Top 10 Must Read Books on Career Coaching 

10 Books for Every Career Coach

Our career trajectories are complicated and multifaceted. Our professional lives frequently take a non-linear path, and along the way, we frequently encounter challenges. Books may stimulate the mind and encourage reflection. They provide order in our solitary times of self-discovery.

Your coach is a fantastic resource for overcoming these challenges, but occasionally, more reading is what we need for our assignments in between sessions.

Here are the top 10 books for career counseling.

1. Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day by Todd Henry

Die Empty was written by Todd Henry and first published in 2013. Die Empty is a tool for folks who won’t wait another day to complete their most critical tasks. Todd Henry describes the factors that contribute to our inertia and offers a method for incorporating dependable routines into your life that will keep you on a straight and steady path.

It’s not about working endless hours on a project or living impulsively; it’s about accepting the notion that time is limited and giving the world the special contribution that only you can. Henry demonstrates how to develop the mindset and techniques necessary to maintain your zeal, overcome mental obstacles, and produce your best work each day. His guiding concepts and benchmarks consist of:

• Define Your Battles: To combat aimlessness, strategically define your objectives and organize your life to help you reach them.
• Be Fiercely Inquisitive: Approach your task with a curious mentality to prevent boredom from dulling your senses.
• Step Out of Your Comfort Zone: By facing your discomfort and embracing lifetime growth and skill development, you may make a significant contribution to the world.

The original edition of Die Empty is available on Amazon for $13.

2. Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together by Pamela Slim

Body of Work was written by Pamela Slim and first published on December 31, 2013. A secure career in any profession is getting harder to find these days. More and more of us are juggling careers at large corporations, stints at startups, freelancing, and side initiatives for charity. To increase our skills, abilities, and experience, we take risks.

• The well-known author of Escape from Cubicle Nation, Pamela Slim, equips us with the skills necessary for fulfilling jobs in this new era of work. 
• She demonstrates how to sell your narrative, connect the dots between various successes, and consistently reinvent and relaunch your brand.

The original edition of Body of Work is available on Amazon for 13$.

3. “Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation” By Anne Helen Petersen

Can’t Even was written by Anne Helen Petersen and first published on September 1, 2020. The creator of the Ladies Get Paid career-development group and the author of a book that will be published, Claire Wasserman, argues that reading this book is a useful approach to considering the changes in social and workplace culture that have fueled the burnout epidemic.

Based on Petersen’s popular BuzzFeed article from 2019, “Can’t Even” explores how capitalism and evolving labor regulations have contributed to the present state of burnout among millennials and how it affects people’s ability to work, parent, and socialize. These are important topics to think about both during and after the epidemic, according to Wasserman.

The original edition of Can’t Even is available on Amazon for 10$.

4. Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life” By Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

Designing Your Life was written by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans and was first published on September 1, 2020. Using design thinking, designers build worlds and find solutions to issues. Look around your house or office, at the chair you are sitting in or the tablet or smartphone you could be using. Our entire world was created by someone. Every design also begins with a challenge that the designer or design team aims to overcome.

• No matter who or where we are, what or where we have done for a job, how old or young we are, or what we do or have done for a livelihood, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans demonstrate in this book how design thinking can help us construct a life that is both meaningful and rewarding. 
• You can create and construct your work and your life using the same design thinking that has produced incredible technologies, goods, and environments. 
• This will result in a life that is fulfilling and joyful, continually creative and productive, and always has room for surprise.

The original edition of Designing Your Life is available on Amazon for 15$.

5. Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges by Amy Cuddy

Presence was written by Amy Cuddy and first published on November 3, 2015. With her TED talk on “power poses,” Amy Cuddy inspired tens of millions of viewers around the globe. Now, she explains the fascinating science behind these and many other fascinating body-mind effects, and she shows us how to apply straightforward techniques to overcome fear in stressful situations, perform at our best, and connect with and inspire others to do the same.

• Presence is a well-researched, passionate, and approachable book that tells the tales of people who discovered how to thrive in difficult situations that earlier made them feel afraid.
• Every reader will discover how to tackle their greatest obstacles with assurance rather than dread and to come out of them satisfied rather than regretful.

