Our selection of leadership books that every leader should start reading!
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"The most important books every leader should start reading now!"
Yet another book list!
Welcome to the Global Leadership Society's prestigious Top 100 Best Leadership Books of all time! But hold on a second—why yet another list? The answer is simple: the existing selections don't quite hit the mark for us!
Many lists vacillate between airport "bestseller" collections, offering popular titles devoid of credible academic backing, stacks of academic textbooks too esoteric for real-world practitioners, or simply highly subjective recommendations based on idiosyncratic preferences. The trouble lies in the ambiguity surrounding the criteria used for selection: Who precisely are the books intended for? What exactly is the understanding of leadership? What development model is implied? Who stands behind the list, and what's their purpose? The absence of clarity results in compilations that are both incoherent and fail to explore the depth and range necessary for genuine leadership development. Our mission is to bridge this gap.
This task is undeniably complex. It also means that our selection won't be a one-size-fits-all:
- Who is our list for: Our list is crafted for seasoned leaders embarking on a journey beyond conventions. These are individuals who have skimmed the shelves of airport books, absorbed the (limited) wisdom of popular TED talks, yet find themselves still hungry for more. It's tailored for those who have achieved success in their careers but crave for deeper understanding and impact, and designed to support those who are aspiring to leave a positive legacy by becoming the very best leaders they can be. For this audience, deeper transformation is the goal, and time is a precious commodity.
- What is our understanding of leadership: Leadership for us is not merely about individual development and far from one-dimensional; it requires individuals in leadership roles to spark and contribute to a systemic process of collective development that bridges diverse stakeholders, different levels of inquiry, and numerous disciplines. Therefore, in order to be effective, good leaders must grasp a wide spectrum of knowledge, spanning management, economics, psychology, philosophy, history, political science, and beyond. (For more details see our model below.)
- What is our purpose: Our ambition extends beyond providing just another list of popular books. We aspire to support a transformative journey for a new breed of leaders—individuals poised to mould organizations that can steer us towards a brighter future of work. Our carefully chosen books are meant to accompany, enlighten, cradle, and guide them to acquire the competences required, and thus develop greater wisdom.
We wish you joy on a unique and insightful journey through the best in leadership literature, handpicked by ourselves and many peers!
Selection Process
Amidst our pre-selection phase, we're thrilled to unveil an initial book list, curated with insights from our community members and inspired by our ongoing 'Leaders for Humanity' interview series.
Our commitment is to refine this selection throughout 2024, officially introducing one category each quarter. Subsequent updates will continuously enhance the list in lock step with our "good leadership foundation course."
We're actively seeking fresh ideas and suggestions! Drop us an email at info@leadershipsociety.world with your preferred titles, briefly indicating the category your book belongs to, the specific competencies it aids leaders in acquiring, and how it excels against our selection criteria. Your input is invaluable—we'd love to hear from you!
Selection Criteria for books in each category:
Credible
Based on credibility of the author as well as academic research or well-rounded theories. Determine if the propositions and principles discussed in the book are derived in a transparent and logical manner; evaluate whether the book was appreciated and discussed seriously by other (critical) thinkers.
Insightful
How effectively does the book provoke critical thinking, encourage liminal perspective-taking, and facilitate a structured evaluation of the world? Consider if it challenges traditional thinking and offers new and deeper insights or frameworks.
Inspiring
How effectively is the book written, and to what extent does it motivate readers to embark on a courageous quest for deeper development? Consider reader reviews and recommendations and appreciate the writing style and accessibility of the book.
Actionable
How effective is the book in providing guidance for practical changes to oneself, others, and the organization? Scrutinize its capacity to offer actionable insights, checking for elements such as case studies, tools, or tips that enhance its practicality and applicability.
Developing Good Leadership
How is Leadership Developed? (Draft)
The second crucial consideration for selecting leadership books involves a perspective on leadership development. This not only involves assessing which leadership competencies are essential for leaders' growth, but also requires examining how any form of written knowledge could meaningfully contribute to increasing their proficiency Recognizing that books probably play a modest role in the broader challenge of leadership formation, our approach is grounded in two specific assumptions:
Firstly, concerning content, our leadership development model pivots around the concept of "practical wisdom." This encompasses the capacity of leaders to make and enact sound decisions in the face of uncertainty and potential value conflicts. In our model, individual leaders' wisdom is "scaled" into the organization. In practical terms, this implies that effective organizational leaders must concurrently cultivate competencies falling into four interrelated categories of knowledge:
Personal and Relational Leadership
A robust grasp of diverse psychological leadership development approaches serves as the foundation. Guided by this understanding, leaders actively nurture personal growth and heightened relational awareness and sensitivity within themselves, their teams, and the broader community. Notably, leaders strive to expand their and their organisation's circle of care continually.
Ethical Leadership
Fostering a perceptive and critical comprehension of reality, moral, and political development. The goal is to enhance the collective capacity within oneself and the organization to independently make informed judgments and take responsible decisions. This process involves thoughtful consideration of all stakeholders while striving for justice and the common good.
