Want to Change Your Life? Start Reading Now
Every January, I see them.
“What I read last year.”
“The 12 books that changed my thinking.”
“My reading list for the new year.”
“What I plan to read this year.”
I enjoy those posts. I’ve found some terrific books because someone else took the time to share what influenced them.
But I’ve also wondered: Why January?
Why do we wait for a new calendar, a new year, or some arbitrary starting line to decide we're going to grow?
Want to change your life?
Start reading now.
Not January 1. Not when things slow down. Not when you finally have more time.
Now.
Build the list now. Choose the first book now. Read the first chapter now.
Read now. Learn now. Grow now.
Leadership development is too important to become another New Year's resolution.
The Promotion That Changes Everything
One of the most common mistakes organizations make is assuming that because someone is exceptionally good at doing the work, they'll naturally be good at leading the people who do it.
Promoting the strongest technician can create the weakest manager if leadership skills are treated as automatic.
Yesterday, success depended on how well you performed the work.
Then comes the promotion.
Overnight, the definition of success changes.
Now you're expected to set expectations, delegate, coach, document, resolve conflict, protect morale, develop people, make difficult decisions, and sometimes make decisions that affect another person's livelihood.
Where exactly were you supposed to learn all of that?
Technical expertise doesn't teach someone how to tell a respected former peer that their performance has slipped.
Loyalty doesn't teach someone how to apply standards consistently.
Being well-liked doesn't teach someone how to hold people accountable.
And a title certainly doesn't teach someone how to remain calm when everyone else in the room is frustrated.
Those are leadership skills.
They have to be learned.
Build a Leadership Library
That's one reason I believe every aspiring leader, and every organization developing leaders, should have a leadership reading list.
Not a bookshelf designed to impress visitors.
A working library.
Books that get opened, marked up, questioned, discussed, challenged, and applied.
Read about difficult conversations before you have to conduct one.
Study accountability before you have to confront a former peer.
Learn about trust before your team stops giving it to you.
Understand culture before you unintentionally create one you never wanted.
Study change before you're responsible for leading people through it.
Learn how to coach before someone's development depends on your ability to do it.
A good leadership book gives us the opportunity to learn from someone else's experience before we're forced to learn exclusively from our own mistakes.
That's a pretty good return on a few hours of reading.
Don't Just Read. Build a Plan.
A list of 100 books can be intimidating.
So don't try to read 100 books.
Start with one.
Then build a plan.
Choose six books for the next six months. Or twelve books for the next twelve.
Perhaps your personal leadership curriculum includes one book on communication, one on culture, one on difficult conversations, one on emotional intelligence, one on strategy, one on coaching, and one on servant leadership.
Then don't simply finish each book and put it on the shelf.
Ask yourself:
What did I learn?
What did I disagree with?
Where do I see this happening in my organization?
What does this expose about my own leadership?
What am I going to do differently because I read it?
That's where reading becomes development.
Better Yet, Don't Read Alone
Here's another idea.
Form a leadership book club.
Invite five or six people who are serious about becoming better leaders. They don't necessarily need to work for the same company, hold the same position, or even work in the same profession.
In fact, some of the richest conversations happen when they don't.
Choose a book. Read a few chapters. Get together once a week or once a month and talk about them.
But don't turn it into a book report.
Talk about application.
Where have you seen this principle work?
Where have you watched it fail?
What would this look like in your organization?
What leadership situation are you dealing with right now that this chapter helps you understand?
What are you going to try differently this week?
Suddenly you're not learning from one author.
You're learning from the author and everyone sitting around the table.
I've experienced the value of this kind of conversation myself. A leadership book club creates something solitary reading can't always provide: other people see things in a chapter that you missed. Someone challenges an assumption you've carried for years. Someone tells a story that makes an abstract leadership principle suddenly very real.
That's growth.
You Don't Even Have to Start Your Own
Maybe organizing a book club isn't practical right now.
Then listen to one.
