The University Libraries’ Career Collection is a treasure trove of valuable resources for professionals at any stage of their careers, from networking and interviewing to pursuing leadership positions. In this list, experts from the Libraries and the Career and Professional Development Center (CPDC) recommend ten books that focus on management and leadership.
Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't
Sinek, Simon (2017)
Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home feeling fulfilled. This is not a crazy, idealized notion. Today, in many successful organizations, great leaders create environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things.
In his work with organizations around the world, Simon Sinek noticed that some teams trust each other so deeply that they would literally put their lives on the line for each other. Other teams, no matter what incentives are offered, are doomed to infighting, fragmentation and failure. Why?
The answer became clear during a conversation with a Marine Corps general. "Officers eat last," he said. Sinek watched as the most junior Marines ate first while the most senior Marines took their place at the back of the line. What's symbolic in the chow hall is deadly serious on the battlefield: Great leaders sacrifice their own comfort--even their own survival--for the good of those in their care.
Too many workplaces are driven by cynicism, paranoia, and self-interest. But the best ones foster trust and cooperation because their leaders build what Sinek calls a "Circle of Safety" that separates the security inside the team from the challenges outside.
Sinek illustrates his ideas with fascinating true stories that range from the military to big business, from government to investment banking. - Publisher's Description
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Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts
Brown, Brené (2018)
Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential.
When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work.
But daring leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires skill-building around traits that are deeply and uniquely human. The irony is that we’re choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the exact same time as we’re scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines and AI can’t do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage, to start.
Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question:
How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture? In this new book, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BSstyle that millions of readers have come to expect and love. Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100 percent teachable, observable, and measurable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.” Whether you’ve read "Daring Greatly" and "Rising Strong" or you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, this book is for anyone who wants to step up and into brave leadership. - Publisher's Description
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Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow
Rath, Tom; Conchie, Barry (2008)
More than a decade ago, Gallup unveiled the results of a landmark 30-year research project that ignited a global conversation on the topic of strengths. Since then, more than 23 million people have taken Gallup’s CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder) assessment, which forms the core of several books on this topic, including the #1 international bestseller "StrengthsFinder 2.0."
In recent years, while continuing to learn more about strengths, Gallup scientists have also been examining decades of data on the topic of leadership. They studied more than 1 million work teams, conducted more than 20,000 in-depth interviews with leaders, and even interviewed more than 10,000 followers around the world to ask exactly why they followed the most important leader in their life.
Gallup reveals the results of this research in "Strengths Based Leadership." Based on Gallup’s discoveries, the book identifies three keys to being a more effective leader: knowing your strengths and investing in others’ strengths, getting people with the right strengths on your team, and understanding and meeting the four basic needs of those who look to you for leadership.
As you read "Strengths Based Leadership," you’ll hear firsthand accounts from some of the most successful organizational leaders in recent history, from the founder of Teach For America to the president of The Ritz-Carlton, as they discuss how their unique strengths have driven their success. Filled with novel research and actionable ideas, "Strengths Based Leadership" will give you a new road map for leading people toward a better future.
A unique access code allows you to take a leadership version of Gallup’s CliftonStrengths assessment. The leadership version provides you with specific strategies for leading with your top five strengths and enables you to plot the strengths of your team based on the four domains of leadership strength revealed in the book. - Publisher's Description
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The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World
Heifetz, Ronald; Grashow, Alexander; Linsky, Martin (2009)
When change requires you to challenge people's familiar reality, it can be difficult, dangerous work. Whatever the context--whether in the private or the public sector--many will feel threatened as you push though major changes. But as a leader, you need to find a way to make it work.
Ron Heifetz first defined this problem with his distinctive theory of adaptive leadership in "Leadership Without Easy Answers." In a second book, "Leadership on the Line," Heifetz and coauthor Marty Linsky highlighted the individual and organizational dangers of leading through deep change in business, politics, and community life. Now, Heifetz, Linsky, and coauthor Alexander Grashow are taking the next step: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership is a hands-on, practical guide containing stories, tools, diagrams, cases, and worksheets to help you develop your skills as an adaptive leader, able to take people outside their comfort zones and assess and address the toughest challenges.
The authors have decades of experience helping people and organizations create cultures of adaptive leadership. In today's rapidly changing world, "The Practice of Adaptive Leadership" can be your handbook to meeting the demands of leadership in the midst of complexity. - Publisher's Description
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Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
Grenny, Joseph (2022)
The book that revolutionized business communications has been updated for today’s workplace. "Crucial Conversations" provides powerful skills to ensure every conversation―especially difficult ones―leads to the results you want. Written in an engaging and witty style, it teaches readers how to be persuasive rather than abrasive, how to get back to productive dialogue when others blow up or clam up, and it offers powerful skills for mastering high-stakes conversations, regardless of the topic or person.
When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation poorly and suffer the consequences; or apply the lessons and strategies of "Crucial Conversations" and improve relationships and results.
Whether they take place at work or at home, with your coworkers or your spouse, "Crucial Conversations" have a profound impact on your career, your happiness, and your future. With the skills you learn in this book, you'll never have to worry about the outcome of a Crucial Conversation again. - Publisher's Description
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Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work
Tulshyan, Ruchika; Oluo, Ijeoma (2022)
Few would disagree that inclusion is both the right thing to do and good for business. Then why are we so terrible at it? If we believe in the morality and the profitability of including people of diverse and underestimated backgrounds in the workplace, why don’t we do it? Because, explains Ruchika Tulshyan in this eye-opening book, we don’t realize that inclusion takes awareness, intention, and regular practice. Inclusion doesn’t just happen; we have to work at it. Tulshyan presents inclusion best practices, showing how leaders and organizations can meaningfully promote inclusion and diversity.
