Leadership Books To Read During Spring Break

Starting to choose which business books you'll bring along with you on Spring break this year? Here are some leadership books I highly recommend:

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Twenty-five Of My Favorite Leadership Quotes

All year during 2012, I collected my favorite quotes about leadership from Twitter. When the year ended, I published the list. So, for today's leadership flashback , among the thousands of tweets and retweets on Twitter about leadership during 2012 these 25 were my favorites. A mix of advice from some unknown individuals along with many from leadership book authors and famous leadership experts, and a few from past U.S. presidents and current-day athletes. Great leaders know the power of asking questions. Lead with your heart, not just your head. Learn to let go of fear and embrace the unknown. People are much more impressed by your potential than by your track record. Smart leaders use the power of stories whenever they have important messages to convey. To be effective, leaders have to close the conversational gap with their employees. One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency -- Arnold Glasow Managers...

Business And Life Lessons From Entrepreneur Miguel Leal

What I like most about Miguel Leal ’s memoir, aside from its overall compelling and inspiring information, are the business and life lessons he shares. Those lessons are found throughout his recently released memoir, The House That Cheese Built . The book is a quintessential American dream story from a Mexican entrepreneur who shares the tale of building a multi-million-dollar business from scratch, complete with both success and failure, and always a vision of hope. Leal came to the U.S. penniless as a teenager, speaking almost no English; he literally slept in the boiler room of a Wisconsin cheese factory for months before he was caught. Through hard work, grit, and ingenuity Leal would go on to launch his own business. He is widely credited with introducing Mexican cheeses to the U.S. market and grew his company to a multimillion-dollar success story that defined an industry. Yet, like many successful entrepreneurs, Leal’s great successes were matched by a variety of ...

How To Uncover Your Blindspots To Become A Better 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...

Helping People Win At Work

Here are some of my favorite pieces of advice from Ken Blanchard's and Garry Ridge's book, Helping People Win at Work : All good performance starts with clear goals. Continually planning and executing without the value of review and learning can blindside you. You don't want to save up feedback until somebody fails. It's amazing how much more you learn when you admit you don't know. If you can't measure something, you can't manage it. The key to developing people is to catch them doing something right. Whenever you attempt to influence someone else's beliefs, thinking, or behavior, you're engaging in leadership. A compelling vision tells people who they are, where they are going, and what will guide their journey.

One Minute Mentoring

Fortunately, I've benefited from having great mentors throughout my career. And, I've have the honor and good fortune to be a mentor, both formally and informally, for various individuals the past few decades. Mentoring is powerful. Both being a mentor. And, being mentored. That's why I became an instant fan of the book, One Minute Mentoring: How to Find and Work With a Mentor -- and Why You'll Benefit from Being One . The book presents a fictional parable about the power of finding, or being, a mentor. In what is about a one- to two-hour read, you'll gain knowledge and easy-to-use tools for how to find and leverage mentoring relationships . Ken Blanchard You'll also learn why developing effective communication and relationships across generations through mentoring can be a tremendous opportunity for companies and individuals alike. Bestselling author, Ken Blanchard, Ph.D . teamed up with Claire Diaz-Ortiz to write One Mi...

Full Engagement By Brian Tracy

Best-selling author Brian Tracy's book, Full Engagement , provides practical advice for how to inspire your employees to perform at their absolute best. He explains that above nearly every measure, employees' most powerful single motivator is the "desire to be happy." So, Tracy teaches you how to make your employees happy by: Organizing their work from the first step in the hiring process through the final step in their departure from your company so they are happy with you, their work, their coworkers, as well as in their interactions with your customers, suppliers and vendors. Full Engagement includes these chapters and topics: The Psychology of Motivation Ignite the Flame of Personal Performance Make People Feel Important Drive Out Fear Create That Winning Feeling Select The Right People Internal Versus External Motivation At a minimum, Tracy suggests that managers do the following when managing their employees : Smile Ask questions Listen ...

The Rainmaker's Credo

How To Become A Rainmaker is a quick, instructional book that reveals the rules for getting and keeping customers and clients. Written by Jeffrey J. Fox , the handbook format provides you the best approaches to take to become a true rainmaker – one who brings clients, money, business, or even intangible prestige to an organization. One of the real gems in the book is Fox’s The Rainmaker’s Credo , which includes: Cherish customers at all times. Treat customers as you would your best friend. Listen to customers and decipher their needs. Make (or give) customers what they need. Teach customers to want what they need. Make your product the way customers want it. Get your product to your customers when they want it. Give your customers a little extra, more than they expect. Thank each customer sincerely and often.

The Three Pillars Of Executive Presence

After two years of research, forty focus groups and a national survey, author Sylvia Ann Hewlett contends the three pillars of Executive Presence are: How you act ( gravitas ) How you speak (communication ) How you look ( appearance ) All three work together to help you telegraph (signal) to others that you have what it takes and that you're star material. "One thing to note at the start is that these pillars are not equally important--not by a long shot," explains Hewlett. "Gravitas is the core characteristic." And according to the senior leaders that Hewlett researched the top aspects of gravitas are : Confidence and "grace under fire" Decisiveness and "showing teeth" Integrity and "speaking truth to power" Emotional intelligence Reputation and standing/"pedigree" Vision/charisma In her book, Executive Presence , she teaches how to act, communicate and look your best while avoiding the most comm...

How to Be a Leader – 9 Principles from Dale Carnegie

Today, I welcome thought-leader Nathan Magnuson as guest blogger... Nathan writes : This is it, your first day in a formal leadership role. You’ve worked hard as an individual contributor at one or possibly several organizations. Now management has finally seen fit to promote you into a position as one of their own: a supervisor. You don’t care if your new team is only one person or ten, you’re just excited that now – finally – you will be in charge! Unfortunately the euphoria is short-lived. Almost immediately, you are not only overwhelmed with the responsibilities of a team, but you quickly find that your team members are not as experienced or adroit as you. Some aren’t even as committed. You find yourself having to repeat yourself, send their work back for corrections, and staying late to fill the gap. If something doesn’t change soon, you might just run yourself into the ground. How did something that looked so easy ...

Q&A With Best Selling Author And Expert Storyteller, Paul Smith

Paul Smith Paul Smith's book, Lead with a Story , is one of the top 10 books I recommend every leader should read. In his book, Paul demonstrates how storytelling is a powerful business tool that can mean the difference between mediocre results and phenomenal success. Since the book was published about three years ago, my admiration for Paul's passion for storytelling and helping to teach people how to effectively tell stories has only but grown. Today, Paul was kind enough to share his thoughts about: that best-selling book how storytelling is growing in the business world his latest book how to use stories during job interviews how Lead with a Story totally changed his carreer 1. How would you summarize the overall reaction to your Lead with a Story book? Any surprises? Paul : Everything is a surprise with your first book. Being a new author, you don’t really know what to expect in terms of book sales, marketing effort...

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