Having outlined some of my leadership favourites, I wonder: what are yours? I invite you to leave your recommendations here.

And I wonder, too, what topics you see as essential resources for leaders? Please share your views here.

Thank you.

What do you do when some of your favourite reads and other resources don’t quite land under a clear and easy heading? Below are some of the books and other resources that I and others have delighted in:

The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
Joel Bakan

Available as a book and as a DVD, Bakan’s book makes a devastating case against corporate greed, exploring the implications of the laws which govern the way we do business.

One Minute Manager, One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey etc.
Kenneth H. Blanchard

These small books (and others in the series) do a fantastic job of making leadership easy to understand and to do. More than any other books I’ve recommended here they pass the “transatlantic flight test” – they’re quick to read and easy to stow in your luggage.

Good to Great and How the Mighty Fall
Jim Collins

I confess I haven’t read either of these books but my colleagues have. They may be a little dated and still they are firm favourites and at least one of them passes the “transatlantic flight test” and can be read in one go.

Oh! And for the longest reading list for leaders you’re ever likely to find go to http://www.jimcollins.com/tools/recommended-reading.html

Working with Emotional Intelligence
Daniel Goleman

Goleman has made significant contribution to our understanding of research which highlights the role that emotional intelligence plays in our success in the workplace. Essential reading for leaders, both to help them shape their own approach and to help them to coach and develop others.

Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results
Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen

If you’re looking to transform your leadership style, this book provides succinct guidance. Rooted in the owner’s experience of transforming the ‘World Famous Pike Place Fish Market’ (see below).

When Fish Fly: Lessons for Creating a Vital and Energized Workplace from the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market
Joseph Michelli & John Yokoyama

If you can – though it seems nigh-on impossible – get the CD abridged version of this inspiring book, which tells of the owners personal transformation and what it meant for the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market.

Quiet Leadership
David Rock

A recommendation from a colleague, I picked this book out because it is rooted in an understanding of the neuroscience of leadership.

The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and with Life
Lynne Twist

For so many of us, work and money are intimately connected. But what is money and what is its meaning in our lives? Lynne Twist’s book is a compassionate and eloquent exploration of this question.

Winning!
Clive Woodward

As coach to the UK rugby team, Woodward set out to create a winning team and was both painstaking and determined in addressing every aspect of what it would take to make this dream a reality, leading to the team’s success in winning the Rugby World Cup in November 2003. A fascinating read which opens up many avenues for exploration.

The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America
David Whyte

Whyte makes a powerful case for bringing ourselves fully into the workplace, offering a profound sense of what it means to locate our work deep within the soul. Whyte’s book offers a completely new perspective on what it means to work.

Life at the Frontier: Leadership Through Courageous Conversation
David Whyte

In this talk, Whyte highlights the need for authentic, real and courageous conversation whilst also recognising the challenges involved. Speaking with humour and compassion, Whyte tells some leadership home-truths.

www.TED.com

If you haven’t got time to read a book, go to www.TED.com for some twenty-minute ‘sound-bites’. This is a valuable resource for leaders who want to explore current thinking in small chunks.

The coaching style of leadership is one of the styles highlighted in The New Leaders (The New Leaders: Transforming the Art of Leadership, by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee) as highly effective in creating high performance teams. The outstanding leader needs to know how to coach those he or she leads. The books below are just a few of the many great books available to support leaders in developing their coaching style.

Coaching Skills for Leaders in the Workplace: How to Develop, Motivate and Get the Best from Your Staff
Jackie Arnold

This book is tailored for leaders in the workplace and draws on a variety of sources to provide a comprehensive and practical guide for leaders who want to develop their coaching style. This is a “how to” book which covers all the bases.

From Coach to Awakener
Robert Dilts

Dilts’ thought-provoking book highlights the wide range of forms that coaching can take, from helping individuals to acquire a new skill right through to sponsoring the individual in understanding who they are and awakening their awareness of the wider system in which they live and work. This book is for leaders and coaches who want to deepen their understanding of the full range of forms that coaching can take.

Sleight of Mouth
Robert Dilts

It’s not because of the limitations of our circumstances that we get “stuck”. Rather, our perspective or “map” can prevent us from seeing ways forward. Coaching is often a matter of helping people to see old information in new ways. Sleight of Mouth draws on what we know about some of the most effective leaders to offer ways of using language to open up new ways of looking at things. An invaluable resource for the leader as coach.

