10 Essential Career Books from Our 2025 Podcast Guests

2025 has brought exceptional voices to the Disrupt Your Career podcast. You’ve heard their stories—now take it to the next level and explore their books. Each one delivers powerful insights to accelerate your growth and boost your career success. Dive in and enjoy!

Visible: How to Advance Your Career Without Playing Politics, Selling Your Soul, or Working Yourself into the Ground

By May Busch 

You’re good at your job, work hard, and deliver results, yet career advancement can feel out of reach. Traditional advice—“let your work speak” or “play the game”—often leaves you stuck between burnout and compromise.

May Busch, former COO of Morgan Stanley Europe, draws on her 24-year journey from entry-level analyst to C-suite and her experience coaching ambitious professionals to reveal the hidden capabilities senior leaders look for when deciding who advances.

This guide shows you how to navigate office politics while staying true to your values, build strategic relationships with integrity, develop presence and confidence, and take ownership of your career progression. Whether overlooked for promotion or ready to accelerate, it provides a framework to advance on your own terms.

Listen to our DYC podcast episode with May

Mastering Executive Transitions: The Definitive Guide

By Navid Nazemian

Drawing on research and real-world experience, the book explores the growing complexity and demands executives face, shorter tenures, and the challenges of navigating career transitions successfully.Mastering Executive Transitions: The Definitive Guide by Navid Nazemian examines why 40% of executive transitions fail within the first 18 months and offers a practical framework to avoid common pitfalls.

It provides actionable guidance for executives about to transition, HR leaders and talent directors seeking to enhance onboarding processes, and executive coaches specializing in leadership transitions.

Through clear insights and proven strategies, Mastering Executive Transitions helps organizations and leaders navigate change effectively, turning potentially risky transitions into opportunities for success and lasting impact.

Listen to our DYC podcast episode with Navid 

Sustainable Ambition: How to Prioritize What Matters to Thrive in Life and Work

by Kathy Oneto 

Sustainable Ambition offers a fresh approach to achieving goals without sacrificing well-being. Life-work strategist Kathy Oneto argues that work-life balance is a myth; instead, we need a sustainable approach to ambition.

Today’s pressure to “do it all” often leaves people stretched thin, questioning choices, and at risk of burnout. Time-management tricks aren’t enough. Drawing on research, coaching, interviews, and personal experience, Oneto presents a framework of three components—Right Ambition, Right Time, and Right Effort. When aligned, they help you pursue meaningful goals with clarity, energy, and peace of mind.

Practical and grounded, Sustainable Ambition provides tools to evaluate opportunities, focus effort, preserve personal space, and maintain ambitions while thriving in both life and work.

Listen to our DYC podcast episode with Kathy

Leadership Transitions: How Business Leaders Take Charge in New Roles

By Richard Elsner and Bridget Farrands

In a working life of 35 years, a manager can expect at least 10 job changes—or transitions—where the demands for rapid business delivery and effective leadership increase with each new role. Recent research shows over 25 per cent of new leaders appointed from within fail within 18 months, rising to nearly 40 per cent for external appointments. The cost of this failure is high, from financial loss to performance and organizational disruption.

This book explores the sources of these failures and how to overcome them. Whether leaders are promoted internally or hired externally, their experiences can be divided into three phases: Arriving, Surviving, and Thriving. By analysing each stage, the authors provide strategies to help leaders take charge and succeed in their new roles.

Listen to our DYC podcast episode with Bridget

The Mirror Effect: A Transformative Approach to Growth for the Next Generation of Female Leaders

By Dr. Sheila Gujrathi

The Mirror Effect by Dr. Sheila Gujrathi offers a powerful guide for disenfranchised leaders—women, people of color, and other historically marginalized professionals—seeking to overcome barriers and thrive authentically.

Drawing on her two decades in medicine, biotech, and venture capital, Gujrathi presents a three-part roadmap: “Hold Up Your Own Mirror” to dismantle your inner critic, “Reflect on Your Surroundings” to navigate toxic environments, and “Make a Life Worth Mirroring” to build support networks, master negotiations, and command the room.

Through personal stories, research, and actionable insights, The Mirror Effect helps leaders see themselves clearly, build resilience, and create success on their own terms—moving beyond striving for a seat at the table to building their own.