We can reach presence, a condition in which we stop caring about the image we’re leaving on others and instead make changes to the impression we’ve been giving ourselves, by using our power. We don’t have to undertake a significant inner shift or finish a major spiritual journey in order to tap into the power of presence, as Harvard professor Amy Cuddy’s ground-breaking book demonstrates. Instead, we must gently guide ourselves by making little adjustments to our everyday actions, attitudes, and body language.

The original edition of Presence is available on Amazon for 12$.

6. The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines Into Massive Success and Happiness by Jeff Olson

The Slight Edge was written by Jeff Olson and first published on February 4, 2005. The Slight Edge is not simply another self-help or motivational item that you must pick up to climb the success ladder. It only demonstrates how to use tools that are already inside of you to produce effective outcomes from the everyday routines of your life.

• Find the one item that will help you accomplish your objectives, fulfill a long-held desire, or catapult you up the success ladder. 
• Once you have it, you will realize how your philosophy, attitude, actions, and outcomes all combine to make your life. 
• A Slight Edge is an approach to thinking and information processing that helps you to make everyday decisions that will propel you toward the success you want. 
• The Slight Edge is the secret to making all the other self-help books and articles you read, watch and hear genuinely useful.

The original edition of The Slight Edge is available on Amazon for 28$.

7. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” By Greg McKeown

Essentialism was written by Greg McKeown and first published on April 15, 2014. This book explores the use of essentialism as a discipline to reclaim control over how you spend your time and energy at work and in general. 

• It’s a viewpoint that may help readers accomplish less, but better, not necessarily a productivity or time management method, according to McKeown. 
• Essentialism is more than just a productivity hack or time-management tactic.
• It is a methodical discipline for identifying what is truly necessary and then getting rid of everything else so we may contribute as much as we can to the things that really matter.

The focused pursuit of less helps us to retake control of our own decisions about where to spend our valuable time and energy by pushing us to apply more discriminating criteria for what is Essential, as opposed to implicitly granting others the right to make such decisions for us.

Essentialism is a completely new method of doing things, not just one more thing. Doing less while doing it better applies to every aspect of our life. The movement of essentialism has now reached its peak.

The original edition of Essentialism is available on Amazon for 13$.

8. David & Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell

David & Goliath was written by Malcolm Gladwell and first published on October 1, 2013. Malcolm Gladwell challenges our understanding of challenges and disadvantages in his book David and Goliath, offering a fresh perspective on what it means to experience discrimination, deal with a disability, lose a parent, attend a subpar school, or experience any number of other ostensible setbacks.

Gladwell starts by telling the true account of what transpired between the giant and the shepherd child all those years ago. From there, David and Goliath explore the dynamics of successful and unsuccessful classrooms, the Northern Ireland Troubles, the thoughts of cancer researchers and civil rights activists, murder and the high costs of retribution, and more to show how much of what is significant and beautiful in the world emerges from what appears to be suffering and adversity.

The original edition of David & Goliath is available on Amazon for 12$.

9. A Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership” By Steven B. Sample

A Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership was written by Steven B. Sample and first published in 2002. Steven B. Sample, the college president who made the University of Southern California one of the most prestigious and highly ranked campuses in the nation, questions many of the traditional teachings on leadership in this unconventional approach. Here, Sample describes an unconventional style of leadership that defies accepted wisdom on the subject, yet that certainly succeeds. Sample exhorts current and future leaders to pay attention to certain fundamentally paradoxical realities.

• He provides his own straightforward, homemade, and often unconventional advice on a variety of difficult and important topics. 
• Additionally, he offers several useful, albeit contentious, leadership strategies, including the advice that leaders should occasionally sacrifice their moral standards, refrain from reading everything that comes across their desks, and routinely postpone making judgments.

The original edition of A Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership is available on Amazon for 13$.

10. Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance” By Atul Gawande

Better was written by Atul Gawande Sample and first published in 2007. In this book, Atul Gawande explores how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable. Gawande’s compelling tales of perseverance, innovation, and what it means to treat people fairly transport us to polio outbreaks in India, labor and delivery rooms in Boston, combat surgical tents in Iraq, and malpractice courtrooms throughout the nation.

He explores the moral conundrums surrounding doctors administering deadly injections, considers the impact of money on contemporary medicine, and tells the astonishingly acrimonious past of hand washing. As with all of his writing, Gawande also provides an inside peek at his personal life as a surgeon in practice, providing a brutally frank description of what it’s like to work in a profession where mistakes are both inevitable and unfathomable.The original edition of Better is available on Amazon for 12$.