10 Best Leadership Books Everyone should read
Reading books is a necessary skill that one needs to have. In particular, one who is a founder or CEO or wants to see themselves in a top-notch position as a better leader. Because, ultimately, you can’t make all mistakes in life and learn from them. You have to learn from other people’s experiences in their lives (whether bad or good and both), and the best way to do that is through reading thier published books. So, to see you as a good leader, we have picked up the 10 best leadership books to read.
1. Start With Why – Author Simon Sinek
Have your ever thought? Why do very few leaders, products, and originations leave a great impression on us? There are very few leaders influence their followers and employees to stick with them forever. Thinking of leaders like Mahatma Gandhi or companies like Apple, Harley Davidson, Coca-Cola, etc. These leaders and companies started movements. They have incredible loyal followers and customers.
In the book “Start with Why”, the author (Simon Sinek) explains a naturally occurring pattern, a way of thinking, acting, and communicating that gives some leaders the ability to inspire those around them. The author believes, those who start with “Why” never manipulate people. Instead, they inspire.
2. The 7 habits of highly effective people – Author Stephen R. Covey
This is one of the bestselling books that offers a holistic, integrated, principal-centred approach to solving personal and professional problems. It is written based on Covey’s own life experiences with others learning things gathered while working with successful individuals in business and universities and studying multi-different literature on the concept of success and many psychology books (written over the past 200 years.).
The book opens a conversation with how many individuals who achieved magnificent success in their lives still find themselves struggling with an inner need for developing personal effectiveness and growing healthy relationships with other people. The author believes the way we see the world is completely based on our own perceptions. In order to change a given situation, we must change ourselves first. And to change ourselves, we must change our perceptions.
3. Tools of Titans – Author Tim Ferriss
Tools of Titans is the tactics, beliefs, and habits of world-class performers, written by Tim Ferris. Imagine if you can learn from over 200 top performers all over the world. The author did exactly that on his podcast “The Tim Ferriss Show”, which has over a hundred million downloads, featuring guests such as movie stars, pro athletes, hedge fund managers, billionaires, motivational speakers, entrepreneurs, and so on and so forth. Tim has gone far ahead and distilled all the valuable knowledge from all these interviews that he’s had. And compartmentalized it into this book called “Tools of Titans”.
4. The First 90 Days – Author Michael D Watkins
New professionals are very vulnerable in their first month in a job. This is because they have less in-depth knowledge of the issues they’ll face and insufficient knowledge of what they need to do to make a success of their new role. According to the author, if a new one (who has just joined a company) is not able to create momentum in the first 90 days, then the rest of their time in that position would be an uphill battle.
In this book, the author, Michael Watkins (Harvard Business School) introduces a road map for taking charge in the first 90 days of a new management position. With it, avoid common new-leader pitfalls, secure critical early wins, and establish yourself in your new role.
5. How to win Friends and Influence People – Author Dale Carnies
“How to win friends and influence people” is considered a perfect self-help book of all time. The book shares the most essential principles of social interaction and highly effective idea for dealing with people. It lets you understand people better, help you become more trustworthy, improves relationships, win others over, and influence behaviours through leadership. The book was first published in 1936 by Dale Carnies and has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide to date, and currently has been recognized all-time bestseller. This proved the author’s principle as relevant today as 80 years ago.
6. Good to Great – author Jim Collins
“Good to great” is another book that we all should read – particularly, if you are a CEO/founder looking to grow your business. This book explains what it takes for ordinary companies to become great and outperform their competitors. In this book, the author describes debates he had with his research team on the nature of leadership in good to great companies. After investing more than a quarter-century in rigorous research, Jim wrote this book and published it in 2001. Since then, they have sold more than four million copies, and it is going far beyond the traditional audience of business books.
7. Drive: The surprising Truth about What motivates Us – Author Daniel H. Pink
Drive is a nonfiction book by Daniel Pink. It says that people’s motivation is mostly intrinsic. The aspects of his motivation can be divided into three-parts autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In this book, the author made a discussion against traditional motivation models dominated by extrinsic factors like money. Drive explains that rewards and punishments are part of an old paradigm it doesn’t work well in today’s work environments. Many originations, cultures, and even families operate on an outdated operating system built around external reward and punishment. Motivation needs an upgrade.
8. Tribes: We need you to lead us – Author Seth Godin
If you could base your whole effort at business on just one author’s books, then pick Seth Godin. Not because most of his books are bestsellers or because he has really good at predicting the future, although, it could be one to believe, but because his business is based on honesty, hard work, and a positive spirit with a drive to bring changes in the world.
Tribes, the book turns you from a sleepwalker into a heretic, by giving you the advice to form your own tribe in business, explaining why they’re the future of business, and showing you that you can be a leader too. This book is not different. Published almost a decade after publishing the book called Permission marketing by Seth. This book teaches you how the internet has made it possible for an ancient phenomenon – the development and growth of tribes – to take place anywhere in the world, all the time.
9. The One Minute Manager – Author Blanchard & Spencer Johnson
This book gives you three simple tips, which take 60 sec each but can tremendously improve your management style for the better- forever.
Three simple tips from this book are:
- Give three tasks to each of your employees and review them within one minute.
- When an employee does an impressive job, use one minute of praise to give your worker positive feedback.
- One-minute reprimand is more than enough to express your dissatisfaction.
Blanchard and Spencer Johnson are legends on their own already. Blanchard is known for his famous book Raving Fans and Spencer for his mega-success book Who Moved My Cheese? And when they two united, this is what we expect from them.
10. Emotional Intelligence – Author Daniel Goleman
This book teaches us the importance of emotion in our lives. How it helps and hurts our ability to navigate the world, followed by practical advice on how to improve our emotional intelligence and why that is the key to leading a successful life. Goleman is a science journalist who has worked with New York Times, reporting brain-behaviour research. Assuming this is one of the reasons why his many books are psychology based. This book is a masterpiece of his many published books, sold over 5 million copies globally.
Must Read:-
- Top 10 pharma companies in the world
- Top 10 company of India 2021
- Top 10 logistic Companies in India
- Top 10 automobile companies in India
- Top 10 fastest growing industries in the world
- Top 10 most charitable person in the world, meet generous people
- Top 10 logistic Companies in India
- Top 10 Company in the Corporate World
- Top 5 Most Fuel Efficient Car In India
- Start Small and go Big: Low-Investment Business Ideas 2021
- Top 10 Electrical Company in India 2021
