25 Books to Improve Your Leadership Skills

Following is the list of my favorite books that can help improve your Leadership skills. The list is in not in any order.

1. How We Decide
 
2. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

3. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

4. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

5. Six Thinking Hats

6. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

7. Confessions of a Public Speaker

8. Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive

9. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future

10. Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time

11. Emotional Intelligence: 10th Anniversary Edition; Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

12. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

13. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

14. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

15. How to Castrate a Bull: Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business

16. What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

17. The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

18. Winning

19. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

20. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

21. The One Minute Manager

22. Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life

23. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

24. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

25. Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What I Learnt from Marathon Training ?

When I started marathon training I was not able to run for 15 minutes. I trained for 5 months and completed running Silicon Valley full marathon.  Following are some of the lessons that I learnt. Try before saying no : Our immediate response when we have a new challenge is to say no. We think that if  we have not done it before we would fail. This is not always right. When we give up before trying we close ourselves to number of opportunities.  Before saying no, say  "I'll try". Try for few days and learn from it. Now you will be able to make an informed and a better decision. It's not about you, it's about your discipline : When we have  new challenges, our immediate question is whether we can do it ?   A better question would be, " Do I have the discipline  to achieve what I want ?".  Marathon training needs immense discipline for few months. Most of the goals can be achieved with discipline and perseverance. We have what is required to achieve, b
Read more

Summary of the book, "The wisdom of crowds"

"The wisdom of crowds" book by James Surowiecki underlines the importance of the wisdom of the the crowd in making better decisions. This is contrary to the general belief that experts always have the right answers and they can make better decisions.  The book describes number of instances where the crowd or a group made a close call. This doesn't mean that well informed analysts are of no use in making good decisions. However the advice of experts need to be pooled with other people to make better decisions. Group decision will be better than most of the people in the group. It's unlikely that one person will be better than the group.  Not all the groups can make good decisions. When a group has people who think alike in worldview and mindset, then they easily fall prey into groupthink. These type of groups would not make the best decisions. Smartest group are made of people with different perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other.  Homogeneou
Read more

Book Summary - "Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard"

Image
This book provides good insights on making changes. It can be a change at a personal level or a Leader who wants to make a change in his organization. An analogy of a Rider and an Elephant is used in this book. Rider is the logical part and our thinking which drives us. Elephant is our emotion. To make a change, you need to appeal to both the Rider and the Elephant. If you appeal only to Rider, your team will have understanding without motivation. If you appeal to Elephant you will have passion without direction. It is easy to turn an easy change problem into a hard change problem. If you want somebody to eat less, serve them in a smaller plate instead of worrying about convincing or educating them. What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. When you shape the path you make change more likely. To change behavior, direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant and shape the path. If you are trying to change things, there will be bright spots. Understanding the br
Read more