Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 7 Powerful Tools for Life and Work, Marilee Adams, 2004. "Questioning" is a skill rarely taught in school, but doing it well - that is, asking the right questions of the right people - can radically transform attitudes, actions, and results. This book provides easy-to-learn tools that can make a significant and immediate difference in people's business and personal lives. Written as an engaging fable, it inspires readers to take charge of their thinking in order to accomplish goals, improve relationships, advance careers, investigate new territories, and in general gain greater life satisfaction. This book explains how to "be your own coach," outlines the author's QuestionThinking Model, and lists the top 12 questions for change. Real-world examples provide practical models for applying the principles in a variety of situations, while a Choice Map is a useful visual tool that demonstrates that everyone has a choice in every situation, even if it is not immediately apparent.

Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, William Isaacs, 1999. In this book the author argues that organizational learning cannot take place without successful dialogue. Dialogue is conversation that encourages collective observation and thought, enabling groups to think beyond their members' individual limitations. Isaacs posits an "ecology of thought," which is typically constrained by habits that are known and felt but never discussed. Those habits can be revealed only through dialogue that permits inquiry, confrontation, and clarification. Only then can habits be changed and new possibilities explored. Isaacs examines the processes that constitute dialogue and shows what encourages and what discourages dialogue, what happens when dialogue is introduced into difficult settings, and how to manage the changes within oneself that are necessary to become an effective participant in dialogue.

Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, and Roger Fisher, 2000. This is one of the best guides for effectively handling difficult conversations – those conversations that are often fraught with emotion and conflict. Difficult conversations all share a common structure, which is the gap between what is said and what is not said. The authors, all members of the Harvard Negotiation Project, first outline the underlying structures that make conversations difficult and then move to discussing an approach that alleviates those problems. The main thrust of the book is to enter the conversation from a learning stance, rather than one that is judgmental or defensive. Other key elements for successfully navigating a difficult conversation are to understand the difference between impact and intent and to focus on interests rather than positions. The authors tie everything together at the end of the book by revisiting one of the scenarios used throughout the book and coaching one of the participants in this scenario through the conversation.

Discussing the Undiscussables: A Guide to Overcoming Defensive Routines in the Workplace, William R. Noonan, 2007. Based on the pioneering work of Chris Argyris on defensive behaviors in the workplace, this book provides a set of practical exercises for detecting, surfacing, and discussing organizational defensive routines in a safe productive way. The book comes with a companion DVD that contains video vignettes.

Dotmocracy Handbook, Jason Diceman, 2010. The cover of this book describes it as “a simple tool to help large groups find agreement,” and indeed it is. This easy-to-use guide is divided into an introduction to the concept of dotmocracy (a visual method for recognizing points of agreement among a large number of people), an overview of the process, a detailed section on facilitation, and a section of facilitator resources. This is a great tool for anyone facilitating agreement in large groups. If you don’t care if you have the color version, you can download the latest version at www.dotmocracy.org

Facilitators Guide to Participative Decision Making, Sam Kaner, Lenny Lind, Catherine Toldi, Sarah Fisk, and Duane Berger, 2007. This book gives readers additional tools and insights to enable effective participatory action and the potential to achieve strong, principled results and positive social change. Anyone wanting to increase their understanding of group dynamics and improve their skill at making groups work more effectively will benefit from this book.

Future Search: An Action Guide to Finding Common Ground in Organizations and Communities, Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff, 2000. Future search explores a promising way for enabling diverse groups of people with a stake in an organization or community to plan their own future. This practical guide offers principles, techniques, and examples for running successful future search conferences.

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher and William L. Ury, 1991. This is another great book about how to communicate effectively in challenging situations. As the title suggests, it focuses particularly on negotiations, but the ideas are broadly applicable. The authors discuss the advantages of principled negotiation - negotiation that is based on merits - over positional bargaining. Good negotiation, they state, should produce a wise agreement, be efficient, and should improve or at least not damage the relationship between the parties. In essence, they are talking about a win-win rather than a win-lose situation. The four key points of principled negotiation are: 1) separate the people from the problem, 2) focus on interests, not positions, 3) brainstorm options, and 4) develop objective criteria for evaluating proposals. Much of the book is devoted to outlining these four key points in detail followed by a section on some difficult negotiation situations, such as how to negotiate when the other party has more power or they refuse to negotiate. The book concludes with a section of frequently asked questions about the method. This book is a great complement to Difficult Conversations.Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide, Harrison Owen, 2008. Open Space Technology is a methodological tool that enables self-organizing groups of all sizes to deal with hugely complex issues in a very short period of time. Authored by the originator of Open Space Technology, this book details what needs to be done before, during, and after an Open Space event. It is the most authoritative book available on how to plan and run a successful Open Space event. It also adds a survey of the current status of Open Space Technology around the world, an updated section on the latest available technology for report writing (a key aspect of the Open Space process), and an updated list of resources.

Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities, Adam Kahane, 2007. The author shares his experience in creating environments that enable creative new ideas and solutions to emerge and be implemented even in the most challenging contexts.

