These are
books and audio recordings I have found inspirational and helpful in the past
several years. There are Amazon.com links for those items available
through Amazon.com. Please let me know of your favorites and new
discoveries that are not listed.
Turning to One Another
by
Margaret J. Wheatley
Editorial Reviews
It is impossible to read Turning to One Another in the wake of the devastating
attack on New York City's World Trade Center and not marvel at the book's eerie
and moving prescience. Of course Margaret Wheatley has already earned herself a
(deserved and legit) reputation as the Oprah of "sensitive" organizational books
with such titles as A Simpler Way. But 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 in
the clean, straightforward voice that always saves her work, unlike that of so
many other "New Age" gurus, from cheesiness. "It has no other purpose." 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--or even those looking for the book equivalent of a cool, tall drink
of water (perhaps where all change begins)--will be truly moved and genuinely
inspired by Wheatley's practical, timely wisdom. --Timothy Murphy
Janet
McCallen
Thought-provoking, sensual, and heartfelt.
