While it doesn’t always make headlines, there is a growing recognition that kindness is vital to strong performance at work. In the broad range of leadership skills, kindness is inherently quieter, more personal and harder to see – and yes, less interesting or cinematic than controversial tweets and ‘bullying boss’ behaviour. But kindness builds empathy and trust, which ultimately creates a sense of psychological safety – and that safety leads to more creativity; a better quality of decision-making; safer critical thinking; higher levels of staff loyalty, flexibility and retention; a heightened sense of engagement; and, ultimately, higher productivity and profitability.

In KIND, Graham Allcott explores how we can create work cultures that encourage kindness. He argues that, far from being a ‘fluffy’ or nebulous idea, kindness and empathy are 21st century superpowers, which can transform any organization into a dynamic environment where people want to work. The author aims to convince the doubters, as well as helping already ‘kindful’ people, to articulate the power of kindness and make a stronger case for its greater profile in their working environments.

Drawing on psychology and neuroscience as well as management theory and business research, he shows how kindness helps encourage productive and positive work cultures. From busting three important myths that need to be addressed to engage the more cynical reader – or the reader’s more cynical colleagues – to covering ‘The Eight Principles of Kindfulness at Work’, Graham Allcott offers practical advice on how to make kindfulness part of the fabric of your working life so both you and your team can thrive.

With over 2,000 locations across the UK and overseeing multiple operations daily for the past two decades, it’s fair to say that the CEO of the family-owned Timpson business knows a thing or two about running a successful company.

What makes James Timpson’s approach to collaboration, profit and success is simple: let the people you hire run your business.

That might seem like a simple concept to a CEO, manager or director but if you think about the hundreds of meetings, hours lost from your day by responding to emails, signing off on projects and more, you will notice that you are still working in a traditional, top-down mindset. Doing this means the team you work with only see themselves as a cog in the machine instead of the trusted, valued colleagues that they are.

The Happy Index is structured into lessons that will equip you and the people you work with, with the tools and tactics to re-evaluate the ways you manage your business. Offering insight into the ways in which James has overseen the family business, he firmly believes that you will see the benefits of working with an upside-down mindset, not only for financial success but also your team’s wellbeing and happiness.

Really, though, it’s easy. Turn up on time. Trust your team. Do your work.

The modern world is built for neurotypicals: needless noise, bright flashing lights, small talk, phone calls, unspoken assumptions and unwritten rules – it can be a nightmarish dystopia for the autistic population. In Untypical, Pete Wharmby lays bare the experience of being ‘different’, explaining with wit and warmth just how exhausting it is to fit in to a world not designed for you.

But this book is more than an explanation. After a late diagnosis and a lifetime of ‘masking’, Pete is the perfect interlocutor to explain how our two worlds can meet, and what we can do for the many autistic people in our schools, workplaces and lives. The result: a practical handbook for all of us to make the world a simpler, better place for autistic people to navigate, and a call to arms for anyone who believes in an inclusive society and wants to be part of the solution.

It’s time to do things differently.

Trust your team. Be radically honest. And never, ever try to please your boss.

These are some of the ground rules if you work at Netflix. They are part of a unique cultural experiment that explains how the company has transformed itself at lightning speed from a DVD mail order service into a streaming superpower – with 190 million fervent subscribers and a market capitalisation that rivals the likes of Disney.

Finally Reed Hastings, Netflix Chairman and CEO, is sharing the secrets that have revolutionised the entertainment and tech industries. With INSEAD business school professor Erin Meyer, he will explore his leadership philosophy – which begins by rejecting the accepted beliefs under which most companies operate – and how it plays out in practice at Netflix.

From unlimited holidays to abolishing approvals, Netflix offers a fundamentally different way to run any organisation, one far more in tune with an ever-changing fast-paced world. For anyone interested in creativity, productivity and innovation, the Netflix culture is something close to a holy grail. This book will make it, and its creator, fully accessible for the first time.