The Best Personal Development & Human Behavior Books of 2024
December 20, 2024
These books help us better understand and appreciate ourselves and one another, forcing us to take a step back and reflect on how we all need each other, not just to exist, but to succeed and flourish.
A recurring theme in the personal development and human behavior category (and quite a few of the other categories this year) is the pursuit of connection. We achieve connection through trusting, cooperating and collaborating, taking breaks from work, being truthful and open, expanding your networks, embracing emotions both at home and at work, examining and learning from the past, and more.
We reap the benefits of authentic connection in longer and healthier lives, improved productivity, better self-esteem, stronger teams and communities, and more. These books help us better understand and appreciate ourselves and one another, forcing us to take a step back and reflect on how we all need each other, not just to exist, but to succeed and flourish.
Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness by Jamil Zaki, Grand Central Publishing
When you pick up a nonfiction book, it’s likely you already know what you want to get out of it: you want to improve your creative practice or you want to learn to crochet or you want to better understand a historical event, etc. However, when a book promises to bring hope to cynics, it seems like it could be overpromising.
I shouldn’t have been so cynical.
What makes Hope for Cynics so successful is that the reader embarks on their journey from cynicism to hope right alongside the author who empathetically expresses despair over but then realigns his perspective of climate change, political division, collective distrust, and more.
In an eloquent and emotional introduction, author and psychologist Jamil Zaki shares candid details about his life-long tendency toward cynicism and how the early loss of his ever-positive friend and colleague Emile Bruneau helped galvanize him to examine this worldview. In his examination, he finds he is far from the only one with negative expectations of others:
“Humanity has lost faith in humanity, and lost even more in our institutions. Between the 1970s and 2022, the percentage of Americans who trusted the presidency fell from 52 to 23 percent, newspapers from 39 to 18 percent, Congress from 42 to 7 percent, and public schools from 58 to 28 percent. Maybe we’re right to suspect politicians and cable pundits. But our collective cynicism has consequences. Trust is not money, but it is just as vital for health, prosperity, and democracy.”
You don’t have to look at statistics to be convinced that trust and hope are in very low supply these days. But the question is do we have a choice? How do we find the light when so many news headlines, social media posts, and everyday conversations revolve around societal divides, self-serving content, and complaints about everything or everyone else?
“Cynicism is not a radical worldview. It’s a tool of the status quo. This is useful to elites, and propagandists sow distrust to better control people. Corrupt politicians gain cover by convincing voters that everyone is corrupt. Media companies trade in judgment and outrage. Our cynicism is their product, and business is booming.”
Zaki offers many ways out.
One way out is through even more statistics: FBI statistics on violent crimes show that the crime rate decreased by nearly 50 percent between 1990 and 2020. A Bangladeshi bank that mostly lent money to people with no assets actually has a repayment rate of 99 percent, comparable to small business loans in the United States. Although responders estimated only 25% of Toronto residents would return a wallet, follow up surveys in Toronto and across the world reflected up to 80% of wallets were returned. And when 100 Americans were paired with someone who had opposite beliefs surrounding gun control, climate change, and abortion, “after talking with a rival, participants’ dislike of rivals plummeted by more than twenty points on a hundred- point scale and remained lower three months later.”
Another way out is through psychology: Negativity bias (an inclination to focus on the negative) is natural but often built on unfounded evidence. Burnout sows cynicism, but spending time alone as “self-care” isn't as effective as spending time with or helping others. “Our species is intertwined, such that helping others is a kindness to ourselves, and watching over ourselves supports others.”
Another is through monetary motivation: Journalism articles focused on solutions to problems rather than clickbait were 28 percent more likely to gain readers’ trust in the articles’ source. Cynical organizations, like GE under Jack Welch who “stripped away GE’s generosity and motivated people through naked rivalry.”, may experience a short boost in profits but those profits don’t last long without a healthy company eco-system. The antidote is enforcing “task interdependence,” meaning that when people rely on each other to achieve something, they become more trusting and efficient.
