Transforming Social Work

Journalists today are inundated with data about which stories attract the most clicks, likes, comments, and shares. These metrics influence what stories are written, how news is promoted, and even which journalists get hired and fired. Do metrics make journalists more accountable to the public? Or are these data tools the contemporary equivalent of a stopwatch wielded by a factory boss, worsening newsroom working conditions and journalism quality?

Following Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte’s groundbreaking examination of time management and stress, the prizewinning journalist now turns her attention to the greatest culprit in America’s quality-of-life crisis: the way our economy and culture conceive of work. Americans across all demographics, industries, and socioeconomic levels report exhaustion, burnout, and the wish for more meaningful lives. This full-system failure in our structure of work affects everything from gender inequality to domestic stability, and it even shortens our lifespans.

It is only by healing from injustices and dissolving our personal barriers to connection that we develop the ability to view others with compassion and to live in community with people of vastly different backgrounds and viewpoints. Incorporating mindfulness exercises, research, and Magee's hard-won insights, The Inner Work of Racial Justice offers a road map to a more peaceful world.

Knowing how to transform conflict is critical in both our personal and professional lives. Yet, by and large, we are terrible at it. The reason, says longtime mediator Chad Ford, is fear. When conflict comes, our instincts are to run or fight. To transform conflict, Ford says we need to turn toward the people we are in conflict with, put down our physical and emotional weapons, and really love them with the kind of love that leads us to treat others as fellow human beings, not as objects in our way.

What if social transformation and liberation isn't about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle.

A generations expert and author of When Generations Collide and The M-Factor teams up with his 17-year-old son to introduce the next influential demographic group to join the workforce - Generation Z - in this essential study, the first on the subject. They were born between between 1995 and 2012. At 72.8 million strong, Gen Z is about to make its presence known in the workplace in a major way - and employers need to understand the differences that set them apart.

The national best seller that defines a new economic class and shows how it is key to the future of our cities. The Rise of the Creative Class gives us a provocative new way to think about why we live as we do today - and where we might be headed. Weaving storytelling with masses of new and updated research, Richard Florida traces the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing role of creativity in our economy.

Woven from Joseph Campbell’s previously unpublished work, this volume explores Judeo-Christian symbols and metaphors - and their misinterpretations - with the famed mythologist’s characteristic conversational warmth and accessible scholarship. Campbell’s insights highlight centuries of confusion between literal and metaphorical interpretations of Western religious symbols that are, he argues, perennially relevant keys to spiritual understanding and mystical revelation.

Politics are being transformed by religion, namely in China - within the next 30 years, one-third of this potential superpower could be Christian. If this religious transformation occurs, China would be one of the largest Christian nations in the world.

In SuperShifts, Dr. Ja-Nae Duane and Steve Fisher deliver an incisive overview of how we are at the end of one 200-year arc and embarking on another. With this new age of intelligence, Duane and Fisher highlight the various catalysts for change currently affecting individuals, businesses, and society as a whole. They also provide a model for transformation that expertly bridges the gap between theory and practice to provide a holistic view of making radical change through three lenses: you as a leader, your organization, and society.

Based on extensive research with organizations and companies that are boldly breaking out of business as usual, Beloved Economies offer listeners an imagination-expanding vision of what work could be. Authors Rimington and Cea explore possibilities for how we work, learning with more than sixty people from a wide array of enterprises. What these groups have in common is that they are generating forms of success that audaciously prioritize well-being, meaning, connection and resilience—alongside conventional metrics like quality and financial success.

Learn the connections between social identity, racial trauma, and mental health. With empathy and expertise, Archer encourages us to explore complex trauma through an Anti-Racist Psychotherapy lens. In his down-to-earth style, mixing personal stories and therapeutic insights, Archer welcomes you on a transformational journey that’s fresh, comprehensive, and unapologetically anti-oppressive.

In Engagement, best-selling authors Lee G. Bolman and Joan V. Gallos offer a compelling workplace parable to illustrate the strategies and skills needed to make unworkable relationships positive and productive. The audiobook introduces the four-step SURE model, which offers rules of engagement for staying alert, grounded, and productive when faced with the prickly, taxing, or toxic folks who block progress.

With the help of God, her family, and many other people along the way, Diane's Kids off the Block morphed from a personal crusade to do what she could into a nationally known program that has helped more than 3,000 at-risk Chicago teens. In this powerful, energizing book, she tells her incredible story to men and women who are sick of sitting behind their keyboards watching the world crumble and are ready to do something to make a difference.

A Manifesto for Hope sets out ten tried-and-tested practical principles for how to develop joined-up, cost-effective, community-empowering work, gleaned from the hard-won experience that has sat at the heart of Steve Chalke's mission over the past four decades. It's time to reimagine. Our social care systems are failing us, struggling for funding, and failing to speak to one another. At the same time, we are side-lining our greatest national asset: its people - mums, dads, families, and other community members.

A groundbreaking investigation into diversity and equality in the workplace, arguing that both men and women need to be active participants in the conversation if any meaningful progress is to take place. There's never been more discussion around diversity and inclusion in the workplace. From gender pay gaps and the #MeToo movement to Black Lives Matter, it seems that every organisation has finally recognised that lasting change needs to happen.

With every news report, the world seems to be careening off the rails. It's all too easy to slip into despair waiting for co-opted, self-serving governments to act. Hope and action is the antidote. We each hold the power to make personal changes that can drive local changes and cascade into large-scale social transformation. This is the guidebook for ordinary people who want to create a new society now.