Any great leader worth their salt has a life long desire to be stretched. We do this with our technical expertise all the time – books, training or conferences and if we are committed, we do this with our leadership capacity too.
What informs your understanding of leadership?
When I look at most leadership books and conferences these days, my eyes glaze over. Why? It seems like the same ‘voices’ get promoted time and time again. The same leadership messages arise and build the basis of our leadership understanding.
What if you are not challenging ourselves enough?
Is it time to break free from those ‘voices’ and listen to a new tune?
Do you challenge your leadership thinking or stay where it’s comfortable?
When was the last time you read a leadership book by a female, an author that’s not American or from non-Caucasian background?
Time to break out
I am constantly mindful of what sources I read and recommend to ensure I’m getting a variety of leadership perspectives. I’m interested in broadening my sources so I’m not always reading leadership from the perspective of a white American male which can easily be the case. I have plenty of those books on my bookshelf already and learned a lot, but…
No one gender, generation or geography has the monopoly on great leadership
So I would love to hear your favourite books on leadership from a variety of authors – I want to stretch and challenge my knowledge and understanding of leadership.
Here are some of my recommendations:
- Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity by Margaret Wheatley
- Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies by Otto Scharmer and Dr. Katrin Kaufer
- Reinventing Organisations: A Guide to Creating Organisations Inspired by the Next State of Human Consciousness by Frederic Laloux
- Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation by Linda Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove and Kent Lineback
- Act Like a Leader, Think like a Leader by Herminia Ibarra
- Presence: Bring your Boldest Self to your Biggest Challenges by Amy Cuddy
- Radical Candor: How to be a Great Boss without Losing your Humanity by Kim Scott
- Open Leadership: How Social Technology can Transform the Way you Lead by Charlene Li
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
- Business as Unusual by Anita Roddick
- Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad Yunus
Let’s bring a variety of voices to the table. In fact, let’s give them a loud speaker too.