And the final way out is through practicality:
Rather than feel defeated, angry, or fearful of things like the climate crisis, the erosion of democracy, the wealth gap, the rise of mental illness, and other such sources of impending doom challenges, we need to step back and see that we, individually and collectively, are part of that challenge as well, and we have a choice in its outcomes.
“When Emile brought scientists and peacemakers together after his first surgery, he urged us to teach people about the sublime potential they all have — to walk through darkness and spread light. ‘And the nice thing is,’ he said, ‘that this force is in us and communal. It's not owned. And the best way to activate a communal force is to be a community. That's why we're here.’
You were right, Emile. That's why we're all here.”
Microskills: Small Actions, Big Impact by Adaira Landry & Resa E. Lewiss, Hanover Square Press
Adaira Landry and Resa E. Lewiss are both professors and healthcare workers (among many other impressive titles) whose debut book teaches readers the building blocks skills (“microskills”) required to master broader skills for success.
The concept of the book is simple and effective: by focusing on developing specific, small, and more accessible skills first, we can build towards harnessing much larger skills and expertise.
Microskills is an easy book to recommend, because it offers insight and advice that is applicable to readers across the career and experience spectrum. From building strong independent well-being through appropriate self-care and sleeping well to career-growth skills like building and maintaining a reputation, growing your network, and more, Microskills zeroes in on the many elements of success that others might disregard as implied or second-nature. For those who feel like outsiders–whether at work or in the world at large–this book will help you feel seen.
Each chapter explains why you need each microskill, why they’re hard to achieve, and various ways you can utilize them to build into even bigger skills. In Microskills, nothing is “basic.” Rather, every skill has a much larger purpose–maybe also a metaphor for the importance of every employee in a company’s success.
“Your workplace is more like an emergency department than you may think. There is a culture, a workflow and a way of life that allows the team to interact and get work done. And you must be open, curious, and intentional in how you go about learning that culture.”
The authors were strategic about how they laid out the book, in both design and content. In design, it is a stocky volume that is easy to hold and page through, each chapter laid out in the same guidebook-like structure, making it easy to find what you’re looking for when you’re done reading and want to review specific information. Some people might find the formulaic layout boring, but the utility of the book in layout and content is what makes it so important. Each short section gets quickly to the point of what you need to know and helps you decide how to move forward with that information. This makes the book itself a successful example of the chapter 3 microskill needed for polished communication: “Cut to the Chase. Do not bury the point.”
Accompanying each microskill are candid and insightful first-hand stories from Landry and Lewiss that will make readers become fans of the authors as much as they are fans of the book’s teachings. Additionally, if you’re not in the healthcare industry, their stories from emergency departments and classrooms of early physicians will remind you that your own day-to-day stresses pale in comparison to administering the correct dose of medicine to a patient dying of cardiac arrest.
In their asides, Landry and Lewiss share their life-changing encounters with patients, their failed attempts at giving actionable feedback, the directionless meetings they’ve endured, and other difficulties they’ve encountered in their work. In an otherwise straightforward guidebook, these sections are essential to driving home the practicality of each microskill. Their stories demonstrate that even experts are still human and frequently make mistakes; the difference is that experts become experts by learning from those mistakes. By practicing the skills found in MicroSkills, you can do the same.
Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together by Michael Morris, Thesis
There are books every year about cultivating a healthy work culture, but Tribal by Michael Morris delves deeper, showing readers the centuries-old proof of how humans’ tribal instincts affect our personalities, our decisions, and our successes.
The carefully selected real-world examples and case studies provide a clear picture of how humans’ histories have been not just affected by but written with the capabilities afforded by our tribal instincts.
One standout example from the book (though, truly, there are so many that you’ll want to rehash at parties as much as at the office) details how an organization employed different messaging to convince homeowners to conserve energy. First, their doorknob messages targeted values (ie. “You can save $54 this month by conserving energy”) and then it targeted peer behavior (“Join your neighbors in consuming energy”). Only the latter made any difference in energy consumption, showing how peer pressure can go beyond being an effective marketing strategy to being a force to positively change the world.
