Best Leadership Books: 10 Must-Reads for Every Aspiring Leader
Read any good books lately?
My professional journey has taken me to surprising places, but no matter where I go you can always find a book in my hand. And, while I love a good science fiction novel, most of my reading centers on books to improve leadership skills—although not in the way you’d expect. Sure, there’s always a space on my shelf for a classic standard like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or How to Win Friends and Influence People, but there’s more to becoming a great leader than reading about them. The best leaders are those that understand human nature, and the best books are the ones that open your mind to how and why we act the way we do.
Trends come and go, but some topics are evergreen. My list of recommended leadership books doesn’t only cover the usual suspects, but authors and topics that help you truly understand what it means to lead.
If you expect the people you lead to grow and develop, their first and greatest example should be you. As you set an example for a growth mindset, you prove that you’re never to high up to keep expanding your knowledge base and learn from others. The right leader takes time to understand people on a human level, building empathy and patience through understanding. My favorite books aren’t necessarily the ones specifically about leadership. I find that, more often than not, those are highly subjective and filled with personal opinions. And, while it’s interesting to read about what made IBM successful or the history of leadership at Apple, the lessons learned don’t always translate.
Usually, the best books about leadership aren’t leadership books at all—they’re discussions of human emotion and explorations of social intelligence. Here are my personal top 10 must-read leadership books that every leader should have on their shelf.
1. First, Break All the Rules (Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman)
Buckingham and Coffman are revolutionary because they were among the first to recognize that good leaders come in all different shapes, sizes, and personality traits. Instead of pushing people to become leaders (the two authors challenge the idea that you can teach leadership greatness), the book utilizes Gallup data to extrapolate how to attract and keep high-potential individuals. If you’ve ever struggled with the hiring process or had a solid hire leave unexpectedly, First, Break All the Rules helps you find the best fit for each employee instead of forcing an employee into a role they aren’t built for.
2. Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ (Daniel Goleman)
Daniel Goleman leverages years of behavioral psychology for a book that truly understands the merits of traits like empathy and compassion. Goleman highlights the idea that a high IQ is great, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to career success. Factors like childhood, past experiences, and even geographical location can all contribute to a person’s behavior, and leading from a position of deep emotional intelligence and understanding will serve managers better than going solely off the usual metrics of knowledge or performance.
3. In Search of Being: The Fourth Way to Consciousness (G. I. Gurdjieff)
Gurdgieff was a master and philosopher who did most of his work as a teacher in Russia and Turkiye from 1915 to 1949. He taught that the majority of people go throughout life without being totally conscious of their choices and their impact. Awakening, otherwise referred to as the Fourth Consciousness, only occurs when individuals are willing to do the work by addressing mind, body, and emotions as one. He encourages self-reflection to understand what causes specific behaviors in order to transcend those hard-baked ideas.
4. Shaping a Winning Team: A Leader’s Guide to Hiring, Assessing, and Developing the People You Need to Succeed (Chak Fu Lam and Paul Fayad)
Okay, I might be a little biased about this pick, but Shaping a Winning Team was written as the ultimate guidebook for anyone in a leadership role and we’re excited for you to read it. By helping you identify the difference between the sitter, rowers, and drillers you work with, you’ll learn to assess talent through a new lens. Using the Positive Assessment Tool (PAT), the book is a roadmap for working with others, understanding their worth, and building a team that can’t help but succeed.
5. Social Intelligence (Daniel Goleman)
Yep, Goleman is on the list twice. That’s because I believe that social intelligence is just as vital to the leadership learning process as emotional intelligence. We don’t work in a vacuum:—we need to learn to interact with and understand each other. Social Intelligence explains the “why” behind human relationships and how others affect our own moods, behaviors, and choices. We are built to live in societies where other people live, love, and work. Social Intelligence guides us through how to balance person-to-person relationships with our own wants and needs.
6. Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity (Kim Scott)
What kind of boss are you? The empathetic, understanding type or the one who just wants the job done? What if I told you that you could be both? Radical Candor is a Positive Leader favorite because we all love the way it outlines a framework for becoming a boss who is empathetic and effective; honest and direct. It’s the idea that leaders can challenge employees while still offering understanding—but only if they’ve cultivated a direct and candid workplace culture.
7. Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (Daniel J. Siegel, M.D.)
Harvard-trained Dr. Siegel combines brain science with years of psychotherapy experience to create a book that validates your past experiences and helps you break through negative behaviors. The idea of “mindsight” can be boiled down to focusing on the internal workings of the mind to better understand your reactions to everything, whether it’s how you feel uneasy around certain people or why you feel overwhelmed in certain situations. By delving deeper into what your brain is trying to tell you, you can master those emotions and the potential that comes along with that level of self-improvement.
8. The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Sonja Lyubomirsky)
Have you ever wondered what motivates your employees (and how to use that to actually motivate them)? In The How of Happiness, professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, Lyubomirsky breaks down the psychology of what motivates us and how to use that to our advantage in just about every aspect of our lives. She explains that most of what makes us happy depends on things like our capacity to change rather than the situations we find ourselves in. And, as one of the developers of the PAT, I love that the book starts off with a quiz to help you find and set your own personal “happy point.”
9. J. Krishnamurti and the Nameless Experience
Unique in the sense that this is a book of teachings from philosopher J. Krishnamurti, compiled and discussed by Rohit Mehta, Nameless Experience is a journey through the mind of a master of spirituality and awareness who believed that “truth is a pathless land.” He argues against following one specific guru or religion and instead teaches about the freedom of enlightenment and increased consciousness. It’s exactly the kind of enlightened leadership that makes the most impact.
10. Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will (Robert Sapolsky)
Sapolsky is undoubtedly one of the great behavioral scientists, and his approach to the connection between reason and emotion helps us understand why we judge others (and ourselves) the way we do. The idea of life without free will isn’t that we can’t make our own choices, but that the choices we make are often predetermined by our past, present, and future experiences. As a leader, this book has been an integral part in the way I use empathy to work with others and help them find their own paths.
Extra credit leadership books
It’s difficult to keep all of the best leadership books pared down to a list of 10, so here’s some extra credit reading if you’re looking for help with a specific topic:
- Best book for transformational leadership: Leading From the Inside Out (Samuel D. Rima)
- Best book for servant leadership: Multipliers (Liz Wiseman)
- Best book for improving weaknesses: Leaders Eat Last (Simon Sinek)
- Best “classic” leadership book: The One-Minute Manager (Kenneth Blanchard)
- Best non-leadership leadership book: Outliers (Malcom Gladwell)
- Best new and upcoming leadership book: Move Fast and Fix Things (Francis Frei and Anne Moriss)
How to choose a leadership book
Hopefully your interest has been piqued with some of these books. Still, you can’t always rely on someone else to give you book suggestions. After all, a person on the Internet doesn’t know the full story of who you are and what you’re hoping to achieve as a leader. Personally, I love to combine book choices with the results of the PAT to identify exactly what type of leader I am and how I can play to those strengths. Whether you’re looking to strengthen your skills or understand your employees better, the first step is to take stock of where you are and compare it to where you want to be. Assess your leadership style here to get started.
Leadership books really run the gamut, and this top 10 list illustrates that beautifully. Becoming a great leader doesn’t have a cheat code or fast track—it simply comes from putting in the work and expanding your viewpoints. Reading and considering new thoughts, opinions, and science is just another component of becoming one of the all-time greats.
