Leadership Resources
Leadership is not an innate trait. While some people may have more aptitude for leadership, to do it well it to practice, to learn, to fail and to practice some more. It truly is a journey to excellence or a descent into… well… something not good for you or anyone around you.
So how does one learn to be a better leader? Basically it is the same as any other skill, find someone who is good at it and learn from them. Leadership being a sort of skill that has to align with your own aptitudes and tendencies however, is not the same sort of skill as blacksmithing or bicycle repair, so that journey to being a good leader is different for everyone. Unpopular reveal: not everyone should aspire to be a Jack Welch type of leader – while he was a great leader, he was only one kind of leader, and not everyone could, or even should become a leader like Jack Welch. Think of your favorite coach, your favorite teacher, a community leader or a pastor in your church–all different kinds of leaders. Ultimately, your journey to be a good leader will be different than everyone else’s, and your definition of what it means to be a good leader, while perhaps the same in principles as Jack Welch, is likely to look very different in practice. Not because you cannot be a powerful CEO and business leader, but because you may not be gifted or motivated in that same way.
Developing leadership is to become self-aware to a level that allows you to leverage your strengths, compensate for your weaknesses and to care more about how to use your skills and aptitudes to lead and inspire others than to care about your own comfort. There is no greater satisfaction than to see your impact on the lives of others because of your leadership investment, but it is not a quick path to self-gratification either.
I am often asked about what resources I have leveraged in my own leadership journey (in which I am no where near any finish line), so I thought I might blog about it here just to provide a resource to reference each time or even expand as I find new resources. Some go way back, some are new and some were not as impactful as I would have hoped, but the list and some notes on each is below, in no particular order.
How to Win Friends and Influence People – This classic still deserves a re-read every few years. If you want to lead people, you have to know how to be a friend and how to influence them. Treat people well, know how they are motivated and say their name often. If you are a type-A personality / task-oriented person, read this book every few years–it will change your life as well as your leadership style.
21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership – No one can give you succinct rules of leadership like John Maxwell. The Law of the Lid, the Law of E. F. Hutton. I have used these laws over years of influence and leading, and they are always true. Memorize them or put them on flash cards and carry them with you.
Daring Greatly and Dare to Lead are the Brene Brown classics that everyone should read–they will make you a better person and a better follower. Get past the toxicity that is so much power-lead leadership and learn to have the hard conversations, learn to lean into vulnerability and learn to lead with your whole heart. Get ready to rumble!
The Leader’s Journey – This book taught me to think about leadership in an entirely different way, learning to see the systems that lead to specific results that are almost impossible for those bound up in them to change, and then learning how to change myself in order to invite the change that the systems needed. This book was where I first learned what I needed to do to be calm leader (or to lead calmly, in any case, I am still working on that!).
Leadership On the Line – I read this book for a class in seminary while leading a very complex technical project at work whose delay and cost overruns had already lead to the dismissal of the divisional CIO. The project was the most expensive in the business unit’s history and was not going well. But leadership is not forged in times of ease, but in times of high stress. I used this book as a playbook to help stabilize the project, the people that were part of it and lead us to success that ultimately enabled explosive growth in the company. All because it helped me focus on leading the people who got it done.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Where there is no trust, there is no team. This book through its parable style story telling helps teams work through building trust. If your team knows it needs it, and cannot follow this book to get to trust within a year, time to lead or leave. Diversity of opinion makes the team strong, but only if the team can learn to trust one another.
Team of Teams – In this world of high fidelity communication, the need for immediate response and cross-functional abilities requires a different kind of team. In this book General McChrystal presents how they created these teams in the Iraq counter-insurgency and how they can be created within the business world. If you are responsible for helping to create high-performing teams, you have to read this book.
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Another classic work that identifies the seven habits you should be practicing as a leader and as an individual contributor. If you cannot rattle them off right now without looking, go read it again.
How full is Your Bucket – There is a greater amount of self-awareness required of leaders than of people not leading. This book helps you work to identify those things that energize you versus drain you. One of my professors called this the 70/30 rule. Seventy percent of what you do should energize you (AKA, fill your bucket) and thirty percent can drain you. If you get this out of balance, you burnout fast. Know how to balance your work.
The First 90 Days – For starting a new job, this book is invaluable to get you jumpstarted. Use it as your blueprint/checklist and you will be adapted to the new role much faster.
You Are What you Love – This is not so much a leadership book, but a faith book that was useful in orienting me to the thing that matters most. It helped me understand that the thing to pay attention to first was what was I orienting my heart towards, what was I loving? Because, whether I knew it or not, that was the most important thing in my life. Ensuring that my love was directed properly is the first step to ensuring everything else is directed properly.
Drive – People crave autonomy, mastery and purpose. As a leader, if you can provide an environment where they get those things they will stay there forever. This book forever changed my orientation of what I attempt to provide for my team members.
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever – This book transformed how I executed my one-on-one coaching meetings with my employees. The idea is to use questions to help them unravel and think through the challenges they are facing. The truth is, ultimately they are far better equipped to work their way through those challenges than you are, they just need some coaching to enable them to do it, and the coaching questions work very well!
Principles: Life and Work – IN NCIS Leroy Jethro Gibbs has a set of rules, and that inspired me to write down my own but that was before I knew Ray Dalio had written his down. They are a great read, if for no other reason than to inspire you to write your own set.
Leadership and Self-Deception – So much of leadership is about communication, and understanding how your words impact others. This book helps you understand that how you present a challenging topic may actually trigger self-defense mechanisms in the other person and lead to an outcome that you do not want. The book teaches you how to identify that situation and avoid it, leading to the desired outcome and ensuring all people retain their dignity in the situation.
Leadership Agility – Different times require different types of leaders. This book identifies five different leadership styles and when to use those different styles. You may do some of this instinctively, but having the semantical range to be able to label and identify each can be empowering and leader to a more conscious, more bold approach to each of the styles as you apply them.
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth – You would think that surgical groups that do not report many errors have a higher success rate than those that do report errors, but studies show that to be inaccurate. It is teams that have the safety in exposing errors and failures for correction that have higher success rates. This book presents how to create that psychological safety in a team in order to enable that successful growth.
Servant Leadership – Last on my list, but first in my heart. This classic presents what is now a common label of “servant leadership” but was a relatively new innovation at the time of its publication. What does it look like to approach leadership as a servant, seeking to uplift and enable others, to serve institutions and to seek the greater good of society? Read this to get your leadership style firmly grounded in a servant leadership approach.
This is my list, for now. I am sure I will add to it over time, so check back for updates. May your leadership journey be as steep as you need to grow, give you vistas to reward your efforts and moments of repose and rejuvenation to keep you going.
Last Updated 6/2/2021.
