Books – Page 21 – Practical Inspiration Publishing

Good Leaders in Turbulent Times

This book is for good leaders in organizations, large and small, everywhere. The power of their collective response to turbulent times will surely tip the balance towards creating a decent, civil and sustainable society for all.

A unique and rich mix of imaginative true-to-life story-telling and sage, enthusiastic and practical advice Good Leaders in Turbulent Times is for those nightmare times when everything seems to be falling apart around us.

With engaging humour and deep wisdom, it tells the stories of leaders who drift into crisis, struggle deep in wild waters, digest their experiences and move on to find new ways of living and working. The wise words they discover along the way will be as valuable for you as for them.

‘An energising and liberating book…’ – Jane Keeper, Social Worker, Former Director of Operations at REFUGE

‘A must-read for anyone seeking to lead with courage, empathy and conviction in today’s unpredictable and challenging world.’ – Ambassador Salwah Dallalah, Director, Conference Affairs Services, UNFCCC and IAEA

‘A wise and compassionate look at living through leadership crises and difficult relationships and moving from surviving to thriving.’ – Ros Oakley, Co-Founder and First Chief Executive, Association of Chairs

‘The next best thing to being in the room with Martin… You will find him on every page.’ – Greg Dalder, Bereavement Counsellor, Arizona

Now in his sixth decade working in civil society, Martin Farrell has held senior positions at organizations including Save the Children and the British Red Cross. Since his first assignment with the UN in 2002 he has been in demand as an international facilitator and crisis coach. He is a Certified Professional Facilitator | Emeritus.

Good Bye

Business Book Awards 2026 Shortlisted in Leadership category

Nobody likes to talk about endings. Here’s why we need to.

Leaders spend a lot of time planning new initiatives. But what about the endings that go along with them? Most leaders are not taught how to manage themselves, let alone their teams and organization, through the messy, multifaceted discomfort of an ending. Making a team member redundant, merging two teams, cutting funding to a failed project: in all these situations we tend to focus on the new beginning, and rush past the ending that needs our care and attention. Dealing with endings well takes maturity and emotional intelligence. Leaders need to understand and process their own feelings before they can lead others through transition.

Why does this matter? Because poorly managed endings leave a scar on everyone involved. Discretionary energy and motivation are not so forthcoming. Change programmes don’t get traction, resistance and cynicism take root. Change fails.

Leading Executive Coaches Alison Lucas and Lizzie Bentley Bowers provide this missing piece of the change leadership puzzle: a way of leading yourself and others through change in a respectful, emotionally agile way. Because better endings mean better beginnings.

‘Good Bye highlights a crucial yet often overlooked moment in leadership and organizational life, offering valuable tools and actionable guidance. It will undoubtedly benefit leaders seeking to handle moments of parting with clarity and care.’ – Kirsty Devine, Head of US HR, Financial Times

‘I am adding this title to my recommended reading list!’ – Professor David Clutterbuck

Leading Executive Coaches Alison Lucas, of Randolph Partnership Ltd, and Lizzie Bentley Bowers, of The Causeway Coaching Ltd, are professionally accredited coaches and facilitators, working at board and senior level across all sectors to equip leaders to thrive in a complex and uncertain world.

Graceful Power

Leadership has never been tougher.

Deliver results, drive change, navigate uncertainty, handle difficult conversations, stay human. All while being pulled between competing expectations: be confident and decisive, yet inclusive and responsive. Set uncompromising standards, yet invite candid feedback and admit mistakes. If you sometimes wonder whether you have what it takes, you’re not alone.

The most effective leaders hold these paradoxes with a steadiness you can feel. They set clear direction without shutting people down. They create trust without lowering the bar. They act with conviction while staying open and grounded. They move people towards bold goals without drama or force, building cultures where people take ownership and thrive.

That is Graceful Power.

In these pages, Sally Netherwood distils decades of real-world coaching into a practical guide for leaders who want to expand their impact without losing themselves in the process. With real case studies and frameworks you can apply immediately, you’ll build your own Graceful Power to grow the influence that drives performance, accelerate your career and enhance the experience of those around you.

Sally Netherwood is a world-class leadership coach who works with CEOs and founders, creatives and change-makers around the globe, helping them lead with greater clarity, courage and impact. Drawing on tens of thousands of leadership conversations, she translates complex challenges into practical strategies that improve performance, culture and daily working life.