Leadership book club podcasts can let you sit in on the conversation while you're driving, exercising, traveling, or getting ready for work.
One example is the Leadership Lounge Book Club by CDAERIS Agency.
The value isn't simply hearing someone summarize a leadership book. It's listening to people wrestle with the ideas, compare them with their own experiences, and translate what they're reading into situations leaders actually face.
Think of the possibilities.
Read the book. Listen to the discussion. Consider another person's perspective. Then decide what you're going to apply.
That turns reading from consumption into development.
And it removes another excuse we sometimes give ourselves: “I don't have time.”
Maybe you don't have an uninterrupted hour every evening.
But you probably have twenty minutes somewhere.
Ten pages before bed.
A chapter over lunch.
An audiobook during your commute.
A leadership book club podcast on the way to work.
Growth doesn't always require finding more time. Sometimes it requires becoming more intentional about the time we already have.
Organizations Should Be Doing This Too
If you're promoting people into management, give them more than a new title, a job description, and the keys to the office.
Give them a curriculum.
Give them books.
Give them a mentor.
And consider creating an organizational leadership book club.
Imagine selecting six leadership books each year and bringing your supervisors together once a month to discuss what they're learning.
Now the conversation isn't theoretical.
“What did this chapter make you think differently about?”
“Where are we getting this right?”
“Where aren't we?”
“How does this apply to the team you're leading?”
“What are you going to do differently?”
That's leadership development.
Books don't replace training, coaching, mentoring, or experience.
They make all four more valuable because they give developing leaders frameworks and language for understanding what they're experiencing.
Managers need training before their mistakes become everyone else's workplace experience.
Because when we promote someone without preparing them to lead, they aren't the only person who pays for the learning curve.
Their entire team does.
100 Books Every Leader Should Read
Foundations of Leadership
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — Stephen R. Covey
Good to Great — Jim Collins
The Effective Executive — Peter F. Drucker
How to Win Friends and Influence People — Dale Carnegie
The Leadership Challenge — James M. Kouzes & Barry Z. Posner
On Becoming a Leader — Warren Bennis
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership — John C. Maxwell
Leadership and Self-Deception — The Arbinger Institute
True North — Bill George
Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 — John C. Maxwell
Servant Leadership, Character & Trust
Servant Leadership — Robert K. Greenleaf
The Speed of Trust — Stephen M.R. Covey
Dare to Lead — Brené Brown
The Trusted Advisor — David H. Maister, Charles H. Green & Robert M. Galford
The Go-Giver — Bob Burg & John David Mann
The Motive — Patrick Lencioni
The Servant — James C. Hunter
Wooden on Leadership — John Wooden & Steve Jamison
Lead by Legendary Example — Jay Jacobson
Integrity — Henry Cloud
Teams & Organizational Culture
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team — Patrick Lencioni
The Culture Code — Daniel Coyle
The Advantage — Patrick Lencioni
Team of Teams — Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman & Chris Fussell
The Ideal Team Player — Patrick Lencioni
Multipliers — Liz Wiseman
The Fearless Organization — Amy C. Edmondson
Turn the Ship Around! — L. David Marquet
Tribal Leadership — Dave Logan, John King & Halee Fischer-Wright
The Wisdom of Teams — Jon R. Katzenbach & Douglas K. Smith
Communication, Conflict & Difficult Conversations
Crucial Conversations — Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler & Emily Gregory
Difficult Conversations — Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton & Sheila Heen
Radical Candor — Kim Scott
Thanks for the Feedback — Douglas Stone & Sheila Heen
Never Split the Difference — Chris Voss & Tahl Raz
Nonviolent Communication — Marshall B. Rosenberg
Fierce Conversations — Susan Scott
Just Listen — Mark Goulston
Supercommunicators — Charles Duhigg
Getting to Yes — Roger Fisher, William Ury & Bruce Patton
Management, Coaching & Developing People
The One Minute Manager — Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson
High Output Management — Andrew S. Grove
The First 90 Days — Michael D. Watkins
Being the Boss — Linda A. Hill & Kent Lineback
The Making of a Manager — Julie Zhuo
First, Break All the Rules — Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
Coaching for Performance — John Whitmore
The Coaching Habit — Michael Bungay Stanier
One Minute Mentoring — Ken Blanchard & Claire Diaz-Ortiz
The Manager's Path — Camille Fournier
Emotional Intelligence & Self-Awareness
Emotional Intelligence — Daniel Goleman
Primal Leadership — Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 — Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves
Insight — Tasha Eurich
Ego Is the Enemy — Ryan Holiday
Think Again — Adam Grant
Mindset — Carol S. Dweck
The Courage to Be Disliked — Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga
The Daily Stoic — Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman
Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
Strategy, Decisions & Execution
Playing to Win — A.G. Lafley & Roger L. Martin
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt
Measure What Matters — John Doerr
Execution — Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan
The 4 Disciplines of Execution — Chris McChesney, Sean Covey & Jim Huling
Essentialism — Greg McKeown
The ONE Thing — Gary Keller & Jay Papasan
Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
Decisive — Chip Heath & Dan Heath
The Checklist Manifesto — Atul Gawande
Change, Adaptability & Innovation
Leading Change — John P. Kotter
Switch — Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Who Moved My Cheese? — Spencer Johnson
The Innovator's Dilemma — Clayton M. Christensen
Originals — Adam Grant
Range — David Epstein
Antifragile — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Obstacle Is the Way — Ryan Holiday
Upstream — Dan Heath
The Infinite Game — Simon Sinek
Purpose, Motivation & Influence
Start With Why — Simon Sinek
Leaders Eat Last — Simon Sinek
Drive — Daniel H. Pink
Grit — Angela Duckworth
Give and Take — Adam Grant
Influence — Robert B. Cialdini
Man's Search for Meaning — Viktor E. Frankl
The Power of Moments — Chip Heath & Dan Heath
The Happiness Advantage — Shawn Achor
Extreme Ownership — Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
Perspective, Experience & Leadership Legacy
Legacy — James Kerr
The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz
Creativity, Inc. — Ed Catmull & Amy Wallace
Shoe Dog — Phil Knight
The Ride of a Lifetime — Robert Iger
Principles — Ray Dalio
The Last Lecture — Randy Pausch
The Boys in the Boat — Daniel James Brown
HBR's 10 Must Reads on Leadership — Harvard Business Review
Leadership in War — Andrew Roberts
Want to Change Your Life?
Don't bookmark this list and promise yourself you'll come back to it in January.
Don't wait until December to post about the books you wish you'd read.
And don't convince yourself that you need to read all 100.
Pick one.
Order it. Download it. Borrow it. Listen to it.
Better yet, find some people willing to read it with you.
Start a leadership book club.
If that's not possible, find a leadership book club podcast and join someone else's conversation. The Leadership Lounge Book Club by CDAERIS Agency is one example.
Then make reading part of the rhythm of your life.
Ten pages tonight.
A chapter tomorrow morning.
Twenty minutes instead of twenty minutes of scrolling.
An audiobook during the commute.
A book club conversation over coffee.
A leadership podcast on the drive home.
And then apply something.
Because the objective isn't to someday be able to say, “I read 50 leadership books.”
The better question is:
“What did those 50 books c
hange about the way I lead?”
You don't have to wait until January to become the leader you hope to be next year.
Begin now.
Read now.
Listen now.
Discuss now.
Apply now.
Grow now.
Lead better now.
One of the books on my own leadership journey eventually became the book I wrote. Lead by Legendary Example grew from more than four decades of watching leadership succeed, watching it fail, and discovering that leadership reveals itself most clearly when circumstances become difficult.
Lead by Legendary Example by Jay U. Jacobson, LUTCF, CPC, CFSP was named a finalist for the International Impact Award.
If you want to go deeper into how leadership actually shows up under pressure, Lead by Legendary Example lives here:
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