,000 leaders at Marriott International, Katie Sheketoff distilled what actually works into three waypoints. Awareness: cultivating knowledge of yourself and your surroundings. Alliance: building relationships across boundaries that foster trust, abundance, and mutual growth. Action: taking ownership of incremental changes that add up to radical progress.

The book helps leaders at every level find meaning, build connection, and move forward without a map.

ripples.media

Christopher O. H. Williams

Many people know the right action to take but hesitate, later facing regret and wondering what might have been. In C.O.U.R.A.G.E.: 7 Choices for Living a Life Without Regret, business transformation consultant Christopher O. H. Williams argues that courage is the essential power that enables authentic living and a fulfilled life. Often overlooked in daily life, courage is not an innate trait for a select few; it’s a trainable muscle that everyone must strengthen.

Drawing on a thirty-year global leadership career, Williams defines courage and introduces a seven-point framework: Commit to a purpose, Own your potential, Unmask fear, Reject distracting voices, Act decisively, Grow from failure, and Embody resilience and joy. Organized into Accelerators, Decelerators, and a Sustainer, these choices form a practical path for personal growth. Through stories of “courage pilgrims” and diverse perspectives, Williams offers actionable guidance for leaders seeking purposeful, fearless lives.

amazon.co.uk

Liane Davey

Backed by science and written with the time- and energy-strapped manager in mind, Thoughtload is Liane Davey’s potent handbook for a better way to lead. Apply the strategies in this book to create calm within the chaos—so you and your team can perform, produce, and prosper.

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Henry J Evans

Bombs, Bacon, and Bankruptcy helps leaders make better decisions when the stakes are highest. Rather than offering theoretical leadership advice, the book provides practical frameworks for navigating uncertainty, communicating effectively under pressure, and creating cultures where people speak up before small problems become major crises. Drawing on lessons from national security, executive coaching, and personal experience, Henry shows readers how to recognize the hidden effects of fear on decision-making, build Emotional Safety®, and develop the resilience needed to lead with clarity and confidence through change. Ultimately, the book helps leaders strengthen trust, improve organizational performance, and turn adversity into an opportunity for growth rather than paralysis.

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Julie Smith

Contagious Confidence helps leaders deliver an ambitious agenda without burning out their team. One 5-star reviewer says: "If you want to do more with less (which it feels like all leaders are being asked to do), this shows you the most human way of doing it." The book supports leaders to unlock the ultimate performance variable: confidence. When people’s self-belief matches their capability, they feel able to stretch themselves, take on new challenges, extend their impact. Collective confidence enables teams to stride towards their goals, holding each other to high standards. Packed with real-world stories and 50 practical tools, Contagious Confidence equips leaders to build confidence that fuels results. It tackles hidden leadership habits that drain belief. For example, being overly helpful sends the message 'I don't think you can do this on your own.’ Another reviewer says: "all the power of a coach but all in your own hands."

amazon.co.uk

Amy Summers

Drawing from real stories, practical strategies, and insights from her popular podcast and award-winning seminars, Summers shows you how mentorship doesn’t have to be a heavy lift. Whether you’re currently managing a team, preparing to take on more responsibility, or starting your own entrepreneurial endeavor, Lift offers the guidance you’ve been looking for to become a leader who inspires, connects, and creates lasting impact that accelerates not only their careers, but also your own.

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Matt Gjertsen

How often have you heard that engineers don’t make good managers? Many engineers, their teams, and even the HR professionals who support them believe technical people aren’t wired for leadership. That assumption is wrong. In Minimum Viable Manager, Matt Gjertsen reveals how technically minded people can move past solving problems and take the first steps towards being exceptional leaders." In this practical guide for leaders at any stage, you’ll gain tools for building trust, setting clear expectations, and giving effective feedback—the deceptively simple skills that determine success and are rarely taught. Matt explains the psychology behind each skill, illustrates them with real-world examples, and includes self-reflection questions in every chapter so you can immediately apply what you learn.

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Hollie Rottman

Jim Rottman

The Confluence Method helps people stay human when pressure makes that hardest. When the stakes rise, we can narrow, protect, rush towards consensus or silence the voice that most needs to be heard. Yet that dissenting voice might change a patient's outcome, catch a critical design flaw or reveal something a team has missed. We believe conflict is not something to avoid, but a uniquely human capacity we need to strengthen. Through embodied practice, leaders learn to regulate their own nervous system, stay present with discomfort, invite challenge, repair trust and help others find their voice. The impact reaches beyond better decisions. It means people carrying enormous responsibility don't have to carry it alone. They can think together, challenge one another and stay connected through difference. As technology increasingly thinks alongside us, our ability to remain deeply human, courageous and connected may matter more than ever.

