Skip to main content

Recommendations For Your Business Books Summer Reading List

This Memorial Day, as you select the books you plan to read for pleasure this summer, how about adding to the list at least one business book. Perhaps a book that will help you improve your leadership skills.

Awhile back, members of five groups on the professional social media web site LinkedIn voluntarily recommended their favorite books about leadership. They responded to a group discussion question, "Best Leadership Books -- What's Your Favorite?"

When contemplating their favorites, they likely thought about which books were in their minds the best, most favored, most inspiring, most instructional, most relevant, and which ones they might reference frequently.

The recommendations came from these member groups:
  • ExecuNet Executive Suite
  • Leadership Think Tank
  • Linked 2 Leadership
  • Keller Graduate School Of Management
  • The Talent Buzz
As the recommendations rolled in, it became clear that leaders learn from, and are inspired by, a wide variety of books -- biographies, autobiographies, books backed by research and academia, books made famous by the popular press, books by motivational speakers, and books by professionals eager to share their personal and professional leadership success stories, tips and suggestions.

Readers' favorites included those written by or about sports coaches, athletes, CEOs, scholars, religious leaders, governmental and military leaders.

Not surprisingly, many well-known leadership book authors made the list, such as authors:
  • Drucker
  • Kotter
  • Maxwell
  • Welch
Interestingly, the discussion thread, particularly within the Linked 2 Leadership group of LinkedIn, generated debate about the value and quality of some of the book recommendations. But, the general consensus was that if someone recommended a book that inspired them or taught them how to be a better leader, the book was worth their time.

Within the list of favorites you'll find titles published decades ago and ones published last month.

Here is the list of all 235 books, in alphabetical order. It represents many of the vast approaches to leadership in practice today throughout the world. Take a look to see how many you've read. Perhaps you'll find one of your favorites.