Organisational Leadership
Cultivating a thorough and discerning understanding of organizational behavior, change dynamics, and innovative management approaches. The objective is to drive the evolution of organizational policies, structures, and character, thereby enhancing the organization's capacity to co-elevate and collaboratively generate solutions for the benefit of all stakeholders.
Ecosystemic Leadership
Cultivating an expansive and diverse understanding of business within larger systems, fostering the ability to harness capabilities beyond the organisation and envision and experiment with innovative solutions that not only benefit customers but also contribute to a just and sustainable economy.
Secondly, concerning didactics, we firmly believe that books should not merely be credible; they should also illuminate new perspectives, ignite inspiration, and provide actionable guidance, thereby making a tangible and meaningful impact. This is reflected in our specific selection criteria above.
YOUR SUGGESTIONS WANTED!
Do you have other inspiring leadership books? Email us or post on LinkedIn @goodleadershipsociety - briefly indicating the category your book belongs to, the specific competencies it aids leaders in acquiring, and how it excels against our selection criteria.
Top 100 Best Leadership Books - Candidates Updated Q4 2023
Community Recommendations
The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations
Inviting Leadership: Invitation-Based Change™ in the New World of Work
Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity
The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America
On Becoming a Leader
Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box
Golf is Not a Game of Perfect
Dialogue: The Art Of Thinking Together
The Undefended Self: Living the Pathwork
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success
The Essential Rumi
I Write What I Like
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
A Promised Land
Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Flex: The Art and Science of Leadership in a Changing World
Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way
The Art of Power
Leder DNA: I Blodet På 25 Topledere
Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean
What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How successful people become even more successful
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader
Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time
REAL: The Inside-Out Guide to Being Yourself
Invisible Power: Insight Principles at Work: Everyone's Hidden Inner Capacity
The Zen Leader: 10 Ways to Go From Barely Managing to Leading Fearlessly
Who Do We Choose to Be?
Senior Leadership Teams: What It Takes to Make Them Great
Learning for Action: A Short Definitive Account of Soft Systems Methodology, and its use for Practitioners, Teachers and Students
The Purpose Effect: Building Meaning In Yourself, Your role, and Your Organization
Open to Think: Slow Down, Think Creatively and Make Better Decisions
Lead. Care. Win.: How to Become a Leader Who Matters
Our Secret Potential: A new approach to performance, purpose and well-being in the 21st century
Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
Work-Life Bloom: How to Nurture a Team that Flourishes
Shared Decision-Making in the Corporate Arena: A Journey into Organizational Cultures of Autonomy and Responsibility
Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership
Leading with Wisdom: Spiritual-based Leadership in Business
The Bhagavad Gita: According to Paramhansa Yogananda
Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
Meditations
What Poetry Brings to Business
Ursprung und Gegenwart
Eros, Kosmos, Logos
Die Logik des Misslingens: Strategisches Denken in komplexen Situationen
1984
Freedom from the Known
Money and the Meaning of Life
I'm Ok, You're Ok
Rethinking Leadership: A New Look at Old Questions
Clear Leadership: Sustaining Real Collaboration and Partnership at Work
CEO Excellence
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
Dare to Lead
Die Kunst sich selbst auszuhalten
Momo
The Leadership Society Team Recommendations
Servant Leadership
Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership
Understanding Organizations
Sensemaking in Organizations
Flourish: A New Understanding Of Happiness And Well-Being - And How To Achieve Them
Positivity: Groundbreaking Research To Release Your Inner Optimist And Thrive
Adaptive Intelligence
Spiral Dynamics (SD) is a model of the evolutionary development of individuals, organizations, and societies. It was initially developed by Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan based on the emergent cyclical theory of Clare W. Graves
Arguing that mature masculinity is not abusive or domineering, Moore and Gillette provide a Jungian introduction to the psychological foundations of a mature, authentic, and revitalized masculinity.
This practical guide offers an approach to organizational change based on the possibility of a more desirable future, experience with the whole system, and activities that signal ""something different is happening this time."