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Barbara Salopek

Future-Fit Innovation helps leaders turn innovation from a vague buzzword into a practical capability. Instead of offering another quick-fix framework, it shows readers how to overcome the real barriers that block innovation—rigid thinking, weak psychological safety, poor collaboration, resistance to technology, and shallow approaches to sustainability—and how to build the conditions for innovation across the individual, team, and organizational levels. Grounded in both academic insight and hands-on business experience, the book gives readers clear models, checklists, reflective questions, real cases, and immediately usable tools. It helps leaders make better decisions, build stronger cultures, reduce costly innovation mistakes, and create organizations that are more adaptive, resilient, and future-ready. In short, this book helps people lead change more effectively and turn good ideas into meaningful, lasting results.

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Bruna De Palo

The Brain Instruction Manual for Leaders helps leaders understand the hidden brain patterns that drive stress, miscommunication, resistance, and conflict. By translating neuroscience into practical, easy-to-use tools, it empowers readers to navigate difficult conversations, break unhelpful habits, and lead with greater clarity and confidence. Through real-world examples and actionable frameworks, the book shows how to create calmer, more productive teams, strengthen trust, and improve decision-making under pressure. Readers gain a deeper understanding of both their own behavior and that of others, enabling them to build healthier workplace cultures where people feel safe, engaged, and able to perform at their best.

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Janet Ply

This book helps leaders by giving them what’s been missing in most leadership development - practical, real-world tactics they can apply immediately. It strips away the jargon and focuses on the everyday situations leaders face: difficult conversations, unclear roles, shifting priorities, and teams who want guidance and trust. Instead of theory, it provides step-by-step frameworks that make leadership feel clear, actionable, and achievable. Readers routinely say the book make leadership feel doable with tools they could put to work the same day. It helps leaders move from trial-and-error to intentional, effective leadership, resulting in stronger relationships, better execution, and teams who feel supported and inspired.

amazon.com

Steve Spangler

Most leadership books describe engagement. This one teaches it. The Engagement Effect gives leaders, educators, and communicators a practical framework for designing moments that earn attention, build trust, and move people to action — drawn from 30 years in classrooms, boardrooms, and television studios. Readers aren't walking away with theory. A teacher applies the strategies in a professional development session the same week she finishes the book. A corporate leader finally understands why his team isn't engaged and what to do about it Monday morning. The science is real, the stories are honest, and the methods have been tested in front of millions of people across every imaginable context. This isn't a book about what engagement looks like. It's a book about how to create it.

stevespangler.com

Elisabeth White

People Are Accountable helps leaders transform the way they think about accountability, replacing blame and fear with ownership, trust, and meaningful action. Elisabeth White challenges the common misconception that accountability is about punishment, showing instead that it is a learnable leadership practice that drives stronger teams, healthier workplace cultures, and better business outcomes. Through practical frameworks, real-world examples, and actionable strategies, readers learn how to distinguish responsibility from accountability, navigate difficult conversations, foster psychological safety, and create environments where people willingly take ownership of results. Whether leading organizational change, managing teams, or developing as a leader, readers gain the tools to improve execution, strengthen collaboration, and build cultures where accountability becomes a catalyst for innovation, continuous improvement, and long-term organizational success rather than a source of f

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Nikolas Badminton

In *The Hope Engineer's Playbook*, leaders will learn how to create bigger visions of possible futures and use hope as a renewable energy for change that supercharges strategic planning and execution by the frontline team. It teaches leaders how to ignite imagination, build anticipation for what comes next and deepen empathy for what we need to change in the world. It also provides a framework allowing organizations to explore possibilities, empower employees to drive projects forward at the frontline and execute with resiliency and drive. The result is a high-hope organization where every person within feels empowered to create change.

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Jerry Connor

Lee Sears

Drawing on 15 years of real-world experience, insights from more than 10,000 coaching conversations, and lessons from leaders ranging from BTS to global organizations, Mastering MESSY Leadership offers a practical roadmap for leading with clarity in an increasingly complex world.
This transformative guide reveals how exceptional leaders move beyond overwhelm, embracing a more adaptive, human-centered approach to leadership. Packed with actionable strategies and real-world examples, it shows how to navigate uncertainty with confidence and lead effectively when the path forward isn't always clear.

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Diane C Gaa

Leader Lessons – From Invisible to Impactful is a heartfelt and empowering guide for those ready to step fully into their influence. Drawing from her journey of growth, setbacks, and resilience, Diane Gaa shows how everyday managers can become trusted, impactful leaders. Through deeply personal moments, like confronting the quiet belief of inadequacies, but choosing to lead anyway, Diane brings leadership to life in a way that is both relatable and transformative. With warmth and candor, she reframes leadership as a human experience rooted not in perfection, but in authenticity, courage, and connection. Leader Lessons equips readers to build trust, navigate challenges, and lead with intention—creating meaningful, lasting impact.