Then, select one or more for your summer reading list.
  • 1776
  • 177 Mental Toughness Secrets Of The World Class
  • 100 Greatest Ideas For Effective Leadership And Management
  • 100 Greatest Leadership Principles Of All Time
  • 20 Minutes To A Top Performer
  • A Book Of Five Rings
  • A Commitment To Valor
  • A Force For Change: How Leadership Differs From Management
  • A Leader In The Making
  • A Sense Of Urgency
  • A Whole New Mind
  • Against The Gods
  • Alexander The Great
  • Awaken The Giant Within
  • Awesomely Simple
  • Bad Leadership
  • Becoming A Person Of Influence
  • Becoming A Resonant Leader
  • Best Practices In Leadership Development & Organization Change
  • Beyond The Timberline
  • Bo's Lasting Lessons
  • Built To Last
  • Built To Serve
  • Changing The Human Battery
  • Chasing The Rabbit
  • Choices: Discover Your 100 Most Important Life Choices
  • Cracking The Code Of Leadership
  • Credibility
  • Crucial Conversations: Tools For Talking When Stakes Are High
  • Deep Change
  • Defeat Into Victory
  • Developing The Leader Within You
  • Defining Moments
  • Developing The Leaders Around You
  • Discipline Of Market Leaders
  • Effective Supervisory Management
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Energy Leadership
  • Engaged Leadership
  • Evolutionary Leadership
  • Execution: The Discipline Of Getting Things Done
  • Executive Wisdom
  • Exodus
  • Exposing Leadership: Redefining The Top 20 Leadership Traits
  • Fired Up Or Burned Out
  • Firms Of Endearment
  • First Break All The Rules
  • For Your Improvement
  • Force For Change
  • From Worst To First
  • Gates Of Fire
  • Get Out Of Your Own Way
  • Good To Great
  • Gung Ho
  • Handbook Of Leadership
  • Heroic Leadership
  • High Five: The Magic Of Working Together
  • Holy Bible
  • Hostage At The Table
  • How Did That Happen?
  • How Lance Does It
  • How The Mighty Fall
  • How To Get Anyone To Do Anything
  • How To Get From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be
  • How To Grow Leaders
  • How To Lead
  • How To Think Like A CEO & Act Like A Leader
  • How To Win Friends And Influence People
  • In Search Of Excellence
  • Influencer: The Power To Change Anything
  • Inside The Tornado
  • Inspirational Leadership
  • Integrity: The Courage To Meet The Demands Of Reality
  • Integrity Is Everything
  • Irresistible Leadership
  • It's Our Ship
  • It's Your Ship
  • Jesus, CEO
  • Launching A Leadership Revolution
  • Lead To Succeed
  • Leaders: Strategies For Taking Charge
  • Leadership
  • Leadership: Tidbits & Treasures
  • Leadership: Enhancing The Lessons Of Experience
  • Leadership Agility
  • Leadership And Motivation
  • Leadership And The One Minute Manager
  • Leadership And The New Science
  • Leadership And Self-Deception
  • Leadership Brand
  • Leadership Engine
  • Leadership For The Disillusioned
  • Leadership God
  • Leadership Insights
  • Leadership Is An Art
  • Leadership Is Common Sense
  • Leadership Jazz
  • Leadership On The Line
  • Leadership Pipeline
  • Leadership Secrets Of Attila The Hun
  • Leadership Self-Deception: Getting Out Of The Box
  • Leadership Without Easy Answers
  • Leading At A Higher Level
  • Leading Change
  • Leading Leaders
  • Leading Out Loud
  • Leading With Confidence
  • Leading With Kindness
  • Learning From The Links
  • Led To Follow
  • Lessons On Leadership
  • Life Entrepreneurs
  • Lincoln On Leadership
  • Love Leadership
  • Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices
  • Masters And Commanders
  • Masterplanning
  • Maximum Achievement
  • Maxwell Leadership Bible
  • Moments Of Truth
  • Monday Morning Leadership
  • Peak
  • Pivot: How One Simple Change In Attitude Can Lead To Success
  • On Becoming A Leader
  • On Leadership
  • One Thing You Need To Know
  • Only The Paranoid Survive
  • Out Of The Crisis
  • Predictably Irrational
  • Preparing For Leadership
  • Primal Leadership
  • Profiles In Leadership From The Battlefields Of Virginia
  • Real Leaders Don't Do PowerPoint
  • Reclaiming Higher Ground
  • Reframing Organizations
  • Regan On Leadership
  • Resonant Leadership
  • Results-Based Leadership
  • Scuttle Your Ships Before Advancing
  • Scores On The Board
  • Senior Leadership Teams
  • Servant Leadership
  • Silver Parachutes
  • Situational Leadership
  • Son Of Morning Star
  • Start With Why
  • Stewardship
  • Straight From The Gut
  • Strengths-Based Leadership
  • Studying Leadership
  • Survival Is Not Enough
  • Team Of Rivals
  • The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness To Greatness
  • The 80/20 Principle
  • The 48 Laws Of Power
  • The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People
  • The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership
  • The 360 Degree Leader
  • The 33 Strategies Of War
  • The Adventure Of Leadership
  • The Anatomy Of Peace
  • The Arc Of Ambition
  • The Art And Discipline Of Strategic Leadership
  • The Art Of Possibility
  • The Art Of The Leader
  • The Art Of War
  • The Change Monster
  • The Courage To Teach
  • The Disney Way
  • The DNA Of Success
  • The Effective Executive
  • The Empowered Manager
  • The Essential HR Handbook
  • The Essential Wooden
  • The Extraordinary Leader
  • The Feiner Points Of Leadership
  • The Fifth Discipline
  • The First 90 Days
  • The Five Dysfunctions of A Team
  • The Four Obsessions Of An Extraordinary Executive
  • The Great Game Of Business
  • The Human Element
  • The Inspiring Leader
  • The Leader Of The Future
  • The Leader's Window
  • The Leadership Challenge
  • The Leadership Code: Five Rules To Live By
  • The Leadership Engine
  • The Leadership Matrix
  • The Leadership Moment
  • The Leadership Pill
  • The Leadership Secrets Of Colin Powell
  • The Leadership Test (my (Eric Jacobson's) most recently read favorite)
  • The Magic Of Thinking Big
  • The Maxwell Daily Reader
  • The Mission, The Men And Me
  • The New Leaders
  • The One Minute Manager
  • The Persian Expedition
  • The Practice Of Adaptive Leadership
  • The Practice Of Leadership
  • The Prince
  • The Psychology of Persuasion
  • The Pursuit Of Something Better
  • The Right To Lead
  • The Rules Of Management
  • The Score Takes Care Of Itself
  • The Secret Language Of Business
  • The Secret Language Of Leadership
  • The Servant
  • The Servant-Leader Within
  • The Seven Hidden Reasons Employees Leave
  • The Sustainable Way
  • The Tao Of Leadership
  • The Winner Within: A Life Plan For Team Players
  • The World's Most Powerful Leadership Principle
  • The Wrong Bottom Line & How To Change It
  • Think & Grow Rich
  • Three Laws Of Performance
  • Total Leadership
  • Tough Choices
  • Toy Box Leadership
  • Tribes
  • Walk The Walk: The #1 Rule For Real Leaders
  • We Were Soldiers Once And Young
  • What A Great Idea
  • What Got You Here Won't Get You There
  • What Leaders Really Do
  • What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School
  • Why Not The Best
  • Who Says Elephants Can't Dance
  • Winning
  • Winning With People
  • Wooden
  • Words That Sell
  • You Don't Need A Title To Be A Leader
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

