7 Books That Made Me the Leader I Am Today

Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes

I was looking through the Books page at Michael McKinney’s Leadership Now: Leading Blog the other day. He has a great, I mean phenomenal, page full of leadership books that have been published since Spring, 2006. Reading through this list, I saw a number of books I’ve read, many that I’ve wanted to read and some I hadn’t previously heard of. There were a number of authors represented who had written follow up books to their previous bestsellers.

This list got me thinking about all of the leadership books I have sitting on my shelf that I’ve collected over the years. I have a lot of classics by the famous folks in the field and I’ve got a number of less well know books that have meant a lot in my own leadership development. We all have our own particular path that we followed to get us to the point where we are and certainly the leadership books that we have read and collected over the years have become our old trusted friends. They were part of what helped us to become the leaders that we are today.

When I look at my bookshelf, I find seven books that I can point to that meant the most to me at the time when I read them. Here are the 7 leadership books that help make me the leader that I am today:

7. Leadership Is an Art by Max DePree: Written by the former Chairman of Herman Miller, this was probably the first “leadership” book that I read. It was the one that really got me thinking about how the work world could be so much different than the place I was working at the time.

6. Crossing the Unknown Sea by David Whyte: This book tells of Whyte’s own journey to become the poet and consultant that he is today. It was the beginning of my exploration into the role personal development plays in leadership development.

5. The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge: One day, years ago in a different organization far, far away our CEO came into the senior managers meeting holding this book and said “we should be doing this”. I decided I’d better read it to see where he was taking us. This is literally the book that changed my life. After reading it, I set out to see if Senge was right and spent the next four years reading and researching, focusing one at a time on each of his five disciplines. This is what directly led me to the path I am on today.

4. Success is a Journey by Brain Tracy: After reading the Fifth Discipline when I was in my Personal Mastery phase, I spent a lot of time reading self improvement authors and Brian Tracy’s voice resonated with me more than all of the others. This book is really the epic story of his cross Africa trip that he weaves his success message through. This really is a great story to read.

3. A Simpler Way by Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers: I read this book as I was moving out of my Personal Mastery phase. This book spoke volumes to me about how we can be with one another. It’s true that sometimes the simplest things are the most profound.

2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey: This was one of the first books I read during my Personal Mastery phase. There is a really good reason that this is such a bestseller. But to me, the power of this book is that each time I’ve picked it up to re-read it, it both serves to remind me of the important things I tend to forget dealing with day-to-day life and validates so much of what I’ve come to know about leadership.

1. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: I actually discovered Csikszentmihalyi’s work in the last several years. This is the original book that talks about his research into the Flow experience. His follow up books bring the meaning of his Flow research to the workplace. This book helped to solidify in my mind that there is a purpose to life and that we can and should be working everyday to live that experience.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list by any stretch of the imagination of the books that have contributed to who I have become as a leader. But they are the ones that meant the most to me at the time.

What books (classic or new) have made the most difference to you in becoming the leader that you are today? If it is an older book, have you re-read it recently?

You also might be interested in:

1. How Can I Learn To Be A Leader?
2. Characteristics of Flow: The Present is What Matters Most
3. Personal Development and Well Being Blog Carnival – 11/15/09
4. November Leadership Development Blog Carnival
5. If You Are a Leader, You Need to Pay Attention