Suggested reading

Hi All,

Sorry this post is a few days late. I was without electric for a few days and that put me behind regarding email and other online work.

Molly Prosser, our departmental assistant, worked with our friends at Divanation, to develop this blog posting.

Professional Leadership prides itself on being part of a larger community than Carlow itself. We foster relationships with diverse regional, national and international organizations by building networks and forming partnerships. Through these affiliations, we support leadership at all levels and stay current with what is really happening in leadership outside of academia.

One organization with whom we have developed a relationship is Divanation™. Divanation™ is an international identity- and narrative-development business consultancy, which focuses on women’s leadership. They work with organizations, leaders, and decision-makers to help facilitate and integrate both individual and structural change to attract, develop, retain, and reclaim women talent and women clients.

Leanne Meyer and Frank Lehner founded Divanation™ with the intent to apply the power of narrative, storytelling, and identity development to promote women’s leadership. Their partnership blends Leanne’s women’s leadership and program development expertise with Frank’s work in narrative, identity, and change.

We asked Leanne and Frank to come up with a list of their favorite books for the Professional Leadership blog! We wondered what they thought were important texts in the field, what inspired them, what made them think, what they love to read.

Here is their response:
1. Biographies – too often we find women have a dearth of female mentors and role models, thus making them feel isolated and alone making decisions and prioritizing their various demands. Biographies offer insights into how different women have made sense of their lives.
Personal History – Katherine Graham ; Half life of a Zealot – Swanee Hunt; Girls like us – Sheila Weller; Loving Frank – Nancy Horan; Why women should rule the world – Dee Dee Myers; Lee Miller: A Life -Carolyn Burke; Alice Waters and Chez Panisse - Thomas McNamee; The Dance of the Dissident daughter - Sue Monk Kidd

2. Identity Development through Narrative – the work Divanation™ does whether coaching, consulting, workshops, or keynotes is based on narrative, on story, on helping people understand where they want and should go, based on where they’ve come from, to giving meaning, urgency, and relevance to what they do in the present.
Composing a life – Mary Catherine Bateson; Writing a Woman’s life – Carolyn G. Heilbrun; Story Catcher - Christina Baldwin

3. Women, Men and the Differences between Them – we have come to see that often the greatest unquestioned assumption in the environments we work in is that women and men are the same—the same as leaders, the same contributors, the same communicators, the same team-builders, the same decision makers. We believe it important that we all realize that women and men are not the same. Not better. Not lesser. Just different.
In a Different Voice – Carol Gilligan; Talking from 9 to 5 – Deborah Tannen; Why Different? & This Sex Which Is Not One – Luce Irigaray.

4. Shapers of our Worldview –
Disclosing New Worlds – Spinosa, Flores, Dreyfus; Birth of the Chaordic Age- Dee Hock.; The Dream of the New Earth - Thomas Berry; Thoughts in the Presence of Fear - Wendell Berry; Anger - Thich Nhat Hanh;

5. Just because we like to eat –
My Bombay Kitchen - Niloufer Ichaporia King


For more information about Divanation™ or Leanne Meyer & Frank Lehner, check their website at http://www.divanate.com/