If you’re someone who tries to change the behavior of others (hopefully for the better)–whether that be through marketing, everyday conversations, or otherwise–this book will give you a nuanced understanding of how various cultural elements (most of which have been part of our DNA since the early Stone Age) affect our decision-making.
“The psychological processes of the peer instinct–attention to peers, mind reading, learning from observation, conformist motivations–are the underappreciated foundation of human culture. We internalize a cluster of peer codes for each cultural community we belong to, and they spring up in situations to guide us toward socially safe actions. It's why your mannerisms at church are different than at the gym. It's why, without even realizing it, you greet people and talk differently at Coachella than at a corporate mixer. That said, it doesn't produce original or optimal choices. It explains my changing morning proclivity over the years for egg-white omelets, cold-pressed juices, and avocado toast (the breakfasts of peers). It's why crypto investments go suddenly from boom to bust, and bank runs still spread like wildfire. We are not independent rational actors. We are tribal creatures wired to respond to peer patterns.”
Morris expertly connects tribalism to both successes (e.g. the tight-knit and efficient teamwork of restaurant staff) and failures (e.g. bias training “heighten[s] the salience of race and ethnicity as opposed to other identity dimensions”). And he further explores how the deep-rooted cultural ideals and habits can be changed. The book overlaps in lessons from Unlearning Silence on the importance of leaders and top-down change, but it also provides examples from history to show how the people in power of companies and social movements have successfully enacted change not by telling people what to do but by leading by example.
With examples from within co-working spaces, neighborhoods, governments, and other social groups, Tribal provides insights that you’ll be thinking about in every context of your life.
Unlearning Silence: How to Speak Your Mind, Unleash Talent, and Live More Fully by Elaine Lin Hering, Penguin Life
“I'm female. I'm young. I'm an immigrant. I'm the only fill-in-the-blank identity in a room full of people who don't share those identities. I'm not supposed to take up space. I'm not supposed to be heard.”
In Unlearning Silence, Elaine Lin Hering voices her own and many others’ concerns, doubts, and fears, progressively examines and overturns them all, and gives the reader the tools to rediscover and use their own voice.
Lin Hering eloquently explains how the consequences of staying silent can be much more detrimental than just getting passed up for a promotion. Silence and silencing others keeps systems of inequality in place, allowing people already with power to maintain or gain more power, and keeping everyone else at bay. The chapter “Change the System” is essential reading for leaders and individuals to recognize how policies in organizations or even at home impact others’ voices and if those policies are achieving their intended impact.
Unlearning Silence offers some of the most challenging and helpful reflection questions I’ve ever encountered.
While the subject matter is heavy, the book is overall hopeful, focusing on the positive outcomes of using our voices. For example: economically supporting good people and perspectives (like local non-profits, under-represented artists, and eco-friendly products) is an effective way to voice one's opinions on what is essential to our communities. Another: thanks to public conversation, there is now less stigma surrounding mental health than in past generations, which helps those with mental health struggles feel less isolated.
“Unlearning silence means challenging the social notions of what is acceptable, what needs to be swept under the rug, and what we choose to acknowledge as real. Ask yourself, Who does my silence protect? Are those the people and systems I want to protect? If not, that's one weight to tip the scale toward choosing voice.”
With a helpful mix of case studies, personal examples, and research relating to both personal and professional spaces, Unlearning Silence has points that will resonate with anyone and everyone. The book has a wide breadth of examples, lessons, and applications, and Lin Hering’s patient, instructional, and candid writing makes it all very enjoyable, digestible, and memorable.
In one particularly memorable example, she narrates a story about a woman who must question her stance on abortion after a friend’s young daughter discloses to her that she is pregnant after being sexually abused by her father. When we are put in the very difficult position of having to wrestle with our own beliefs, we have to ask ourselves some hard questions. As Lin Hering writes:
“Our beliefs don't exist in a vacuum. Our values are expressed by the things we say and do. Real-life situations can force us to examine what our beliefs look like in practice, and if and how the beliefs and values might evolve. We have to ask ourselves, Do I actually believe this-or have I simply never stopped to question it?