Coaching: Evoking Excellence In Others
James Flaherty

Coaching is a journey of mutual learning and growth – a two-way relationship. Flaherty’s practical guidance is rooted in a clear understanding of the mutuality of the coaching relationship.

The Coaching Bible: The Essential Handbook
Ian McDermott & Wendy Jago

The Coaching Bible aims both to make the case for coaching and to offer practical guidance to help the coach to make the most of what coaching can offer. It is as valuable for the leader as coach as it is for the professional coach.

The Portable Coach: 28 Sure-fire Strategies for Business and Personal Success
Thomas J. Leonard

Leonard is often cited as the father of modern-day coaching so his book is something of a classic. For the leader as coach (as well as for the professional coach) this book offers a way to coach oneself and this in turn makes for far greater authenticity in coaching others.

Fierce Conversations
Susan Scott

Coaching is about courage as well as compassion. Fierce Conversations reflects the author’s belief that a single conversation can change the course of a career, marriage or life, showing readers how to have conversations that count. A powerful tool for the leader as coach.

Coaching for Performance: GROWing People, Performance and Purpose
John Whitmore

Whitmore’s GROW model has been widely adopted and is often shared in training programmes for leaders in the workplace. Whitmore identifies coaching as an essential leadership skill as well as providing practical approaches for the leader as coach.

Co-Active Coaching: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success in Life and Work
Laura Whitworth, Henry Kimsey-House and Phil Sandahl

Even when you are coaching as a leader, you are entering into a relationship with those you lead which is based on mutual consent. This book offers clear guidance on the nature of the coaching relationship as well as many practical approaches.

So much of leadership in practice is about communication and relationships – with oneself as well as with others. This reading list sets out to identify those books that support a style of communication that is rooted in an understanding of our true nature and in the ‘win, win’ values psychologists identify. This is about sustainable approaches which meet the needs of everyone involved.

Resonant Leadership: Renewing Yourself and Connecting with Others Through Mindfulness, Hope, and Compassion
Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee

Boyatzis and McKee set out to translate the research findings outlined in their book (with Daniel Goleman) The New Leaders into practical approaches, recognising the extraordinary demands placed on leaders in today’s world.

Words that Change Minds: Mastering the Language of Influence
Shelley Rose Charvet

Our success in communication reflects our ability to appreciate the way others see the world as well as to understand our own views and perspectives. Shelle Rose Charvet’s book stands out in helping the reader to understand the language of influence.

Influence: Science and Practice
Robert B. Cialdini

Cialdini’s book comes highly recommended for anyone who has to market their ideas. This includes leaders as well as salespeople, trainers and others.

The Courage to Love: Principles and Practice of Self Relations Psychotherapy
Stephen Gilligan

Love may not be top of the list as a subject for leaders. Still, Gilligan’s book is valuable reading for the leader who wants to understand and develop his relationship with himself or others.

Nonviolent Communication: A Language for Life
Marshall Rosenberg

This is the book I have most often recommended to others since I first read it in 2003. If you want to develop an approach to leadership which understands human nature and is rooted in values of compassion and accountability, this is your essential “must read”.

The Skilled Facilitator Approach
Roger Schwarz

Schwarz’s book stands alongside Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication in translating the findings of leadership theory into clear values and approaches for effective communication. Also a leadership “must read”.

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success in Work and in Life: One Conversation at a Time
Susan Scott

Scott makes a compelling case for open, honest and courageous conversations in every area of our lives and demonstrates how they act to create momentum, progress and success. Any senior leader who baulks at reading Scott’s input needs to keep reading – again and again and again.

Getting to Yes: Negotiating an Agreement Without Giving In
Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton

and

Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People
William Ury

Fisher, Ury and Patton have outlined ways of negotiating such that everyone wins. And whilst you may rarely think of the conversations you have as “negotiations”, you may find the wisdom outlined in these two small books supports you in the day-to-day business of leadership – from performance appraisals to meetings of the Board.

The style or styles we adopt as leaders reflect a wide range of factors and influences including our experience of being led (the examples we have followed) and our own values and beliefs. Moving from an approach which is both unconscious and incompetent to an approach which is thoughtfully chosen and effective requires deep self awareness. For this reason, leadership is about who we are as well as what we do. This diverse selection reflects the inner journey of a leader.

The Secret: Unlocking the Source of Joy and Fulfilment
Michael Berg

This tiny book is an introduction to the spiritual practice of Kabbalah. Whether or not Kabbalah interests you, The Secret opens up the possibility of living a life of joy and fulfilment in an age when many people hold the untested belief that we are not meant to live in joy.