The Golden Thread

The Golden Thread is a blueprint for authentic organizational culture: what it is, what it isn’t, why it matters, and how to build it.

If you are passionate about creating an environment where people thrive, you’ll understand the value of real engagement and values alignment. But how do you make it happen? Consciously or not, company culture runs like a golden thread through any organization, and where it is not thoughtfully nurtured it unravels – leaving a toxic environment filled with bureaucracy, politics and poor mental health.

The Golden Thread guides business leaders through this concept – exploring cultural diagnostics and revealing what they really mean. This book will show you how to design and develop your own target culture, one that is right for your people and business. It then takes you step by step through the employee lifecycle, helping you to weave your new cultural and values through everything to build a happy, healthy, high performing organization.

Leanne Hamley is an experienced leader and business coach specializing in behavioural change, leadership development and organizational culture.

Getting On

You’ve come this far… How do you move your career forward from here?

Once you reach middle to senior level in your profession, you require diﬀerent skills to allow you not only to carry out your day-to-day role eﬀectively and positively, but to also continue your career progression and fulﬁl your potential.

Simply being technically proﬁcient and having expert knowledge isn’t enough any more. You need to develop other capabilities related to communicating, engaging with others and dealing with every professional scenario eﬀectively and conﬁdently.

This book will help you master these skills to successfully navigate your current role and prepare for your next, so that you can increase your job satisfaction and progress your career.

Joanna Gaudoin helps bright, knowledgeable people with great technical skills and experience improve their non-technical skills, so they progress their careers and boost their ﬁrm’s performance. She has run her business for over a decade and has worked with thousands of people, both individually and in groups. Now she wants to help YOU stand out and develop the skills you need to succeed.

Getting a Return on Returners

Getting a Return on Returners examines one of the most critical and costly career inflection points for top talent: parental leave transitions. Drawing on Dr Kirsty Reynold’s research into maternity transitions in high-performing professional environments, it offers a systemic rethink of how demanding careers treat parenthood — and what leaders can do to retain talent at this pivotal moment.

While family-friendly policies have evolved to accommodate all parents, workplace behaviour has not caught up. In demanding professions across the globe, parental leave is still overwhelmingly a women’s issue. The pattern is familiar: at precisely the point of highest return on investment, women step away or aside — weakening leadership pipelines, slowing gender progress and diminishing the diversity of perspective at the top.

Combining rigorous research with lived professional insight, this book exposes the structural, cultural and performance dynamics that shape whether women sustain ambitious careers after leave. It shifts the focus from individual adjustment to systemic design, offering leaders both a structural diagnosis and a pragmatic blueprint for change – turning a critical risk point into a leadership and talent advantage.

The Gift of Sensitivity

**FINALIST: Women’s Literature (non-fiction): Next-Generation Indie Book Awards**

Sensitivity is a superpower.

This is the era of emotion: EQ training for employees, empathy in leadership, the Experience Economy of consumers. But how do we access the full potential of creativity, originality, innovation, intuition, flexibility, and inclusiveness that emotions can unlock? Through sensitivity.

Sensitivity is the degree to which we sense and perceive the world. For too long we have seen it as a weakness, especially in business: Elena Amber demonstrates that it is the source of our most authentic strength, and our superpower for the future.

Elena Amber brings her years of research in human experience and psychology, focused particularly on emotional engagement, her international business experience and her profound meditation practice to show how connecting to emotions by embracing sensitivity unlocks our most extraordinary and profound faculties.

The Future of Time

**Business Book Awards 2023: People, Culture & Management Book of the Year**

The way we value and manage time at work is broken.

Businesses are squandering time when making decisions, delivering work and managing people. Employees are rewarded for 24/7 availability, speed of response and hours worked.

The results are clear: low productivity; high stress and burnout; falling retention; and stalling diversity.

The Future of Time reveals how ‘re-working’ time – transforming organizations by adopting positive time practices – can help you build a more diverse, engaged and productive workforce.

Diagnostics to quickly assess the ‘time defects’ damaging your business
Compelling evidence, case studies and strategies to ‘re-work’ time successfully
Timelines and tools to bring about fast, effective change.

Helen Beedham, MA Cantab, speaks, consults and leads research on how to create more inclusive, productive workplaces where everyone can flourish. For the past 25 years, as management consultant then chair of a City-wide professional network, she has led change programmes for FTSE 100 businesses and regularly brought together Heads of HR, Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing to exchange market-leading practices.