Formats are available in ebook, hardback, and paperback in English. The book is being translated into Spanish and French, and an audiobook version is currently in progress with launch expected by June, 2026.

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David Ribott

Informed Leadership helps leaders replace reactive decisions with conscious choices grounded in first principles. Drawing on more than 9,000 hours of executive coaching across the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, David Ribott gives readers a clear, sequential model: four pillars (Respect, Integrity, Dignity, Empathy), the ABCs of leadership (Anti-fragile, Bold, Clear, Deliberate), and the three Ps of success (Purpose, Performance, Prosperity). The impact is practical. First-time CEOs use it to lead with clarity under pressure, senior teams use it to realign around a shared purpose, and boards use it to raise the quality of their decisions. By turning hard-won coaching insight into a framework any leader can apply, the book raises the standard of leadership, and with it the wellbeing of the people every leader is responsible for.

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Julia Carolyn Carden

This book helps managers and leaders reach their true potential and enhance their leadership effectiveness, to be successful at work and home. Whilst it is based on robust academic PhD research it it practical, accessible and is packed full of exercises to develop one-self. The book has been written in a way for the busy leader to dive in and digest what is needed, in the limited time they have available. Unlike other books in this area it provides a clear and usable definition of what self-awareness is, and outlines why self-awareness is critical to leading and living through uncertainty. The author argues that self-awareness is what is most needed in this uncertain world to lead effectively. This is what one leader said about the book: "A 'must-read' and a 'must-do' for leaders at every level, it challenges traditional notions and unexamined beliefs about self-awareness and how it informs and shapes how leaders behave and perform."

amazon.co.uk

David L Grossman

The Heart Work of Modern Leadership: 6 Differentiators of Exceptional Leaders helps people become more effective, trusted, and impactful leaders in a time when traditional leadership approaches are no longer sufficient. As author David Grossman notes, “‘Good’ leaders are built for stable times. But we don’t live in stable times. Today’s uncertainties—AI disruption, economic volatility, geopolitical conflicts, and constant organizational change—create relentless instability. ‘Good’ leaders put the company at risk. We need more ‘Exceptional’ leaders.”

The book provides a clear roadmap for moving from good to exceptional leadership.
Grounded in research, it introduces six differentiators that help leaders learn how to integrate emotional intelligence with analytical thinking—what Grossman calls “leading with your heart in your head.” The result is deeper trust, more engaged teams, inclusive cultures, improved retention, higher productivity, and strong business results.

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Christian Marcolli

Winning Match helps leaders unlock the full potential of their most talented people—the Game Changers who drive breakthrough results. By teaching executives to identify these high-potential individuals and become their Leadership Champions through structured "sparring" sessions, the book directly addresses the costly problem of top talent being overlooked, underutilized, or leaving for competitors.

Leaders who apply this framework retain their best people, accelerate innovation, and achieve sustained competitive advantage. Game Changers gain the focused leadership support they need to reach extraordinary performance levels they couldn't achieve alone. The book provides a practical, repeatable system for the leadership interactions that separate good companies from great ones. Readers learn to stop wasting leadership time on low performers while their stars fend for themselves—and instead invest in the high-impact relationships that multiply organizational success. The result: str

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Ryan Taft

Ryan Taft’s RevenueGetter helps leaders shift from managing tasks to developing people—equipping them with practical coaching tools that improve performance, build confidence, and create more supportive, accountable team cultures. By focusing on small, actionable behaviors, the book empowers leaders to help their teams grow in a sustainable way, reducing burnout and increasing both individual and organizational success.

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Will Parks

Graceful Leadership responds to instability, polarisation and overlapping crises with clarity, courage and compassion. Rejecting command-and-control models, it makes a compelling, evidence-based case for compassionate, coaching-led leadership as essential to organisational and societal flourishing. Drawing on storytelling, neuroscience, organisational psychology and three decades of frontline humanitarian, development and crisis-response experience, the book offers a distinctly global, human perspective. Its lessons come not from corner offices, but from disaster zones, conflict settings, government negotiations, community dialogues and multicultural teams under pressure. These accounts turn ideas into practical insights readers can apply immediately. In an era seeking humane, high-impact leadership, Graceful Leadership is timely and transformative. Winning this award would amplify a message business and society urgently need: grace is not weakness; grace is strong humanity in action.