The Power of Myth
Joseph Campbell

Campbell’s studies of many myths have opened up our understanding of key stages in the ‘hero’s journey’. It is essentially this journey that differentiates the leader from the manager. Reading Campbell’s book gives new insight into what it means to be a leader.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People & The 8th Habit
Steven Covey

Covey’s Seven Habits and his more recent 8th Habit have become classics in the field of self management – if you like, the leadership of the self.

The Inner Game of Tennis
W. Timothy Gallwey

Gallwey’s book became an immediate hit amongst business men and women when it was first published because of its insights into our inner dialogue and the role this dialogue can play in the game we play. Although subsequent books have addressed the inner game in specific areas, including work, I still return to my battered second-hand copy of this book.

Born To Win: Transactional Analysis With Gestalt Experiments
Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward

If you want to understand how Douglas McGregor’s ‘X’ and ‘Y’ leaders think about people, including themselves, you need look no further than the initial chapter of this book. This will help you to test your own way of thinking about people and work.

Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership
Joseph Jaworski

Jaworski’s book is rooted in his own experience and describes two quite different ways of being in his life as a leader.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Stephen Pinker

We are at our most effective as leaders when our leadership is rooted in an understanding and acceptance of human nature. For this reason I include Pinker’s book.

On Becoming a Person
Carl Rogers

Carl Rogers is often seen as the father of both therapy and coaching, offering a compassionate approach, in line with the essential findings of leadership theory.

The Road Less Travelled
M. Scott Peck

Scott Peck’s book has become a classic in the field of personal development and offers insights into the path we choose when we become a leader.

A Simpler Way
Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner Rogers

When we understand the way nature works we have the opportunity to live our lives with ease. A Simpler Way offers a way to preserve the colour and texture of a vital individual life whilst coming together to work with others.

Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy
Irvin Yalom

Yalom’s books – from textbooks for psychotherapists to novels rooted in his practice and experience as a therapist – offer insights into what it means to accept oneself and others. Yalom offers a way of being which is both delightful and profound.

In 1993, when Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List was released, I was well aware of its phenomenal success and still, it largely passed me by. It was only recently, fresh from my visit to Cracow, that I picked up a copy of Thomas Keneally’s book Schindler’s Ark at my local discount bookshop. This is the book on which Spielberg’s film is based.

The story of Schindler’s war-time activities is an astonishing one, minutely researched and conveyed by Keneally. For in a period in which between 11 and 17 million people were killed, including 6 million Jews, Oskar Schindler became increasingly determined to save as many Jews as he could from the death camps. As the war proceeded he took increasingly significant risks to this end. No wonder then that, with the end of the war in sight, members of the camp gave up remnants of jewellery and even gold teeth in order to make a gold ring for Oskar, bearing the inscription from the Talmud: He who saves a single life, saves the world entire.

Schindler challenges us in many ways. Keneally’s account of Schindler’s life tests simple views, for example, of what is good and what is evil. For whilst his growing passion to save the Jews in his workplace marks him out as a hero, he also carroused on a regular basis with all sorts of members of the Nazi party. And whilst some of this activity can be firmly put down to the kind of political awareness that made his commercial and other enterprises possible, other activities are not so easily explained away. Throughout his marriage, for example, he made no secret – not even to his wife – of his extra-marital affairs.

Schindler also challenges modern concepts of leadership and especially the idea that once you have acquired the skills of leadership you will always remain a leader. In the early part of the war, for example, Schindler enjoyed a large measure of commercial success. Towards the end of the war he gave this up in favour of guarding the Jews in his care (his factory in Brinnlitz did not produce a single shell and was funded entirely by the profits from the early years of the war). Following the war Schindler’s business enterprises were largely unsuccessful and his home, when he died in 1974, was a small apartment near the railway station in Frankfurt.

In a similar way, Schindler’s heroic acts of leadership on behalf of the ‘Schindler Jews’ during the war brought them to the point of freedom but no further. Keneally gives an account of the speech Schindler made both to the Jewish inmates of his factory camp and to the SS men who were responsible for guarding the camp following the announcement of the end of the war. This was a speech that was finely judged and not without risk – the kind of speech that defines leadership. By his words Schindler secured the peaceful departure of the SS guards and invited the suriving Jewish men and women to act in a humane and just way.

As an account of the extraordinary acts of the most unlikely of heroes, Schindler’s Ark is a ‘must read’ book. At the same time it raises challenging questions about what it means to be a leader, a hero, a ‘good man’.