Tulshyan centers the workplace experience of women of color, who are subject to both gender and racial bias. It is at the intersection of gender and race, she shows, that we discover the kind of inclusion policies that benefit all. Tulshyan debunks the idea of the “level playing field” and explains how leaders and organizations can use their privilege for good by identifying and exposing bias, knowing that they typically have less to lose in speaking up than a woman of color does. She explains why “leaning in” doesn’t work—and dismantling structural bias does; warns against hiring for “culture fit,” arguing for “culture add” instead; and emphasizes the importance of psychological safety in the workplace—you need to know that your organization has your back. With this important book, Tulshyan shows us how we can make progress toward inclusion and diversity—and we must start now. - Publisher's Description
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Anti-Racist Leadership: How to Transform Corporate Culture in a Race-Conscious World
White, James; White, Krista (2022)
Business leaders ready to take a bold stance to make the world better for employees, for consumers, and for the greater community: Read this book. As leaders, you have the unique ability to reach thousands of employees and millions of consumers. It's time for you to build a truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment and, by extension, a more just society.
This book provides a comprehensive plan for leaders who are ready to get serious about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and to create an anti-racist company culture.
As a Black man at the highest levels of corporate America for over thirty years, James D. White has built a deep understanding of how to operationalize and integrate DEI agendas. As CEO and Chairman of the global smoothie chain Jamba Juice, he led a remarkable turnaround to make the company a model of strong performance built on a foundation of a diverse, anti-racist culture. He also draws on the experiences of other leaders at the vanguard of DEI. White writes with his daughter, Krista White, who brings to this book the heart and sensibilities of a younger generation devoted to equity and inclusion and intent on justice.
Practical lessons and real-world examples of techniques used by seasoned experts will empower leaders who, at this urgent moment, are asking themselves what so many have asked James White: What can I do? You can start by reading this book. - Publisher's Description
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Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter
Wiseman, Liz; Covey, Stephen (2017)
Are you a genius or a genius maker? We've all had experience with two dramatically different types of leaders. The first type drain intelligence, energy, and capability from the ones around them and always need to be the smartest ones in the room. These are the idea killers, the energy sappers, the diminishers of talent and commitment. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. When these leaders walk into a room, lightbulbs go off over people's heads, ideas flow, and problems get solved. These are the leaders who inspire employees to stretch themselves to deliver results that surpass expectations. These are the Multipliers. And the world needs more of them, especially now, when leaders are expected to do more with less.
In this engaging and highly practical book, leadership expert Liz Wiseman and management consultant Greg McKeown explore these two leadership styles, persuasively showing how Multipliers can have a resoundingly positive and profitable effect on organizations getting more done with fewer resources, developing and attracting talent, and cultivating new ideas and energy to drive organizational change and innovation.
In analyzing data from more than 150 leaders, Wiseman and McKeown have identified five disciplines that distinguish Multipliers from Diminishers. These five disciplines are not based on innate talent; indeed, they are skills and practices that everyone can learn to use, even lifelong and recalcitrant Diminishers. Lively, real-world case studies and practical tips and techniques bring to life each of these principles, showing you how to become a Multiplier too, whether you are a new or an experienced manager. Just imagine what you could accomplish if you could harness all the energy and intelligence around you. "Multipliers" will show you how. - Publisher's Description
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The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You
Zhuo, Julie (2019)
Congratulations, you're a manager! After you pop the champagne, accept the shiny new title, and step into this thrilling next chapter of your career, the truth descends like a fog: you don't really know what you're doing.
That's exactly how Julie Zhuo felt when she became a rookie manager at the age of 25. She stared at a long list of logistics--from hiring to firing, from meeting to messaging, from planning to pitching--and faced a thousand questions and uncertainties. How was she supposed to spin teamwork into value? How could she be a good steward of her reports' careers? What was the secret to leading with confidence in new and unexpected situations?
Now, having managed dozens of teams spanning tens to hundreds of people, Julie knows the most important lesson of all: great managers are made, not born. If you care enough to be reading this, then you care enough to be a great manager. Whether you're new to the job, a veteran leader, or looking to be promoted, this is the handbook you need to be the kind of manager you wish you had. - Publisher's Description
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8 Paradoxes of Leadership Agility: How to Lead and Inspire in the Real World
Yeo, Chuen Chuen (2020)
The world is ever-changing in unpredictable ways. As a leader, you need to constantly re-examine your assumptions of what it means to be "great" as old models of leadership quickly fade into irrelevance. In short, you need an agile mindset. But how can you, as a leader, become agile?
We need to update and disrupt past definitions of leadership -- to challenge ourselves and test our relevance often. We need to recognize challenges swiftly and respond decisively, especially when our environment is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. "8 Paradoxes of Leadership Agility" teaches you how to rise to your challenges by describing how leaders met their challenging conundrums with agility and emerged stronger.
This book outlines a powerful model and actionable steps using the Re4 Coaching Model developed by Chuen Chuen. The Re4 Coaching Model, clearly illustrated in this book, helps you see their world with objective clarity, understand what has to be done and why. Through this coaching model, you gain the resolve and confidence to overcome challenges with authenticity, integrate theoretical learning with practical steps and learn to thrive. - Publisher's Description
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For additional information, check out the Libraries’ Career Collection resources. Physical copies of books are located on the second floor of Hunt Library, and eBooks can be found in the catalog. You can also visit the CPDC website to find additional resources, or make an appointment with a Career Consultant.
Feature image by Matteo Vistocco on Unsplash