The 10 books every leader should read
Leadership is not a position. It’s a set of attitudes.
Leadership is not a position. It’s a set of attitudes.
Why do so many teams never become high-performing? The answer to this question eluded me. I always wondered what holds teams from reaching their maximum potential. My curiosity pushed me to dive deep into the study of leadership.
Over the last few years, I read many books about leadership to understand what makes a great leader. Some of these books made a profound difference in my understanding of leadership. Let me share my list with you.
(Note: The links mentioned in this article are affiliate links. If you choose to purchase these books through these links, it will help me earn a small amount of money — at no extra cost to you. Thanks!)
Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
― Simon Sinek
What is leadership? Many people think leadership is a position you gain in life. I also used to have this perspective. But leadership is a set of attitudes. People who are not afraid of stepping into the unknown, taking care of the others without waiting for anything in exchange, are leaders.
Regardless of what you do, you can become a leader. The book, Leaders Eat Last, is a fantastic read. It is full of leadership examples. After reading this book, you can get a better understanding of how a great leader acts. What do great leaders do?
Inspire action
Create a circle of safety
Tell the truth
Lead people instead of numbers
Choose to eat last
High-performing teams have an environment that allows them to thrive. The leadership is responsible for cultivating a healthy and sustainable environment. Leaders can only be successful if they understand that leaders are responsible for people who are responsible for the numbers.
Principles, Ray Dalio
“If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential”
― Ray Dalio
How can we thrive in our personal lives? How can we become successful in our professional lives? Ray Dalio wrote the extensive book Principles, where he openly shares the principles that led him to become a successful person.
Principles are fundamentals for us to have a better life. Without them, we may end up running in circles. Principles can guide us through awkward moments. If we step back and give us the chance to analyze the situation and compare it to our principles, the critical choices to make will become clear. However, until we define our principles, we will struggle to identify what works best for us.
Until principles are evident within the team, high performance is unreachable.
Coaching Agile Teams, Lyssa Adkins
“We practice mastering ourselves in the moment so that we can better open ourselves to being a servant leader and to harness our emotions and choose what to do with our reactions.”
― Lyssa Adkins
Why some agile teams become high-performing teams while some remain mediocre? I’ve always wondered if there’s a set of actions to transform ordinary teams into high-performing ones. Lyssa Adkins clarifies the secrets of coaching agile teams. Shu-Ha-Ri is a promising approach:
Shu — “Follow the Rule”: learning how to play the game.
Ha — “Break the Rule”: make the game better for the team.
Ri — “Be the Rule”: evolve the game to reach the best of the team.
For me, one insight stood out in the book Coaching Agile Teams. Coaches should meet the team one step ahead. The coach should always think ahead about the next best step for the team on their Agile journey. It’s essential to understand what the team can reach, but without knowing where the team is, it’s impossible to help them to become a better version of themselves.
The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni
All companies have one aspect in common. They are made of people. How the interaction between the people happens will define how successful the company can be. Why some companies reach so much while some are always struggling for survival?
Ordinary companies have only a group of people working together, which is not a team. In such a scenario, the groups live in an artificial harmony, they don’t discuss, but they also don’t deliver on their commitments. They fail to achieve what they promised.
Successful companies have passionate teams working towards a common goal. They discuss passionately, argue, commit, and deliver what promised.
“Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”
― Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
Good to Great, Jim Collins
“Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”
― Jim Collins
First who, then where. Right people on the bus, wrong people out of the bus. Jim Collins insists on hiring the right people to the company is crucial to be successful. Great leaders find the right people to be with them, and only after that can they define where to go. Without the right people on board, the company will inevitably fail to achieve the goals.
Leadership is a vital difference in companies that make the leap from good to great. All companies have leaders, but few have a level five leader. The most significant difference is the humility. The Level Five executive is someone who leads by example. Someone who is not interested in getting credit for anything. A person who is humble and who believes the achievements were the result of the incredible people around.
“A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.”
― Jim Collins
Made to Stick, Chip Heath & Dan Heath
“The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern.”
― Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Leaders must be great communicators. It’s impossible to lead a team without mastering communication. Yet, it’s such a daunting skill to master. The book, Made to Stick, describes why some ideas stick and others disappear.
If you want to learn how to communicate in a way that resonates with people, Made to Stick, is a must-read. Until people care about the message, nothing will happen. But once they connect to the message, changes can occur.
The authors’ Chip & Dan Heath, shared extensive examples of communication styles and methods that have worked for centuries. This research led to their framework for creating ideas that stick.
Measure What Matters, John Doerr
“When people have conflicting priorities or unclear, meaningless, or arbitrarily shifting goals, they become frustrated, cynical, and demotivated.”
― John Doerr
I’ve been to many companies, where we defined OKRs (Objective Key Results) per quarter. But the OKRs had conflicting objectives. Instead of helping the teams to follow a common direction, we fought because our goals did not align. Every quarter, we would fail to meet our objectives. Our morale tanked.
After reading Measure What Matters, I understood why we failed. The book contains many examples of companies succeeding by using OKRs. By reading this book, you can understand how to implement OKRs properly. Meaningful OKRs show the following characteristics:
Relate to goals to achieve instead of features to develop.
Challenging to achieve while extremely motivating.
Put the teams in a single direction.
The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle
“The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled.”
― Daniel Coyle
Successful teams are much more than a group of people. They have an influential culture behind the scenes which binds them together. Great leaders strive to cultivate a healthy culture.
Without a meaningful culture, teams cannot achieve astonishing results. Many companies fail to thrive due to a weak culture. The book Culture Code helps us to understand the importance of culture and how to cultivate a culture that will put the team in a successful path.
Strong cultures have the following traits:
Safety: encourage people to take risks and learn from failures. Open discussions are welcome. Credit is always shared.
Vulnerability: embrace discomfort. People know they can be vulnerable because there’s mutual support.
Purpose: people share something in common. They know the why behind their activities.
The Trillion Dollar Coach, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg & Alan Eagle
“He believed in striving for the best idea, not consensus (“I hate consensus!” he would growl), intuitively understanding what numerous academic studies have shown: that the goal of consensus leads to “groupthink” and inferior decisions.”
― Eric Schmidt
Bill Campbell was a humble person. He was always behind the scenes. He never wanted to be in the spotlight. Many people tried to write a biography of him, but he never allowed it. It was only possible after Bill passed away. However, his attitudes can teach us profound lessons.
For more than 15 years Campbell coached, among others, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Sundar Pichai at Google, Steve Jobs at Apple, Brad Smith at Intuit, John Donahoe at eBay, Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, Dick Costolo at Twitter, and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook.
Bill Campbell was considered the best friend of almost everyone he coached. His coachees knew, Bill was always available for them. No matter when and what for, Bill would be ready to help. He made the time for everyone. He was humble and selfless.
Beyond being a great friend, Bill guided those he coached in decision making that led to massive business successes. He helped them reach beyond what they could imagine. Bill knew how to find a diamond in the rough.
Give and Take, Adam Grant
“The more I help out, the more successful I become. But I measure success in what it has done for the people around me. That is the real accolade.”
― Adam Grant
Give and Take is a great book to understand some behaviors we can observe in our daily life. According to Adam Grant, there are three types of people:
Givers: help the other whenever they can without expecting anything in exchange.
Matchers: give back precisely what received or only help if get something in exchange.
Takers: do everything to make advantages on the others. Focus on self-progress.
Many takers will get to the top positions, but eventually, they will fall. While givers may take longer to reach senior positions, once it happens, they will last longer because they want to help the others. Givers are selfless. They help the world to be a better place. All high-performing teams I observed had only givers.
Endnote
Being a leader is extremely challenging and demanding. Being a leader means facing the unknown, being bold to take risks, and intelligent to learn from failures. Great leaders help people to achieve what they believe to be impossible. Great leaders don’t speak a lot. Their actions show what matters the most.
The set of books I shared helped me to understand the characteristics of a high-performing team. A group of people cannot reach high performance from one day to the other. As a team, to achieve a high-performance level, a daunting journey awaits for them. But the results will pay out all the efforts. Leadership plays an essential role in forming high-performing teams.