“Actively ask yourself, What do I actually think? Regardless of others’ opinions, what do I think? If I wasn’t worried about consequences, what would I do? How would I explain my reasoning?”
Lin Hering guides the reader progressively deeper into understanding the ways that speaking up–for ourselves and others–can positively impact individuals and communities in a book that forces readers to ask themselves very hard questions, but with great potential to shape happier individuals and a world of greater equality.
When We Are Seen: How to Come into Your Power and Empower Others Along the Way by Denise Young, Crown
For everyone from those starting their first job to leaders to those in a career transition, you will recognize yourself in Denise Young’s When We Are Seen.
The book, ultimately, shows how appreciating and supporting individuals for their specific strengths, weaknesses, and perspectives can instigate a domino effect that strengthens entire organizations. But it is also a showcase of the impressive career that Denise Young made for herself, highlighting humanity in the tech industry, and now to industries everywhere through this book.
“Apple would always be known for its products. I wanted it to be known also for its people.”
Young spent two decades at Apple including as its first Black chief of human resources and its first VP of inclusion and diversity. But to really see Denise Young, and understand her journey, you’ll have to learn how she became someone unafraid to take risks to protect individuals over companies, who never left her love of art and music (which you’ll notice in the clever music-references throughout the book) despite being so embedded in the tech industry, who is a strong advocate for HBCUs, who can hear everyone’s side of the story, and so much more.
When You Are Seen shines a light on the importance of having someone like Young around, who was always reminding one of the most corporate-y corporations about the humans involved in their work. Young’s voice clearly communicates the confidence she’s gained through the years in that space and all of the others that have shaped and been shaped by her.
What I love about the way she tells her story is that she doesn’t take the stance of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Instead, she highlights how people who treated her respectfully, as an equal, and as a human were most impactful in her self-esteem and career journey. And she teaches readers how to give others that same individual-focused treatment.
Each chapter is built around a particular hurdle and lesson: from confusing manager feedback to embracing differences to lacking representation in the workplace to hearing and bearing heard, and more. The author builds the reader’s trust in her expertise through detailed examples that showcase her emotional and cultural intelligence. For example, she notes how at a meeting between several international teams, she noticed one of the attendee’s change in demeanor, and she was able to start a conversation about how differing definitions of terms like “performance management” between cultures and backgrounds require noticing assumptions and inviting others’ perspectives into the conversation.
“The beauty of having more dimensions of humanity represented in more settings is that we are likely to see each other, recognize cultural cues, and be able to act on them, pausing to bring in more clarity and perspective, leaving fewer people behind and psychologically emotionally unaccounted for. The beauty of more dimensions of humans allows for translation of cultural meaning-of inflection, tone, emotional impact - which allows for more people to be a part of the discussion, while we all, even Al, learn something new in the process.”
The book pairs well with some of our other picks for best business books of the year, because it showcases how so many of those books’ themes are relevant to one person’s career experience. For example, Young shares how her career has been stagnated by tribalism (which you can read more about in Tribal by Michael Morris), how staying connected to her creativity has positively impacted her work and her mission (read more about meshing a creative background with a corporate workplace in Born to Create by Anne Jacoby), and how she has helped companies work against the silencing of non-white experiences at work (read more about the importance of communicating and accepting communications in Unlearning Silence by Elaine Lin Hering). Young even references a past Business Book Award selection, Your Brain on Art, when reflecting on how emotions are rarely considered in the workplace.
Part memoir and part invitation for self-reflection, When We Are Seen is an important book for those who want to feel seen and those who could do a better job of seeing others.
Porchlight will announce the eight winners of the 2024 Porchlight Business Book Awards–one from each category–at the end of January. Be one of the first to know by subscribing to our weekly newsletter.