James G. Ellis Shares The Leadership Lessons Behind A Lasting Legacy

  In his new book, James G. Ellis shares the lessons he learned throughout his career as an entrepreneur, CEO, professor, mentor, and one of the nation’s most respected business school leaders. He is the former Dean of the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.   For aspiring leaders, educators, and entrepreneurs, A Journey of Insights: Lessons In Leadership And Legacy , offers a roadmap to success grounded in real-world experience, with a focus on humility, listening, and building strong, collaborative environments. The book is both a personal memoir and a strategic guide for those aiming to leave a lasting legacy in business.   At the core of his message is the central theme that listening to voices around you throughout life is the key to success. “In essence, ears can speak louder than voices,” shares Ellis.   The book also explores pivotal moments that helped define Ellis’ understanding of leadership, including encounters with Pres...
Post a Comment
Read more

How To Transform The Influences Of Your Childhood Into Your Unique And Most Effective Leadership Style

  The most significant predictor (up to 80 percent) of how someone shows up in their interpersonal interactions as a leader, and as a human, is their childhood, claims Pam Manfredo Curtis, PhD , author of the new book, The Origins Of A Leader: Transforming Family Patterns Into Leadership Power .   Grounded in decades of psychological analysis, executive coaching, and behavioral data, Curtis elaborates that how leaders perform today is dramatically influenced by their childhood, with patterns formed early in life continuing to shape behavior, decision-making, and relationships at the highest levels.   “When you know your  why , you can change your how ,” says Curtis. “Put another way, when you understand the influential factors of your life, you can choose how they affect you. Curtis encourages you to explore specific childhood environments and discover how they shaped your strengths, communication patterns, and hidden limitations.   Regarding the implications o...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Five Critical Roles You Need To Build A Winning Team

The book, Team Players , by leadership expert and New York Times bestselling author, Mark Murphy , explains why a team needs more than strong leaders—it needs the right mix of five roles and talents to succeed.   In addition, Murphy reveals that the secret to extraordinary teams isn’t making everyone the same—it’s embracing and leveraging fundamental differences through those five distinct team roles. No amount of teambuilding, trust, or cohesion can overcome having the wrong mix of people in the room.   The five essential roles and talents are :   The Director assumes a leadership role within the team, guiding its direction and making important, difficult, and even unpopular decisions.   The Achiever immerses themselves in the details of accomplishing tasks and getting things done, with a keen eye for delivering error-free work.   The Stabilizer keeps the team on track with meticulous planning, processes and procedures, clear timelines, and organization. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Six Leadership Actions To Leverage Employees' Differences To Strengthen Teams

The new book, All The Difference: Six Leadership Actions To Bridge Perspectives, Strengthen Teams, and Create Value , teaches how leaders can turn their team's individual differences into deeper trust, greater creativity, and winning results.   “The greatest risk of unmanaged difference isn’t conflict: it lies in the ideas, insights, and opportunities that may never surface,” explain the book’s authors, Susan MacKenty Brady , Stuart D. Kliman , and Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Leslie C. Smith .   They suggest that you look around your team to fully see people with different communication styles, perspectives, cultural norms, and capabilities. These differences are expressed in all kinds of ways, such as casual gestures in a meeting, a colleague's opinion on a current event, or an intense work style.   Often, those differences can lead to friction, even conflict. You may try to manage around them. But, for you and your organization to fully leverage the strengths of your team’s diffe...
Post a Comment
Read more

How To Become Your Best-Self Leader Everyday

“By focusing in specific ways on five key leadership elements— Purpose, Process, People, Presence, and Peace —you can increase your time, capacity, energy, and ultimately your leadership impact,” explains Amy Jen Su , author of the book, The Leader You Want To Be: Five Essential Principles for Bringing Out Your Best Self—Every Day . Su shares both Western management thinking and Eastern philosophy to provide a holistic yet hands-on approach to becoming a more effective leader with less stress and more equanimity. She draws on rich and instructive stories of clients, leaders, artists, and athletes. And, she focuses on three foundational tenets: s elf-care, self-awareness, and personal agency . Most important, Su explores in depth, chapter-by-chapter the Five Ps : Purpose – Staying grounded in your passions and contributions, doing your highest and best work that has meaning and is making a difference. Process – Relying on daily practices and routines that honor your natural energy rhyt...
Post a Comment
Read more

