In the TomorrowToday UK team’s ezine newsletter last Friday, we gave an excellent list of books that leaders should be reading. Have you read any of these? If so, what did you think of them? What else would you add to this list?
The following books have been recommended by some of the top leadership development experts that I know (and I have read most of them, and agree):
- Leadership without easy answers – Buy at Amazon.co.uk ; Kalahari.net (South Africa) ; Amazon.com
- Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading – Buy at Amazon.co.uk ; Kalahari.net ; Amazon.com
- The practice of adaptive leadership (a practical guide to ‘knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do’) – Buy at Amazon.co.uk ; Kalahari.net ; Amazon.com
- Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World (a paradigm shifting book and as such a classic) – Buy at Amazon.co.uk ; Kalahari.net ; Amazon.com
- Leading Without Power: Finding Hope in Serving Community – Buy at Amazon.co.uk ; Kalahari.net ; Amazon.com
The key to the following recommendations is that they focus on inside out leadership – i.e. leadership is ‘who we are’ not ‘what we do’:
- Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership – Buy at Amazon.co.uk ; Kalahari.net ; Amazon.com
- Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450 Year Old Company That Changed the World – Buy at Amazon.co.uk ; Kalahari.net ; Amazon.com
- The Element: How finding your passion changes everything – Buy at Amazon.co.uk ; Kalahari.net ; Amazon.com
Other good reads:
- The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life – Buy at Amazon.co.uk ; Kalahari.net ; Amazon.com
- Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down – Buy at Amazon.co.uk ; Kalahari.net; Amazon.com
- Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace – Buy at Amazon.co.uk ; Kalahari.net ; Amazon.com
And finally… leaders should regularly read ‘non-leadership’ leadership books. These include philosophy, anthropology, bios, history and the like. So much of the ‘distilled’ leadership literature is weak, and it therefore makes sense for business leaders to read something outside the norm and then do some of your own thinking!