Listen to our DYC podcast episode with Sheila 

Futureproof Your Career: How to Lead and Succeed in a Changing World

By Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj and Naeema Pasha 

Futureproof Your Career is a practical guide to navigating today’s rapidly changing world of work and making the most of opportunities for progression. It focuses on the shifting business, economic, and technological landscape, and the new challenges of job retention and career growth.

The pandemic, the fourth industrial revolution, growing awareness of institutionalized discrimination, and concerns over recession have created a “new normal” in which working patterns and career paths are irreversibly altered.

Written by two leading academics, the book combines practical advice with insights into the future of work. Drawing on research, international case studies, and interviews, it offers engaging perspectives on what lies ahead.

With key insights into how jobs and networking are transforming, it helps readers identify opportunities, safeguard their careers, and prepare for success in an uncertain world.

Listen to our DYC podcast episode with Naeema 

Leading Yourself: Find More Joy, Meaning, and Opportunities in the Job You Already Have 

by Elizabeth Lotardo

In Leading Yourself, workplace thought leader Elizabeth Lotardo offers a practical guide to taking ownership of your career and improving your work experience—even if you’re not in your dream job. Through tips, watchouts, and stories, she shows how to manage self-talk, find meaning in everyday tasks, optimize time, and build relationships that matter.

Lotardo, a popular LinkedIn Learning instructor, shares strategies for overcoming self-doubt, navigating change, and handling difficult bosses. She provides advice on giving and receiving feedback, protecting your reputation when others fall short, and making thoughtful career moves.

Focused on behaviors and habits that reshape how you experience work, Leading Yourself helps readers unlock new opportunities for growth. Whether you’re an aspiring manager or an established leader, it offers a roadmap to greater confidence, resilience, and impact in any workplace.

Listen to our DYC podcast episode with Elizabeth 

Is this Seat for Me?: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome in Everyday Life and Business

by Sheila Buswell

Do you sometimes feel like you are “not enough?” You’re not alone. Imposter syndrome can affect many different people in unexpected ways, causing anxiety, fear, stress, and a variety of other symptoms. Is This Seat For Me? shares the stories of a diverse group of accomplished individuals who struggled with self- doubt and found ways to overcome it. In these intimate and candid remembrances, the authors reveal their own personal experiences with imposter syndrome—from the hardship and suffering they endured, to the final freedom of realizing they were enough.

Is This Seat For Me? also offers practical solutions to help the reader on their own journey, so that they can overcome the obstacles in their lives, rediscover their own self-worth, and confidently take a seat at any table they choose.

Listen to our DYC podcast episode with Sheila 

Creating Your Encore Career: A Guide to Finding Purpose and Prosperity in Your THIRD Act 

by Michelle M. Prince

Creating Your Encore Career is a guide for anyone considering a career pivot or new life chapter in 2025 and beyond. Rather than viewing retirement as an ending, this book invites readers to see it as an opportunity to design a more purposeful “third act.” Drawing on her experience as a consultant and coach, Prince combines practical tools with real-life stories to address both the opportunities and challenges of career transition later in life.

The book goes beyond financial planning to explore psychological and emotional dimensions, offering exercises that encourage self-reflection, confidence, and resilience. It acknowledges real concerns—such as ageism and financial uncertainty—while highlighting diverse paths from entrepreneurship to volunteer work. Whether you are nearing retirement or simply seeking renewed direction, this resource helps uncover passions, align strengths, and chart a fulfilling and sustainable next chapter.

Listen to our DYC podcast episode with Michelle 

The Truth About Equity: What It Really Is, What It Isn’t, and Why Everyone Wins When We Get It Right 

by Celeste Warren 

The Truth About Equity by Celeste Warren offers a clear, practical perspective on one of today’s most misunderstood topics. Warren, a global HR leader and Diversity & Inclusion executive, explains that equity is not preferential treatment—it is progress that benefits everyone.

The book clarifies the difference between equity and equality, explores why people resist equitable practices, and shows how tailored support, rather than identical treatment, fosters true inclusion.

Using accessible frameworks like the “rocks and fences” analogy and stories of individuals who thrived when given fair opportunities, Warren provides tools to lead and live with fairness and purpose. The result is a practical guide to understanding equity’s impact on innovation, leadership, and lasting organizational change.

Listen to our DYC podcast episode with Celeste 

What about you? What career-changing reads have inspired you lately? Share your favorites with us — and tell us which guests you’d love to hear on the podcast next!