Recommended Reading (Old)

Recommended Reading (Old)

We have compiled a list of the best books
we recommend both for Business Leadership
and for Self Leadership.

Jump to Self Leadership

	Mastering the Rockefeller Habits Vern Harnish, Gazelles Inc. What are the underlying handful of fundamentals that haven’t changed for over a hundred years? From Harnish’s famous Mastering a One Page Strategic Plan process that has been a best-selling article on the web to his concise outline of eight practical actions you can take to strengthen your culture, this book is a compilation of best practices adapted from some of the best-run firms on the planet. Read More
	Good to Great Jim Collins, Harper Collins Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? Read More
	The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni, Jossey-Bass In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni once again offers a leadership fable that is as enthralling and instructive as his first two best-selling books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams. Read More
	Silos, Politics & Turf Wars Patrick Lencioni, Jossey-Bass In yet another page-turner, New York Times best-selling author and acclaimed management expert Patrick Lencioni addresses the costly and maddening issue of silos, the barriers that create organizational politics. Silos devastate organizations, kill productivity, push good people out the door, and jeopardize the achievement of corporate goals. Read More
	The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth Fred Reichheld, HBS Press CEOs regularly announce ambitious growth targets, then fail to achieve them. The reason? Their growing addiction to bad profits. These corporate steroids boost short-term earnings but alienate customers. They undermine growth by creating legions of detractors – customers who complain loudly about the company and switch to competitors at the earliest opportunity. Read More
	Who Geoff Smart & Randy Street, Ballatine Books Geoff Smart and Randy Street provide a simple, practical, and effective solution to what The Economist calls “the single biggest problem in business today”: unsuccessful hiring. The average hiring mistake costs a company $1.5 million or more a year and countless wasted hours. This statistic becomes even more startling when you consider that the typical hiring success rate of managers is only 50 percent. In business, you are who you hire. In Who, Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer simple, easy-to-follow steps that will put the right people in place for optimal success. Read More
	The Great Game of Business Jack Stack, Crown Business The Great Game of Business started a business revolution by introducing the world to open-book management, a new way of running a business that created unprecedented profit and employee engagement. Read More
	Live R.I.C.H.: How to Build Success in Your Company and Your Life with a Proven Code of Values Dina Dwyer-Owens, AMA Nystrom How can a company with more than 1,600 locations worldwide and nearly 400 percent growth rate maintain a close corporate culture and a family business atmosphere? The key is an unshakable corporate Code of Values. “Here is a company who really gets the big idea. Dina and her team have empowered an entire franchise network, giving them the tools to lead more successful businesses and more successful lives. If ethics ranks high in your life, so will this book.” Mary Ellen Sheets, founder and CEO of Two Men and a Truck. Read More
	Fail-Safe Leadership Linda L. Martin & David G. Mutchler, Delta Books Fail-Safe Leadership advances a results-based definition of leadership. It demonstrates how it’s possible to grow leaders quickly, and how to align every individual’s work effort directly to the company’s vision and strategic plan, in order to improve a company’s bottom line. Read More

	Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box The Arbinger Institute, Berrett-Koehler Through a story everyone can relate to about a man facing challenges on the job and in his family, the authors expose the fascinating ways that we can blind ourselves to our true motivations and unwittingly sabotage the effectiveness of our own efforts to achieve success and increase happiness. Read More
	The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict The Arbinger Institute, Berrett-Koehler Written as an engaging story, this book shows how mistaken views can cause people to misread situations and exacerbate the issues they wish to improve. Arguing that it is only after they understand themselves and get their internal house in order that they can correctly confront external conflicts, the book shows what can be done to make that happen, and how to make inner peace a potent tool for achieving outer satisfaction. Read More
	The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Steven Covey, Franklin Covey Co. One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated readers for 25 years. It has transformed the lives of Presidents and CEOs, educators and parents— in short, millions of people of all ages and occupations. Read More
	QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability at Work and in Life John G. Miller, Denver Press The lack of personal accountability has resulted in an epidemic of blame, complaining, and procrastination. No organization-or individual-can achieve goals, compete in the marketplace, fulfill a vision, or develop people and teams without personal accountability. Read More
	What’s Your Genius?: How The Best THINK For Success In The New Economy. Jay Niblick, St. James What’s Your Genius is a compelling visit into the world of how you think and make decisions and how that explains why you succeed almost effortlessly at some things yet not in others. Seven years of scientific research studying top performers around the world delivers the secrets that the most successful already know about achieving greater success, satisfaction and happiness. Now it’s your turn. Read More
	First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman, Free Press The greatest managers in the world seem to have little in common. They differ in sex, age, and race. They employ vastly different styles and focus on different goals. Yet despite their differences, great managers share one common trait: Read More
	Now, Discover Your Strengths Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D., Free Press Unfortunately, most of us have little sense of our talents and strengths, much less the ability to build our lives around them. Instead, guided by our parents, by our teachers, by our managers, and by psychology’s fascination with pathology, we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to repair these flaws, while our strengths lie dormant and neglected. Read More
	Primal Leadership: Unleashing the power of emotional Intelligence Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatis, & Annie McKee, Harvard Business School Press Managers and professionals across the globe have embraced Primal Leadership, affirming the importance of emotionally intelligent leadership. Its influence has also reached well beyond the business world: the book and its ideas are now used routinely in universities, business and medical schools, and professional training programs, and by a growing legion of professional coaches. Read More
	Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler, McGraw Hill The first edition of Crucial Conversations exploded onto the scene and revolutionized the way millions of people communicate when stakes are high. This new edition gives you the tools to: Prepare for high-stakes situations Transform anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue Make it safe to talk about almost anything Be persuasive, not abrasive Read More
	Talk Less, Say More: Three Habits to Influence Others and Make Things Happen Connie Dieken, Wiley Talk Less, Say More is a revolutionary guide to 21st century communication skills to help you be more influential and make things happen in our distracted, attention-deficit world. It’s loaded with specific tips and takeaways to ensure that you’re fully heard, clearly understood, and trigger positive responses in any business or social situation. Read More
	Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Malcolm Gladwell, Bay Back Books Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant-in the blink of an eye-that actually aren’t as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? Read More