5 Leadership And Business Books To Read This Winter

Stumped for what leadership and business books to add to your winter reading list? Here are five must-read books for leaders well worth adding to your list:

Lead With A Story -- A Guide To Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince, and Inspire. Author Paul Smith explains why storytelling has emerged as a vital skill for every leader and manager. In the book, you'll find over 100 ready-made stories you can use as templates to tell your stories. Stories are so powerful because they are simple, timeless, demographic-proof, contagious, easy to remember and inspiring. Most important, they put the listener in a mental learning mode.
What's The Future Of Business? (WTF?) -- Changing The Way Businesses Create Experiences. This book, by Brian Solis, details the incredible transformation happening in business today, driven by new social and mobile technologies. And, he explains how experience design helps your business and how you can harness its power for business growth. This book is a wake-up call for every business leader.
AMA Business Boot Camp -- Management and Leadership Fundamentals That Will See You Successfully Through Your Career. Edited by Edward T. Reilly, this is the book for brushing up on your leadership skills, or learning what to do in your new leadership role. It covers basic management, managing staff changes, managing projects, strategic thinking, hiring, delegating, and communication -- and lot's more.
The Facts Of Business Life -- What Every Successful Business Owner Knows That You Don't. Author Bill McBean has spent more than 40 years as a successful business owner. In his book, he explains that to be successful you need to know more than your industry and just the basic concepts of leadership, management and operations. His advice? Planning is about preparing for the future, not predicting it. If you don't market your business, you won't have one. Plus, there's five other lessons McBean teaches in the book.
Leadership Conversations -- Challenging High-Potential Managers To Become Great Leaders. I couldn't put this book down. It's rich with real-world examples and tactical guidance. And, it covers the four types of conversation every leader must effectively master; conversations that: build relationships, develop others, make decisions and take action. Authors are Alan S. Berson and Richard G. Stieglitz.

So, there you go. Five books I recommend you read this winter.

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Leading With GRIT

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Nelson Mandela Leadership Quotes

Here are my favorite Nelson Mandela leadership quotes: "Lead from the back--and let others believe they are in front." "The greatest glory in living lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall." "It always seems impossible until it's done." "I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles." "I've learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." "Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again."

Daily Intentions For Leaders

Everyone can benefit from the book, Dear Friend , which features bite-sized, daily notes for contemplation, inspiration, connection, and clarity. Busy and stressed business leaders can particularly benefit from the 365 profound, heartfelt reflections from author Michelle Maros , founder of Peaceful Mind Peaceful Life and cohost of the podcast, Life Happens with Barb and Michelle . Dear Friend invites readers to go deep and use the notes as a daily practice that compounds over time, nurturing strength, resilience, and clarity. In just a few minutes each day, this book will offer you a daily reprieve when you feel burned out, beaten down, or overwhelmed by the strains and stresses of modern life. The heart of Dear Friend began in the quiet mornings Michelle shared with her mom, Barb. Every day, they would sit together, reading affirmations or passages from Barb’s beloved books. These small rituals—simple but powerful—set the tone for each day, grounding them in g...

Your 2026 New Year's Resolutions Check-in

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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 ...

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...

Change Is Inevitable. Change Is Good. Embrace Change.

Change is inevitable. Change is good. Help your employees and team learn to embrace change. Here are some solid insights from Dr. Rodger Dean Duncan 's (Liberty, Missouri) book, Change-friendly Leadership -- How to Transform Good Intentions into Great Performance : The kind of behavior change that results in lasting (sustainable) change must accommodate people's feelings--feelings that involve trust, confidence, passion, and all those other intangible but very real things that make us human. It's often the stress that people resist, not the change itself. Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights ( Pauline R. Kezer ). A transformational leader focuses primarily on initiating and "managing" change. He/she influences people to improve, to stretch, and to redefine what's possible. It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive t...

How To Step Up During Six Critical Leadership Moments

The book, Step Up , shows readers how to step up to the plate during six critical leadership moments . Readers learn how to: Use anger intelligently in the workplace. Recognize and deal with terminal politeness. Make decisions when no one else is making them. Take ownership when others are externalizing a problem. Identify and leverage pessimism. Inspire others to take action. And, before you start to read the book, you can take (via a QR code in the book) a fifteen-minute online Step Up Leadership Assessment , which will give you instant feedback on your leadership readiness and point you to the most relevant chapters in the book. The book's two authors recently shared these insights with me: A Conversation with Henry Evans and Colm Foster, authors of Step Up What is a “leadership moment”? These are moments when leadership is required in order to see a problem solved, opportunity seized, momentum changed, rela...

How To Lead In An Era When Everything Is Being Displaced

Today, leaders are caught in a cascade of contradictions. The technology that promises unprecedented capability also delivers unprecedented doubt. Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes everything faster, cheaper, and more capable. It also makes the most fundamental question of leadership unavoidable: what are humans actually for? You did not choose this moment. But you are responsible for who you and your organization become in it. In Re-Placed: Answering The Call Of Leadership In The Age Of AI , leadership strategist and CEO Kari Zeller offers something rare in the AI conversation: a leadership book that starts with the human, not the technology. “The arrival of artificial intelligence doesn't have to displace us,” explains Zeller. “But it will, unless we learn to re-place ourselves first—to consciously reposition who we are, how we lead, and where we create value in a world where intelligence is no longer ours alone.” “Being re...

How To Talk About Poor Performance With An Employee

As a leader, the time will come when you will have to speak with an employee about his or her poor performance. Perhaps that time is now as you conduct year-end performance reviews. So, here are six steps that will guide you through that process : 1. Tell him what performance is in need of change and be specific. 2. Tell him how his actions negatively affect the team. 3. Let the discussion sink in. 4. Set expectations of performance improvement and timeframe, and get his agreement on the desired outcome. 5. Remind him that he is a valuable part of the team and that you have confidence his performance will improve. 6. Don't rehash the discussion later. You made your point. Give him time to make his improvement.

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