With a New Year just around the corner, you’ve no doubt started giving thought to your goals for 2018. As a leader, chances are you’ll meet with your team for annual planning to chart the course of your company’s growth for the next year, to prepare for new growth, and to plan for any challenges you foresee. But leadership happens outside of the workplace as well, and the most successful leaders understand that you never stop sharpening your skills or increasing your knowledge.
Personal development, especially in the area of leadership, is a task all leaders should regularly pursue, so as you begin planning your goals for 2018, why not carve out some time in the New Year for growth and continual learning? Here’s our list of 5 books every leader should read in 2018 to grow by leaps and bounds both in their personal and professional lives.
Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t
by Simon Sinek
Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home feeling fulfilled. This is not a crazy, idealized notion. Today, in many successful organizations, great leaders create environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things.
In his work with organizations around the world, Simon Sinek noticed that some teams trust each other so deeply that they would literally put their lives on the line for each other. Other teams, no matter what incentives are offered, are doomed to infighting, fragmentation and failure. Why? In this book, he shares his ideas on workplaces that foster trust and cooperation.
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
by Charles Duhigg
In The Power of Habit, Pulitzer Prize–winning business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. Distilling vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives that take us from the boardrooms of Procter & Gamble to sidelines of the NFL to the front lines of the civil rights movement, Duhigg presents a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential.
At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. As Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.
The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
You want less. You want fewer distractions and less on your plate. The daily barrage of e-mails, texts, tweets, messages, and meetings distract you and stress you out. The simultaneous demands of work and family are taking a toll. And what’s the cost? Second-rate work, missed deadlines, smaller paychecks, fewer promotions–and lots of stress. And you want more. You want more productivity from your work. More income for a better lifestyle. You want more satisfaction from life, and more time for yourself, your family, and your friends.
Now you can have both—less and more. In The ONE Thing, you’ll learn to cut through the clutter, achieve better results in less time, build momentum toward your goal, dial down the stress, overcome that overwhelmed feeling, revive your energy, stay on track, and master what matters to you. The ONE Thing delivers extraordinary results in every area of your life–work, personal, family, and spiritual.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t
by Jim Collins
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world’s greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?
Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness — why some companies make the leap and others don’t.
Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers
by Timothy Ferriss
“For the last two years, I’ve interviewed more than 200 world-class performers for my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show. The guests range from super celebs (Jamie Foxx, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.) and athletes (icons of powerlifting, gymnastics, surfing, etc.) to legendary Special Operations commanders and black-market biochemists.
For most of my guests, it’s the first time they’ve agreed to a two-to-three-hour interview. This unusual depth has helped make The Tim Ferriss Show the first business/interview podcast to pass 100 million downloads. This book contains the distilled tools, tactics, and ‘inside baseball’ you won’t find anywhere else.” (Please note: we don’t endorse all of the methods described in Tools of Titans).
So there’s our list of the top 5 books every leader should read in 2018. Which ones will you add to your to-read list?
But no list would be complete without mentioning our own Ros Cardinal’s title, The Resilient Employee: The essential guide to coping with change and thriving in today’s workplace. From the description: “Change expert, Rosalind Cardinal, wants to help you discover a different way to approach change in your life. She asserts, when we master our mindset and take back control of our reactions, we can use change for our benefit—both as a wellspring of invaluable lessons and as a launch pad to greatness. In The Resilient Employee, she’ll show you the exact strategies and techniques she’s shared with a range of organisations over the last decade. You’ll discover a range of tools that will allow you to transform change from your biggest enemy to your greatest ally.”
Click the image below to purchase your copy today and start 2018 with the tools you need to use change to your advantage!
