The 2017 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards: Personal Development & Human Behavior Book Giveaway

We continue this week on our mission to give away all the books on the longlist of the 2017 800-CEO-READ Business Book of the Year.

We recognize 40 book on our longlist—five books in eight different categories—and this week, we'll be giving away the books in the Personal Development & Human Behavior category. Those five books are listed below, along with the publisher's description. (Check back with In the Books Wednesday for our take on the books.) Each of this week's winners will receive all five books in the category.

Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone by Brené Brown, Random House

A timely and important new book that challenges everything we think we know about cultivating true belonging in our communities, organizations and culture, from the three-time #1 bestselling author of Rising Strong.

“True belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are. It requires us to be who we are.” Social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW has sparked a global conversation about the experiences that bring meaning to our lives—courage, vulnerability, love, belonging, shame, and empathy. In Braving the Wilderness, Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarization. With her trademark mix of research, storytelling, and honesty, Brown will again change the cultural conversation while mapping out a clear path to true belonging.

Brown argues that what we’re experiencing today is a spiritual crisis of disconnection, and introduces four practices of true belonging that challenge everything we believe about ourselves and each other. She writes, “True belonging requires us to believe in and belong to ourselves so fully that we can find sacredness in both being a part of something, and standing alone when necessary. But in a culture that’s rife with perfectionism and pleasing, and with the erosion of civility, it’s easy to stay quiet, hide in our ideological bunkers, or fit in rather than show up as our true selves and brave the wilderness of uncertainty and criticism. But true belonging is not something we negotiate or accomplish with others; it’s a daily practice that demands integrity and authenticity. It’s a personal commitment that we carry in our hearts.” Brown offers us the clarity and courage we need to find our way back to ourselves and to each other. And that path cuts right through the wilderness. Brown writes, “The wilderness is an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it’s the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.”

Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less by Tiffany Dufu, Flatiron Books

A bold and inspiring memoir and manifesto from a renowned voice in the women's leadership movement who shows women how to cultivate the single skill they really need in order to thrive: the ability to let go.

Once the poster girl for doing it all, after she had her first child, Tiffany Dufu struggled to accomplish everything she thought she needed to in order to succeed. Like so many driven and talented women who have been brought up to believe that to have it all, they must do it all, Dufu began to feel that achieving her career and personal goals was an impossibility. Eventually, she discovered the solution: letting go. In Drop the Ball, Dufu recounts how she learned to reevaluate expectations, shrink her to-do list, and meaningfully engage the assistance of others—freeing the space she needed to flourish at work and to develop deeper, more meaningful relationships at home.

Even though women are half the workforce, they still represent only eighteen per cent of the highest level leaders. The reasons are obvious: just as women reach middle management they are also starting families. Mounting responsibilities at work and home leave them with no bandwidth to do what will most lead to their success. Offering new perspective on why the women’s leadership movement has stalled, and packed with actionable advice, Tiffany Dufu’s Drop the Ball urges women to embrace imperfection, to expect less of themselves and more from others—only then can they focus on what they truly care about, devote the necessary energy to achieving their real goals, and create the type of rich, rewarding life we all desire.

Insight: Why We're Not as Self-Aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life by Tasha Eurich, Crown Business

Executive coach Tasha Eurich shows how to develop better self-awareness—what she calls the meta-skill of the twenty-first century—to improve work performance, leadership skills, interpersonal relationships, and more. A fascinating exploration of everyone’s favorite topic: themselves.

No matter what profession we’re in or where we are in our career, our success depends largely on how we come across to others: our bosses, our clients, our customers, and our peers. Research shows that self-aware people perform better and get more promotions at work, make smarter career decisions, and are more respected and effective leaders whose employees are more satisfied and whose companies are more profitable.

But while many of us may have a well-developed sense of what Eurich calls internal self-awareness—that is, being in tune with one’s thoughts and emotions—most of us are woefully lacking in public self-awareness: we have very little sense (or worse, a delusional sense) of how others see us. We all know people who lack external self-awareness: for example, the tyrant boss who thinks he comes across as “tough but fair” but in reality is seen by his employees as a bullying jerk, the kind of boss who thinks he’s earning respect but in reality is sapping employee engagement and motivation and hampering the performance of his team. Because for all the lip service given in the business world to performance assessments, mentorship and sponsorship, and 360-degree peer reviews, few of us actually have mechanisms for eliciting honest, accurate feedback about how we come across.

Eurich draws on thousands of original surveys, hundreds of academic studies, and 15 years of experience coaching Fortune 500 clients to debunk conventional wisdom about self-awareness and offer a toolkit of practical and battle-tested strategies for cultivating better self-knowledge.

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Simon & Schuster

The New York Times bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us and elevate us and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work.

While human lives are endlessly variable, our most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember twenty years later? What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers? What if you had a better sense of how to create memories that matter for your children?

This book delves into some fascinating mysteries of experience: Why we tend to remember the best or worst moment of an experience, as well as the last moment, and forget the rest. Why “we feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.” And why our most cherished memories are clustered into a brief period during our youth.

Readers discover how brief experiences can change lives, such as the experiment in which two strangers meet in a room, and forty-five minutes later, they leave as best friends. (What happens in that time?) Or the tale of the world’s youngest female billionaire, who credits her resilience to something her father asked the family at the dinner table. (What was that simple question?)

Many of the defining moments in our lives are the result of accident or luck—but why would we leave our most meaningful, memorable moments to chance when we can create them? The Power of Moments shows us how to be the author of richer experiences.

Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures by Jennifer Romolini, Harper Business

An honest, sharp-witted, practical guide to help you get and keep the job you want—from an outsider whose been there and done it, a woman who went from being a broke, divorced, college dropout to running some of the biggest websites in the world.

Jennifer Romolini started her career as an awkward twenty-seven-year-old misfit, navigated her way through New York media and became a boss—an editor-in-chief, an editorial director, and a vice president—all within little more than a decade. Her book, Weird In A World That’s Not, asserts that being outside-the-norm and achieving real, high-level success are not mutually exclusive, even if the perception of the business world often seems otherwise, even if it seems like only office-politicking extroverts are set up for reward.

Part career memoir, part real-world guide, Weird in a World That’s Not offers relatable advice on how to achieve your dreams, even when the odds seem stacked against you. Romolini helps you face down your fears, find a career that’s right for you, and get and keep a job. She tackles practical issues and offers empathetic, clear-cut answers to important questions:

• How do I navigate the awkwardness of networking?
• How do I deal with intense office politics?
• How do I leave my crappy job?
• How do I learn how to be a boss not just a #boss?
• And, most importantly: How do I do all this and stay true to who I really am?

Authentic, funny, and moving, Weird in a World That's Not will help you tap into your inner tenacity and find your path, no matter how offbeat you are.