The Argument Culture: Moving From Debate to Dialogue, Deborah Tannen, Ph.D., 1998. The author posits that misunderstanding is endemic in our culture because we tend to believe that the best way to a common goal is by thrashing out all our differences as loudly as possible along the way. Thus we are treated to a whole array of confrontational public forums, all based on a metaphor of war. What gets lost in all the shouting, Tannen says, is thoughtful debate and real understanding. As an alternative, she offers a survey of other, mostly non-Western ways of dealing with conflict, including the use of intermediaries and rituals.

The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Cooperation, Daniel Yankelovich, 1999. Dialogue – a carefully structured communications technique that is generally employed to promote mutual understanding between bona fide as well as potential adversaries – has long been an effective tool in the political realm. The author of this book, however, insists that business also can utilize the process to develop "webs of relationships" that encourage the acceptance and increase the adoption of any company's plans and visions. This book outlines 15 specific strategies (such as "Focus on common interests, not divisive ones" and "Use specific cases to raise general issues") that can be successfully applied in situations ranging from routine meetings and casual encounters to corporate retreats and union negotiations. Yankelovich contends, "When dialogue is done skillfully, the results can be extraordinary."

The Skilled Facilitator, Roger Schwarz, 2002. This book provides the essential materials for facilitators and includes simple but effective ground rules for group interaction. It contains proven techniques for starting meetings on the right foot and ending them positively and decisively. It also offers practical methods for handling emotions when they arise in a group and offers a diagnostic approach for identifying and solving problems that can undermine the group process.

The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook, Roger Schwarz, 2005. Based on the same principles from The Skilled Facilitator, this book offers consultants, facilitators, managers, leaders, trainers, and coaches the tools, exercises, models, and stories that will help them develop sound responses to a wide range of challenging situations. The book spans the full scope of the successful Skilled Facilitator approach and includes information on how to get started and guidance for integrating the approach within existing organizational structures and processes.

The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey, Stephen R. Covey, Rebecca R. Merrill, 2008. In light of the recent financial crisis and events that led or contributed to the current recession, the topic of this book is both timely and enduring. Covey describes trust as being based on character and competence, where character is required and competence is situational. He uses financial terms as a concrete way to convey the cost of low trust and the benefit of high trust, describing the former as a trust tax and the latter as a trust dividend. The quickest way to make a withdrawal, he insists, is to violate a behavior of character, and the quickest way to make a deposit is to demonstrate a behavior of competence. He goes on to detail seven low trust taxes (redundancy, bureaucracy, politics, disengagement, turnover, churn, and fraud) and seven high trust dividends (increased value, accelerated growth, enhanced motivation, improved collaboration, stronger partnering, better execution, and heightened loyalty). Covey also outlines what he characterizes as five waves of trust: self-trust, relationship trust, organizational trust, market trust, and societal trust. For each of these waves, he applies the concept of the four cores (integrity, intention, capabilities, and results) and the thirteen behaviors of high-trust leaders (talk straight, demonstrate respect, create transparency, right wrongs, show loyalty, deliver results, get better, confront reality, clarify expectations, practice accountability, listen first, keep commitments, and extend trust). The book includes a multitude of practical applications and pushes the reader to reflect on his or her own behavior. Note: this book is better read than listened to.

The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter, Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, and the World Café Community, 2005. This book explains what the World Café is, details its seven core design principles, and demonstrates how the World Café can be adapted to any setting or culture. It offers practical tips for hosting “conversations that matter” in groups of any size–strengthening both personal relationships and people’s capacity to shape the future together.

Talking From 9 To 5, Deborah Tannen, Ph.D., 1994. This book is a great sequel to You Just Don’t Understand. Although much of the book revolves around the differences in how men and women engage in conversation in the work setting, it also focuses on more gender neutral conversational styles such as indirectness, ritual fighting, giving praise, and small talk, to name a few.

Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, Margaret J. Wheatley, 2009. This book–devoted entirely to centrality of conversation in healing everything from personal relationships to organizational dysfunction to world discord–flows so broadly and easily across the borders of genre or topic it's almost as though Wheatley intuited when writing it how the need for its message would soon skyrocket. "The intent of this book is to encourage and support you to begin conversations about things that are important to you and those near you," Wheatley writes right up front. She then delivers on that promise, making her points in short, succinct, finely written essays on various aspects of human understanding and connection, invoking the thinking of great humanists like Paolo Friere and Nelson Mandela, peppering her thoughts with encounters with people around the world, and then expanding on 10 "conversation starters" like "Do I feel a 'vocation to be truly human'?" "When have I experienced good listening?" and "When have I experienced working for the common good?" Suffice to say, those looking for some worksheet-packed, three-step plan for organizational harmony won't find it here. Those willing to take a slower, harder, more thoughtful and likely more rewarding path to better relations on any level will be truly moved and genuinely inspired by Wheatley's practical, timely wisdom.

Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace, Dennis S. Reina, Ph.D. and Michelle L. Reina, Ph.D., 2006. The Reinas are international experts in organizational trust, and this book introduces the reader to their trust and betrayal model. It begins by explaining why trust in organizations is so important, different types of trust and how to build them, what happens when trust is broken, and how to rebuild and sustain trust.

You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, Deborah Tannen, Ph.D., 1990. This book outlines how differently men and women engage in conversation. The author argues convincingly that conversational styles between men and women are so different they can be considered cross-cultural communication. By understanding these styles can we begin to accept our differences and find a common language in which to achieve more professional cooperation.

Updated July 7, 2010