What guides you? Why are you doing the compassionate leadership work that you do? Purpose helps connect our actions to deeper meaning, at both a personal and collective level. Here are five books that will help you move more deeply into purpose at every level, from the individual all the way to the systemic level. Moving from our personal inner work outward into the work in the world, the following books would each be a wonderful addition to your summer reading in the Northern Hemisphere or mid-winter reading for those in the Southern Hemisphere.
Starting from the inside out, A joy for this and all seasons is Michael A. West’s gem, Simply Being: A Meditation Guide. Rich Fernandez, Carolina Lasso, and Steph Stern bring a fresh take on purpose in The Purpose Reset. At the team and organizational level, Amy Edmondson explores the different types of failure and their significance in Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well. Finally, Andrew Hoffman, in Business School and the Noble Purpose of the Market, and Katherine Trebeck and Jeremy Williams, in The Economics of Arrival – Ideas for a grown up economy, implore us to rededicate teaching and policy efforts to create an economy that serves humanity instead of the other way around.
In Simply Being: A Meditation Guide, Michael A. West says that the purpose of meditation is “to learn to be in an authentic, fruitful, joyful, quietly peaceful way.” That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? If we start there, our own changes will ripple out to others, to our teams and organizations, and then beyond in ways that will change the world.
Some books you can read again and again and never finish. They become a guide along the path of living. Simply Being is one of those books. The book is written in short chapters that one can read in any order. In fact, a reader can easily focus on even shorter passages – a single paragraph or sentence – and reflect on it for a moment, for a day, or for longer periods. The book is filled with jewel after jewel of wisdom.
West has a PhD in the psychology of meditation and is one of the pioneering thinkers in the field of compassionate leadership. He understands well that effective compassionate leaders anchor their leadership in inner work – awareness, self-compassion, and vulnerability. Simply Being will strengthen each of these compassionate leadership foundational practices.
Whether you are a lifelong meditator or someone who would like to learn about developing your own presence, the beauty of Simply Being is that it will lead you at every step on your journey.
In The Purpose Reset: How Reconnecting to What Matters Most Drives Fulfillment and Success, Rich Fernandez, Carolina Lasso and Steph Stern offer an alternative definition of purpose. For the authors, purpose isn’t something to be achieved or possessed. It is an evolving process that grows awareness, alignment and impact in service to our interconnected world.
The Purpose Reset leads readers into an iterative, three-dimensional inquiry – exploring what (strength and skills), why (values and intentions), and who (impact). This process emphasizes ongoing reflection, experimentation, and realignment, urging us to stay curious and responsive.
To support readers in their ongoing purpose journey, the book is rich in practical tools: individualized purpose mapping, daily practices and team exercises. For compassionate leaders, The Purpose Reset serves as a powerful ally. When purpose is understood as a process, leaders cultivate openness, humility, and presence. They become adept at guiding teams through their own resets by ensuring psychological safety, deep engagement, and collective alignment.
Within organizations, the authors write that everyone “has a role to play in creating a Purpose Reset.” Developing organizational purpose, just like leadership, is not the exclusive domain of the C-suite. We all have a part to play.
We live in a world of constant measurement and gamification, with the chance to succeed or fail on a constant basis. (Have you taken your steps this hour?) The obsession with success has even led to the accusation that some academic researchers on honesty have faked data to avoid a failed hypothesis. One must wonder, what is the purpose of all this measurement? Is it just to celebrate success?
In Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, Harvard professor and psychological safety pioneer Amy Edmondson offers a vital reframe: failure isn’t always bad. Edmondson distinguishes among three forms of failure; one helpful, one ambiguous, and one harmful. Compassionate leaders who understand these differences strengthen their ability to lead for an increased understanding of what is really going on and stronger team and individual growth.
Intelligent failures are the helpful failures. These are experiments designed to learn new information. They are essential to innovation, growth and evolution. Complexity-related failures are ambiguous. They are often unavoidable but bring information that can support process refinement for future improvement. Harmful failures are preventable failures which may be the result of deviation from known procedures, careless errors, or inattention. They are avoidable and often costly.
What is our purpose at work? Do we want to look good or do we want to grow into our full potential. Being our best will still not be perfect and will bring failure on occasion. When we understand that failure is essential to our growth and can help us to contribute optimally, we can fail well.
In Business School and the Noble Purpose of the Market, University of Michigan professor Andrew J. Hoffman offers a compassionate leadership perspective on reinventing business education. What is the purpose of educating business leaders? Quoting Srikant Datar, Dean of the Harvard Business School, Hoffman agrees that it has become a place where the “focus has shifted from learning to earning.” Hoffman proposes an education that develops (compassionate) leaders who will steward the market in ways that address the systemic challenges of our time.
Business schools have developed based on the premise that maximizing economic growth would allow us to address our greatest human challenges. However, this is not being validated in today’s fractured, polarized society. Adam Smith would cringe if he could see today what is being promoted in his name.
Business schools appear to recognize that the old model of focusing singularly on profits is no longer advancing human wellbeing, but the institutional response has been anemic at best. Hoffman argues that business schools need to integrate purpose into the core curriculum and not simply bolt on some electives around questions of values, purpose, and ethics.
This book is targeted to business educators. If you are a leader who takes pride in developing their own team, a leadership or organizational development professional, a coach or leadership consultant, you are a business educator. Read this book.
Katherine Trebeck and Jeremy Williams, in The Economics of Arrival – Ideas for a grown up economy, explore issues similar to Andrew Hoffman’s in the book just above: What is the purpose of economic growth? Is growth exclusively beneficial, or can economic growth create harm?
Trebeck and Williams write that “Material goods are the foundation for a good life, but not the essence of it,” and show with compelling evidence that the material growth of the last fifty years has not resulted in a similar growth in human wellbeing. Around the world, we live in service to Gross Domestic Product as if that were the ultimate end, when it should in fact only be the means to a greater end – human flourishing.
The authors offer steps to create an economy that serves humanity rather than the other way around: deepening human connection, dignity in the workplace, and ecological restoration. Their proposals are incremental and achievable, and there are specific steps for individuals, local communities, business, governments, and international institutions. The authors offer a wide range of examples of successful change from all around the world in many industries including finance, consumer goods, and natural resources. Change will be required at each level, and compassionate leaders can contribute from wherever they sit to the creation of a “grown up economy” for the benefit of all.
Humans don’t have to treat the world as if it were a possession. We could simply try to be at home within it. When we do that, we can say that we have truly arrived.
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