A great leader can remain great and maintain their greatness if they’re continuously growing and keeping up with the fast changing leadership style. We all need to refine, redefine and reinvent our leadership skills from time to time. There are some great leadership books out there that can help you master the art of good leadership. Whether you’re looking to revamp your skills, polish it or learn new techniques, these books can massively help you achieve your ambition of exponentially growing your business and maintaining your status as a great exponential leader.
1. Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
In several of my blogs I’ve talked about how every great leader realizes and understands their strength and success comes from a strong team. In Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek furthers this notion emphasizing on the importance and necessity of leaders making sacrifices for their followers. And as millennials continue to grow as the visible majority in companies, the chapter he writes on leading this breed of workforce becomes even more applicable for exponential leaders today.
2. The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier
Stanier is a coaching expert and in his book, The Coaching Habit, applies his experience and knowledge to seven questions which aim to trigger responses from your team or address roadblocks. As a leader playing the role of a coach is vital to grow and test your team’s true potential and the learning you’ll extract from this often humorous book will help you enhance that ability.
3. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Dan Pink
Any successful entrepreneur or leader knows that timing in business is everything. It’s what makes or breaks a deal and spells success. In the book “When”, Dan Pink explores the most productive time of day to get the most of your work done, the perfect time of the year to kick off a new project and the finest moment in life to switch jobs. This book will give you a whole new perspective of how to organize and manage your time.
4. The EQ Leader by Steven J. Stein
Though the concept of Emotional Intelligence isn’t a new one, Steven Stein emphasizes on why this is one of the most important and fundamental skill that any leader should possess. His book The EQ Leader is particularly a relevant book in the advent of the digital age when automation will drive technical needs and managers are challenged with people interactions.
5. Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord
Patty McCord is the former Chief Talent Officer of one of the most influential and disruptive companies that spawned in the digital age – Netflix. In her book Powerful, she shares her insights on retention, recruitment and building a culture of high performance and exponential growth. If you were to sum up what it takes to manage talent in the age of rapid growth, the word to describe it would be radical. And this book is all about radical talent management.
6. Radical Business Model Transformation by Alexander Zimmermann, Carsten Linz, and Martin Hoffmann
Digitalization is everywhere! In you think of traveling, shopping, how you pay and how you communicate, it’s all about digitalization. In Radical Business Model Transformation: Gaining the Competitive Edge in a Disruptive World, the authors break down the complex world of digitalization making readers appreciate its importance and significance and how businesses simply cannot avoid it, if they are keen to remain competitive and relevant. This book will prepare any leader on how to become an exponential leader.
7. Great at Work by Morten Hansen
Morten Hansen is a coauthor of the famous business guru, Jim Collins, and in his book Great at Work, he captures his 5 year research of 5,000 managers and employees. What he produces from this research are seven of the best practices that they shared. The success stories of exceptional leaders he showcases is an eye and mind opener.
There are plenty other leadership books that I haven’t mentioned yet, however, I will have a subsequent post in the months to come that’ll cover them as well. For now, these are a great place to start if you’re seeking help getting into an exponential mindset. Have you recently read any book that stimulated your exponential leadership style? Do share them in the comments below.
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Paul Keijzer is the CEO and Founder of Engage Consulting and the co-Founder of The Talent Games, which aims to transform HR by digitising talent processes and creating more engaging and productive workplaces through gamification and mobile technology. As a global HR and Leadership Management expert, Paul knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.