New to leadership? I read 100 leadership books; here’s my top 5.

Leadership is not management. You lead people, you manage work; a condenced quote from Rear Admiral Grace Hopper.

It took me years into Management before I realized that managing people was the best way to create a mediocre team and the easiest way to create a revolving door. Another words, you will never get the best out of anyone by trying to manage them and the more you try the more likely they are to leave your team or organization. Which is why it’s so cliche to say…

“People leave managers not companies”

Reactance bias is a very common human bias that drives this avoidance of coercion. It drives those with this bias to do the opposite even if it is what is best for them

Like the old adage reminds us:

“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink”

My first thrust in to “Leadership” was starting my own company when I was in my early twenties. I didn’t understand leadership at that time; and I expected everyone to work as hard as I did and was quite puzzled even flabbergasted at anyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t do what I asked.

A subject that is in vogue among young entrepreneurs repining over their plight with those whom they've hired. Gary Vee has a few videos circling where he touches on that very subject.

The answer stares them straight in the face; influence not coercion. Which brings me to my first book recommendation: “The Five Levels of Leadership” by John Maxwell.

In the book, John Maxwell highlights the importance of influence and equates it to leadership. This concept changed the way I decided to lead because I was misguided by a “fairness” principal where I thought leading people the exact same way was helpful. It’s not only wrong, it’s not helpful, not fair and will never lead to a high performing team.

The five levels of leadership are in the graphic below:

The pinnacle of all leadership is to earn the respect of others to the point that it is all that is required to motivate them to follow your lead. Most inspiring leaders never get out of level’s one and two; People follow you because you’re their boss or because of your mutual relationship.

They either find it hard to connect to someone or when they do connect they find it hard to hold them accountable. Then when people do not follow their instructions they make it all about the employee and rarely look in the mirror. Which brings me to my second recommendation: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

This book is Management turned upside down. In the book, it’s articulated in the most amazing way, why it’s important to take ownership and responsibility for everything that happens on your team; everything.

“No bad teams, Only Bad leaders”

That is a really tough pill to swallow, it points the proverbial finger at yourself and makes you look deeper as to what role you play in every outcome. Which brings me to my third recommendation: The Self-aware leader by John Maxwell.

In the book, John Maxwell covers how foundational self-awareness is and how important Emotional intelligence is in leadership. Getting to understand your self more deeply provides an avenue to understanding others.

A self-aware leader is not only focused on their own success but on empowering their team. Caring deeply is what Author Kim Scott talks about in my forth recommendation: Radical Candor.

Radical Candor was by far the hardest of teachings to implement. I found myself anticipating a ‘fight’ and it would send my emotions racing. Which is why it is so important to make an authentic connection with each person you lead; it will give you what you need to be radically candid.

As the book will articulate better than I can in a short description, this is not a license to be mean or to say things to purposely raise eyebrows. It is to draw attention to what may be a blind spot or a lack of self-awareness around a particular behavior or thought pattern.

There is a careful balance of providing feedback, like walking a tight rope. The deeper the connection you can facilitate with those you lead the wider the rope gets making it easier to cross. One of the best books that covers this balance is one that I read every year!

I’m not joking, I read “How to win Friends and Influence people” at the beginning of each year. It’s like a reset button for the social drama that occurs throughout the year knocking me out of alignment. The book was written in the 30s and probably the most popular book among entrepreneurs and sales people alike.

This book is not thought of as a traditional “Leadership book” and it doesn’t spend a great deal of time talking overtly about leadership. However, it does provide the very foundation of influence. It talks a lot about what is now popularized as “behavioral flexibility”. The book doesn’t use this term but talks about how changing yourself has influence on others.

My favorite story in the book covers the human bias we talked about earlier, “Reactance Bias”; where Dale Carnegie is walking his dog off leash in the park and avoids a ticket by trying to get a ticket.

While these three books are amazing and will help you lead in a different more powerful way; there is nothing more powerful than understanding human bias's and logical fallacies.

So if you are dead set on being an amazing leader, read these five books then dive into the concept of Human Bias’s. Human bias’s are like short circuits in the brain that have even the smartest people imaginable fall into these brain traps.

Thank you for reading, look out for my next article on Human Bias’s and which ones are the most popular when leading a high performing team.