Theories of Development: Concepts and Applications
Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning
Emotion in Organizations
From Dependency to Autonomy: Studies in Organization and Change
Socioanalytic Methods: Discovering the Hidden in Organisations and Social Systems
The Leader on the Couch: A Clinical Approach to Changing People and Organizations
Moral Development and Reality: Beyond the Theories of Kohlberg, Hoffman, and Haidt
How Coaching Works: The Essential Guide to the History and Practice of Effective Coaching
The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity
Triggers: Sparking positive change and making it last
Leadership: A Critical Text
The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development
Systemic Coaching and Constellations
Executive Coaching: Systems-Psychodynamic Perspective
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
The Different Drum
Virtues and Virtue Education in Theory and in Practice
The Path: A New Way to Think About Everything
The Good Society and the Inner World: Psychoanalysis, Politics and Culture
Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity
Coherence: The Science of Exceptional Leadership and Performance
Awakening Compassion at Work
The Expanding Circle
Applying Wisdom to Contemporary World Problems
Servant Leadership
Trust: Reason, Routine, Reflexivity
Invisible Women
Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)
Top 100 Best Leadership Books - Candidates Updated Q4 2023
Community Recommendations
The Fundamentals of Ethics
The Emergence of Leadership: Linking Self-Organization and Ethics
Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust
The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action
The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results
Versuch über die Form des Glücks: Studien zur Ethik
Die Psychologie der Moralentwicklung
Radical Hope
Heart and Mind: The Varieties of Moral Experience
Intellectual Humility
The Leadership Society Team Recommendations
Meaningful Work
Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers
A leader in transpersonal psychology presents the first truly integrative model of spiritual consciousness and Western developmental psychology
The Corrosion of Character – The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism
Democracy And Education
Humanism of the Other
Existential Flourishing: A Phenomenology of the Virtues
Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity
Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship
Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice
The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?
Global Ethics and Global Common Goods
Creating Capabilities
Organisational Learning
Virtuous Emotions
Justice as Fairness: A Restatement
Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
Virtue Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction
Virtue Rediscovered: Deontology, Consequentialism, and Virtue Ethics in the Contemporary Moral Landscape
After Virtue
Handbook of Virtue Ethics in Business and Management
A Better Way to Think about Business
Integrative Economic Ethics: Foundations of a Civilized Market Economy
Virtue at Work: Ethics for Individuals, Managers, and Organizations
The Human Condition
This book presents a method that might be called an Aristotelian common-sense approach to ethical decision making.
In Development as Freedom Amartya Sen explains how in a world of unprecedented increase in overall opulence millions of people living in the Third World are still unfree.
Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art
The Morality Of Happiness
Beyond Civility: The Competing Obligations of Citizenship
The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics
The Wretched of the Earth
Credo
The Social Contract
A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition
The Republic
Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live with Themselves
Power: A Radical View
Frameworks of Power
Top 100 Best Leadership Books - Candidates Updated Q4 2023
Community Recommendations
Adaptive Leadership: The Heifetz Collection
Social Power and the CEO: Leadership and Trust in a Sustainable Free Enterprise System
Executive Leadership: A Practical Guide to Managing Complexity
The Outward Mindset: How to Change Lives and Transform Organizations
Exploration in Management
Critical Leadership Theory: Integrating Transdisciplinary Perspectives
Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest
Systems Leadership: Creating Positive Organisations
Real Power: Stages of Personal Power in Organizations
The Power of Invisible Leadership: How a Compelling Common Purpose Inspires Exceptional Leadership
Moments of Truth
Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation
Leadership in Organizations
The Leadership Shadow: How to Recognize and Avoid Derailment, Hubris and Overdrive
Humble Leadership, Second Edition: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust
Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization
The Connecting Leader: Serving Concurrently as a Leader and a Follower
Mastering Leadership: An Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results
Leadership Without Easy Answers
Built To Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups
Messing about in Problems: An Informal Structured Approach to Their Identification and Management
The Unconscious at Work: A Tavistock Approach to Making Sense of Organizational Life
Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization
Cynefin - Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World
The Quantum Leader: A Revolution in Business Thinking and Practice
High Output Management
The Essential Drucker
The Fearless Organization
The Leadership Society Team Recommendations
Rediscovering Institutions
Collaborative Entrepreneurship: How Networked Firms Use Continuous Innovation to Create Economic Wealth
Heart of Enterprise
The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship
Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them
Many Voices One Song
Reinventing Organizations
Holacracy: The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy
Open Strategy: Mastering Disruption from Outside the C-Suite
Zero Distance: Management in the Quantum Age
The Fractal Organization: Creating sustainable organizations with the Viable System Model
Leading by Weak Signals: Using Small Data to Master Complexity:
In most organizations nearly everyone is doing a second job no one is paying them for--namely, covering their weaknesses, trying to look their best, and managing other people's impressions of them.
Change: How to Make Big Things Happen
Critical Management Studies
Top 100 Best Leadership Books - Candidates Updated Q4 2023
Community Recommendations
Leading from the Emerging Future
The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis
Values
The Leadership Society Team Recommendations
Civil Economy and Organisation
This book asks why it is that the things we value most – from the environment to frontline workers to keeping children well fed and educated – are so often neglected by the market.
The Future of the Commons
Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
Virtues, Morals and Markets: Why Moral Identity Matters
What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
Cosmopolis
The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism: and Other Writings
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond
Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach
Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice
The Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics: Theorizing, Analyzing, and Transforming Capitalism
Power And Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist And Capitalist Dictatorship
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy
Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump
The Common Good
How to be an Anti-capitalist for the 21st Century
The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time
Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy
The Road to Serfdom
The Case for Socialism
The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy
How will Capitalism end?
Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century
Thinking in Systems
Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home
Finance and Good Society
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