My 9 Top Leadership Books
If you’ve been following along for a little while, you’ll know that I am an avid reader. I’m often asked what are my favourite leadership books. And through curating this list, I realized that there are three different categories that leadership books fall under.
The three different categories are Leading Self, Leading People, and Leading Organizations or Cultures.
So Let’s Get Into My Top Books For Leading Self First.
Essentialism by Greg McKeown. This one is all about regaining control of choices so you can prioritize the things that really matter. If you’re someone that can feel overwhelmed or not sure where to start or trying to work through their never ending list of post-it notes. I highly recommend reading it has one of my favorites and most recommended books.
Atomic Habits by James Clear. This is all about evidence-based strategies for breaking and making habits. There’s a few different habit books out there that are quite similar. I chose Atomic Habits over the others because that’s a little bit more tactical. But essentially you can read any of them and get the same principles. What’s really interesting is it explains how you make your own habits and why we do certain things, but it also gives you the breakdown of how you can create new habits.
Gifts Of Imperfection by Brene Brown. This one’s more personal, because it’s about how your story matters because you matter, and it’s about increasing your self worth. So if you have feelings of “not good enough” or “unworthy”.
The Power Of Now by by Echart Tolle. This one’s all about taking you as a reader on this inspiring spiritual journey to find your true and deepest self. it is such an interesting book about understanding what lies inside of us, as opposed to what lies around us.
The Next Part, Once You Understand A Bit About How You Work Is To Move On To How People Interact With Each Other, To This Second Category Of Leading People.
Dare To Lead by Brene Brown. It’s one of my favorites for leaders and for teams to be able to have these courageous conversations in their leadership. There are some wonderful examples and great code phrases like “clear is kind”.
The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier. This is about becoming the leader people want to work for, saying less, asking more, and changing the way you lead forever. One of the core jobs of a leader is to set the direction and help people discover how to get there.
Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott. It’s all about stepping into the uncomfortable conversations you’ve been avoiding at work and in life. I pretty much guarantee if you avoid work conversations, you probably avoid conversations at home.
The Final Category Of My Books And The Last Two Books Is In The Category Of Leading Organizations And Culture.
Legacy by James Kerr. It’s about understanding and building a culture that people want to be a part of it’s lessons from the All Blacks football team in New Zealand.
Reinventing Organizations. It’s about shifting the conversation about what’s broken in management today, to what’s possible. It has a Positive Psychology approach to it (which of course I love being Positive Psychology trained). It is great to understand why people make different decisions, depending on how safe they feel within an organization and how the opportunity is endless if we look at the possibilities instead of what’s broken.
So, they are my favorite reads for positive leadership and life. When I work with clients as part of the process, I always gift them a leadership book, and depending on where they’re at and what’s important, I choose from this list of curated books.
If you have read them, I would love to know what you think. I’ll be releasing some more Rockstar Visual signature summaries of these books over the next month so make sure you are subscribed to my mailing list to have them delivered straight to your inbox!
You can also head to my Podcast Level Up Leadership and take a listen to Episode 21 for more on this topic.