How To Rewire Your Mind To Build Your Adaptability Quotient

    Alec Litowitz argues that the most valuable skill of the next decade isn't IQ or even EQ (Emotional Intelligence). It's AQ: your Adaptability Quotient, the ability to question assumptions, update beliefs, and respond effectively when reality changes.   Litowitz is the author of the forthcoming book (releasing on September 15, 2026)  The Adaptability Quotient: Rewiring Your Mind For Success In The Next Human Era .   And he shares that “AQ is a learnable way of using your mind like a high-performance machine: to model risk, absorb feedback, make faster corrections, and create repeatable advantages in conditions where most people stall out—or drown.”   In short, it’s all about how to move from “making the right decision” to “making decisions right.”   “As artificial intelligence, media, and scientific advances reshape the cognitive landscape, adaptability becomes the essential discipline for reclaiming human agency,” adds Litowitz. “And a s AI resha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Seven Ways To Stay Motivated

To learn how to stay motivated, read High-Profit Prospecting , by Mark Hunter . It's a powerful read that includes counter intuitive advice and cutting-edge best practices for sales prospecting in today's business world. Today, I share one of my favorite sections of the book where Hunter describes his seven things motivated people do to stay motivated : Motivated people ignore voices in their lives . These might be people in the office and friends who have bad attitudes. They're out there, and if you're not careful, they'll control you, too. Motivated people associate with highly motivated people . Just as there are negative people in the world, there are also positive people. Your job is to make sure you spend as much time with the positive people as possible.  Motivated people simply look for the positive in things . Positive people count it an honor to live each day, learn from others, and impact positively those they meet. Positive people take great satisfaction...
Post a Comment
Read more

Five Essential Principles For Sustaining Growth Through Innovation

Even though many companies strive for innovation, most struggle to achieve meaningful change. The largest reason for this disconnect? Playing it safe. Leaders and organizations want to implement new ideas, but too often they are held back by the fear of failure, even though setbacks are intrinsic to the innovation process. In the new book, No Fear, No Failure , by Lorraine H. Marchand (with John Hanc), readers will learn how to overcome the status quo that stifles creative thinking and how to create a culture that encourages innovation. Marchand provides a framework for sustained growth built on the “ 5 Cs ”:   Customer First Culture Collaboration Change Chance   She draws on more than 120 interviews with leaders across industries, real-world case studies, and her firsthand experience and shares step-by-step, field-tested strategies, tactics, and tools that practitioners can use to embed creativity within organizational cultures. Marchand is a former Big Tech and Big Pharma ex...
Post a Comment
Read more

Learn The Power Of Probabilistic Thinking

Dive in for a fascinating read as you discover the life-changing power of probabilistic thinking, taught by Kyle Austin Young in his book, Success Is A Numbers Game .   “Every goal that you’re pursuing has two hidden numbers attached to it—a probability of success and a probability of failure,” explains Young, “If you can make the first number bigger and the second number smaller, you can rewrite your predicted outcome.”   “Whether you’re trying to start a business, run a marathon, get a promotion, earn a pilot’s license, grow a bumper crop of tomatoes, or sign an acting deal, these two percentages are always lurking in the shadows predicting what is going to happen.”   But, adds Young, "Most of us never think about them. We assume our odds are unknowable and unchangeable. This dangerous lie leads millions of people to fail at goals where they were perfectly capable of succeeding. You can choose a smarter path,” encourages Young.   In Success is a Numbers Game , ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How To See What’s Holding You Back As A Leader

What you don't see about yourself can hold you back as a leader. That's typical for many leaders. What we don't see is what we  can't  see: we have  blindspots . Your blindspots prevent you from achieving your greatest success.  “It turns out that we're often not great judges of ourselves, even when we think we are. Sometimes we're simply unaware of a behavior or trait that's causing problems,” explains Martin Dubin , author of the new book, Blindspotting: How To See What’s Holding You Back As A Leader . “Bottom line: until we uncover these blindspots, we can't move forward. The good news is that you can learn to do your own  blindspotting .”   “Most of us understand the idea of blindspots in a general sense—areas we can’t see, to take the term most literally, or places we have gaps that we may not even realize, to be a little more abstract,” says Dubin.  “But in the context of this book, I’m defining blindspots quite specifically: They are the par...
Post a Comment
Read more