At the time this posting is scheduled to be published, I am starting a week-long programme with Roger Schwarz, author of The Skilled Facilitator. I am a great fan of Schwarz’s work via my friend and colleague Aled Davis who was so inspired when he attended Schwarz’s programme in the US last year that he invited him to deliver the programme in London this year.

I think of this when I respond to a request on the Training Journal’s Daily Digest from someone who has just been asked by a client what books she’d recommend for “team building and handling difficult people”. I take a moment to respond and share my own “starter for ten” list below:

Books for team building and difficult people, huh? Well, a few favourites do spring to mind:

· No surprises here, Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life is top of my list. This helps with the reframing of “difficult people” to “people whose behaviour I am finding difficult”;
· Maybe also no surprise, I am slowly reading Roger Schwarz’s The Skilled Facilitator and find it full of insights which apply across a range of settings – as well as rather long!
· Goleman’s The New Leaders also springs to mind, with its description of different leadership styles and the situations in which they are useful. Boyatzis and McKee take this further in their book Resonant Leadership. And just to declare an interest, these are all former colleagues;
· The HBR book (written by about three million authors – also former colleagues) Senior Leadership Teams has solid insight based on research which also applies beyond the senior team;
· And just to put in a word for a recently published book by my friend and colleague-in-the-coaching-profession Rosie Miller, Are You A Badger Or A Doormat? How To Be A Leader Who Gets Results also explores different leadership approaches and may provide inspiration.

Dorothy