Book recommendations for business leaders: 2/21/19

Feb 21, 2019 | Reading Lists

Stephen King says that if you want to be a writer, there are two things you must do: read a lot and write a lot. This is about the “read a lot” part. I include reading lists and book reviews that will help you do business more effectively and write better for business.

In this post, I point you to reviews of Return on Courage: A Business Playbook for Courageous Change, Wisdom At Work: The Making of the Modern Elder, The Book of Beautiful Questions: The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead, Scaling Leadership: Building Organizational Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter Most, and The Wise Advocate: The Inner Voice of Strategic Leadership. Plus, there’s a list of book that will help you thrive in the future, selected by faculty of the London Business School.

From Skip Prichard: Learn to Lead with Courage

“Ryan Berman, author of the new book RETURN ON COURAGE, is the Founder of Courageous, a creative consultancy that develops Courage Brands®. For his book, Berman spent three years shadowing top leaders to understand how they accomplish their goals. He found that the best leaders make sure that courage is a key component of their organization’s culture. The excerpt below will help you build an organization in which courage thrives.”

From Wharton: Wisdom at Work: Why the Modern Elder Is Relevant

“Historically, the boss typically has been older than the staff. But in the last few decades, several trends converged that made it more common for employees to have younger managers. One catalyst is the shift from seniority-based promotions toward those based on merit, according to a research article in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Also, as the pace of technology innovation increases, companies promote more tech-savvy younger workers into supervisory jobs. Meanwhile, older workers are staying employed longer due to such things as the disappearance of early retirement schemes.”

From Kevin Eikenberry: The Book of Beautiful Questions

“You ask questions every day. You know that when you ask the right questions, you can get better results for yourself. You also know that the best leaders are great question askers. Yet, you’ve likely never studied asking questions. You can change that today, with this great book.”

From Michael McKinney: Scaling Leadership

“THE INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCE of leading in an increasingly complex world is that we will have developmental gaps in our leadership. As our context change, we have to grow with it.”

From Bob Morris: The Wise Advocate

“Art Kleiner, Jeffrey Schwartz, and Josie Thomson pose three separate but related questions: How do you figure out the right right decision to make? How do you position yourself so that decision achieves the given objective? Most importantly, how do you develop the habit of making better choices, time and time again, even in situations that are volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous?”

From the London Business School: How to thrive in the future

“LBS faculty propose essential reads that draw on the lessons of history to help navigate changing times.”

Reading recommendations are a regular feature of this blog. Want more recommendations about what to read? Check out my Three Star Leadership blog, Michael McKinney’s LeadingBlog, and Skip Prichard’s Leadership Insights.