CREATING SAFE SPACES FOR ALL

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (And How to Fix It) (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019)

A TOP SHELF PICK

Amy C. Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Wiley, 2019)

Beth Comstock, Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change (with Tahl Raz; Currency, 2018)

How is it that at a time of unprecedented focus on leadership — a continuing proliferation of books, articles, degree programs, and big-budget training efforts — spectacular leadership failures proliferate at the highest levels in public, private, military, and faith-based institutions? The headlines are filled with tales of grounded fleets of aircraft, class-action lawsuits alleging a callous indifference to pharmaceutical outcomes, individuals coming forward to describe decades-long patterns of harassment and abuse at the hands of formerly exalted executives, and a contagion of mistrust in the tech titans whose products shape our daily experience.

It’s clear that mere exhortation — Listen! Be a coach, not a boss! Value diverse perspectives! — is ineffective. It’s likewise clear that in an age when rote tasks are increasingly outsourced to machines, and innovation and teamwork have become the keys to organizational survival, the chief job of every leader is to create an environment in which people feel the sense of common purpose, belonging, and engagement that enables their best ideas to surface.

Each of this year’s best business books