amazon.com

Frankie J. Weinberg

While most mentoring books teach you how to follow, Mentorship shows you how to lead. This book introduces a bold new approach to mentoring – one that empowers mentees to captain their own growth while engaging mentors as trusted navigators. Grounded in research and rich with real-life stories, this book offers a fresh paradigm for how mentoring can – and should – work in today’s evolving world of work and life. Whether you’re navigating your first career move, seeking clarity in a leadership transition, or mentoring others, Mentorship invites you to rethink outdated models and embrace the power of authentic mentoring. Through the transformative ACE Framework – Align, Collaborate, Evolve – this book explores how to build relationships that are flexible, individualized, and rooted in mutual growth. Along the way, you'll develop the Seven Cs of Mentoring: Coachability, Connection, Co-Creation, Capital, Cultivation, Courage, and Competence – key competencies that will help you lead with c

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Diana Lowe, Lowe

Michael Ashley

Hard to Handle: A High Performer Paradox is changing the conversation about difficult high performers by asking a more human—and more challenging—question: What if the person everyone is ready to give up on is capable of change? Grounded in evidence-based leadership and coaching, the book helps leaders and HR professionals confront a hard truth: when we label someone “difficult,” we can stop being curious about what is driving the behavior—and miss the opportunity for transformation. Through a relatable workplace story and practical tools, readers learn to look beneath behavior, have courageous conversations, build self-awareness and emotional intelligence, and take responsibility for their own impact. At its heart is a powerful idea: people are more than their worst behaviors. When we stop asking “What’s wrong with them?” and start asking “What’s possible here?”, we create the conditions for meaningful change.

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Katie O'Brien Ceccarini

Fearless Feedback is changing the relationship people have with feedback, making feedback less daunting and more effective. Managers who read Fearless Feedback are better equipped to broach, address, and navigate feedback conversations, giving them a new sense of confidence, making them more capable managers. Most managers are never taught how to have great feedback conversations. Until now. Fearless Feedback is the practical, no-nonsense guide managers have been waiting for. This is not a book on why feedback is important—managers already know it is. This is a book laser-focused on the how: how to have meaningful feedback conversations while preserving the relationships they've worked hard to build.

Built on two decades of real management experience and grounded in repeatable frameworks with real-world scenarios, this book gives the language and tools to navigate even the most difficult conversations, making it a book managers can come back to again and again.

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Helen Sanderson

Psychological Safety in Practice is a practical, evidence-based guide for senior HR leaders and people executives who want to improve performance, wellbeing and retention by creating workplaces where people feel safe to contribute, challenge and grow. Written by Helen Sanderson, an expert in wellbeing and health at work, this book moves psychological safety from theory into execution. It translates research into five clear foundations: mattering, voice, clarity, connection, and learning, giving leaders a tangible framework they can apply across teams and functions.

The book then shows how to embed psychological safety across the full employee journey, from recruitment and induction to feedback, development and progression. It addresses the structural, cultural, and leadership decisions that determine whether psychological safety becomes embedded or undermined at scale.

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Jennifer Bryan

The Emotional Side of Organizational Change helps leaders transform the way they lead change and, ultimately, the experience and outcomes of transformation for the people affected by it. The book tackles a critical but often overlooked reason transformation fails: the emotional response to change. It helps leaders understand what sits beneath resistance, uncertainty and disengagement, so they can respond with greater empathy, clarity and intention rather than treating people as obstacles.

Through practical tools, communication strategies, foresight techniques and the ABChange Model, readers learn to anticipate emotional responses, build trust and involve people meaningfully. The result is a shift from doing change to people to creating change with them, helping organisations build resilience, accelerate adoption and sustain new ways of working. It helps leaders put people first without compromising performance, making transformation more human, successful and more likely to last.

amazon.co.uk

Aoife O'Brien

Thriving Talent helps leaders understand what prevents employees doing their best work, and what they can do about it, challenging the idea that underperformance is always an individual problem. Instead, it asks leaders and HR to consider the conditions they’ve created for people to perform. The stories woven throughout help people reflect on their own experiences. Readers say they see themselves in the book: workplace situations, managers they’ve had, and their own leadership styles, both positive and negative.
People dip back into the book when challenges arise, using the frameworks and prompts to work out what to do.

Employees also say it’s helped them better understand their values, needs and strengths, as well as their work environment, and put into words what isn’t working for them. The book works at two levels: helping leaders create the conditions for employees to perform sustainably, and helping individuals understand what they need to thrive.

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Angela Rixon

Meaning Over Purpose offers a fresh and timely leadership model for tackling one of today’s biggest workplace challenges: employee disengagement. It introduces the “Purpose-to-Meaning Gap”, the disconnect between what organisations say and what people actually experience, and shows leaders how to close it. Rather than treating purpose as the answer on its own, the book provides a practical framework for embedding meaning into leadership, culture, and everyday work.
Drawing on Angela Rixon’s senior HR experience, alongside research and psychology, the book is delivered through an accessible, story-led format centred on a fictional CEO, Sarah. It equips leaders to respond to burnout, AI, generational change, and hybrid work while strengthening engagement, retention, productivity, and organisational performance.

amazon.co.uk