Leadership
“Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up” By Jerry Colonna
Jerry’s been making the podcast rounds and I appreciate each interview provides new insights, a different way to be looking at what it takes to be an effective leader, our relationship with work, and what do we want to get out of this life. His new book is an ass-kicker. In his intro he mentions a buddy told him writing the book would “kick his butt”. Well, Colonna wrote the book for people to do their own work along the way of reading/listening to it. There’s a nice mix of Zen Buddhist, humble humanitarian, and business consultant all mixed in.
Any of Brown’s books support becoming a more effective leader. If you haven’t familiarized yourself with her work, we suggest starting with “The Gifts of Imperfection.” “Dare to Lead” is specific to leading in today’s environments. It’s part “Crucial Conversations,” part demonstrating the difference between “armored” and “daring” leadership, and part encouragement that the ability to lead with courage is in all of us.
“What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” By Marshall Goldsmith
This is a timeless guide—perhaps even more relevant now than when it was first written. Position changes and leadership of varying teams is happening at a faster clip; this means leaders need to quickly adjust to the skills and approaches required to be effective. This requires consistent examination of whether how you’re leading is providing the best environment for success. The truth is that oftentimes the very practices, approaches and language used to grow your career will no longer be sufficient in new roles. This book challenges leaders to expand and provides ways to do it.
This book provides great daily learnings along with life stories from the man who created the largest hedge fund in the world, which—at least initially—might make some not pick up the book. The “work principles” are what make us select this for leadership because it’s about successful ways of working together. It’s the building of team with thought-provoking principles and statements that won’t allow one to stay where they are, or continue to lead in the same way.
”To Sell is Human” By Daniel Pink
Look, leadership requires sales skills. This book can be very useful in helping everyone realize that your organization is most likely a sales organization regardless of your event/cause/service. We all do it, even when sales isn’t in the job description. Daniel Pink explains intrinsic motivation and how it can make all the difference.
Continuous Improvement
“Smarter, Faster, Better” By Charles Duhigg
Everyone wants to have a choice—and creating choice greatly improves productivity. A key to success is making choices in certain ways. Duhigg provides eight ideas that seem most important in expanding productivity, based on research. This book is filled with engaging situations and examples and an great appendix with ways to put the ideas in to action.
“Atomic Habits” By James Clear
We’re currently reading and applying this one. If you liked Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit,” this is a good complement with even more actionable frameworks and exercises. Applicable to all parts of life, we especially like the exercise of visualizing a person who’s successful at what you want to accomplish and listing the actions that person takes to be successful. One key is focusing on taking those actions rather than setting an end goal. It gets you to action faster. Another key is to make the actions obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying.
“The Obstacle Is The Way” and “Ego Is The Enemy” By Ryan Holiday
These books help us get over ourselves to achieve the success we desire. Both can be used as daily readings or skim through the topics to see what you currently need. Holiday intermingles stories of success from people we’ve heard of with the ancient Greek teachings of stoicism from Marcus Aurelius and others.
Podcasts
“The Tim Ferriss Show” Podcast
Tim Ferriss has made a living being curious, interviewing people from all facets of life who are best at their craft and sharing his knowledge with the world. Sometimes the most meaningful takeaways come from the ones you’d least expect.
