HBR's 10 Must Reads for New Managers (with bonus article "How Managers Become Leaders" by Michael D. Watkins) (HBR's 10 Must Reads)


Linda A. Hill - 2017
    We’ve combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you transition from being an outstanding individual contributor to becoming a great manager of others. This book will inspire you to: Develop your emotional intelligence Influence your colleagues through the science of persuasion Assess your team and enhance its performance Network effectively to achieve business goals and for personal advancement Navigate relationships with employees, bosses, and peers Get support from above View the big picture in your decision making Balance your team’s work and personal life in a high-intensity workplace This collection of articles includes “Becoming the Boss,” by Linda A. Hill; “Leading the Team You Inherit,” by Michael D. Watkins; “Saving Your Rookie Managers from Themselves,” by Carol A. Walker; “Managing the High-Intensity Workplace,” by Erin Reid and Lakshmi Ramarajan; “Harnessing the Science of Persuasion,” Robert B. Cialdini; “What Makes a Leader?” by Daniel Goleman; “The Authenticity Paradox,” by Herminia Ibarra; “Managing Your Boss,” by John J. Gabarro and John P. Kotter; “How Leaders Create and Use Networks,” by Herminia Ibarra and Mark Lee Hunter; “Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?” by William Oncken, Jr., and Donald L. Wass; and BONUS ARTICLE: “How Managers Become Leaders,” by Michael D. Watkins.

Sponge: Leadership Lessons I Learnt From My Clients


Ambi Parameswaran - 2018
    A challenging customer, in his view, goes from being someone who poses an obstacle to quality work to someone with eye-opening ideas and concepts. Approached as an exercise in listening and learning, these conversations can become long-term lessons. Ambi has worked with some of the most respected brands and names in the Indian corporate world, and each of those assignments were for him masterclasses in leadership development. In this book, Ambi recounts conversations with some of the most iconic business leaders, such as Ratan Tata, Azim Premji, S. Ramadorai, Karsanbhai Patel, M. Damodaran, Dr V. Kurien and many others. He soaked up these conversations, in his own words, 'like a sponge’. This book is an attempt to walk us through some of those dialogues – both the illuminating and the difficult aspects of them – to help us understand how they were learning sessions. For anyone looking at turbocharging their business and career, the ‘Sponge Process’ that emphasises listening is a radical new way of engaging with clients and customers.

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders


L. David Marquet - 2013
    As newly appointed captain of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine, he was responsible for more than a hundred sailors, deep in the sea. In this high-stress environment, where there is no margin for error, it was crucial his men did their job and did it well.But the ship was dogged by poor morale, poor performance, and the worst retention in the fleet. Marquet acted like any other captain until, one day, he unknowingly gave an impossible order, and his crew tried to follow it anyway. When he asked why the order wasn't challenged, the answer was "Because you told me to." Marquet realized he was leading in a culture of followers, and they were all in danger unless they fundamentally changed the way they did things. That's when Marquet took matters into his own hands and pushed for leadership at every level. Turn the Ship Around! is the true story of how the Santa Fe skyrocketed from worst to first in the fleet by challenging the U.S. Navy's traditional leader-follower approach. Struggling against his own instincts to take control, he instead achieved the vastly more powerful model of giving control. Before long, each member of Marquet's crew became a leader and assumed responsibility for everything he did, from clerical tasks to crucial combat decisions. The crew became fully engaged, contributing their full intellectual capacity every day, and the Santa Fe started winning awards and promoting a highly disproportionate number of officers to submarine command.No matter your business or position, you can apply Marquet's radical guidelines to turn your own ship around. The payoff: a workplace where everyone around you is taking responsibility for their actions, where people are healthier and happier, where everyone is a leader.

The Coach Model for Christian Leaders: Powerful Leadership Skills for Solving Problems, Reaching Goals, and Developing Others


Keith E. Webb - 2019
    Rather than provide answers, leaders ask questions to draw out what God has already put into others. ICF Professional Certified Coach and speaker Keith Webb teaches Christian leaders how to create powerful conversations to assist others to solve their own problems, reach goals, and develop their own leadership skills in the process. Whether leaders are working with employees, teenagers, or a colleague living in another city, they’ll find powerful tools and techniques to increase leadership effectiveness. Based on first-hand experience and taught around the world, The COACH Model for Christian Leaders is packed with stories and illustrations that bring the principles and practice to life and transform leaders’ conversations into powerful results.

The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels


Michael D. Watkins - 2003
    In this updated and expanded 10th anniversary edition, internationally known leadership transition expert Michael D. Watkins gives you the keys to successfully negotiating your next move—whether you’re onboarding into a new company, being promoted internally, or embarking on an international assignment.In The First 90 Days, Watkins outlines proven strategies that will dramatically shorten the time it takes to reach what he calls the "breakeven point" when your organization needs you as much as you need the job. This new edition includes a substantial new preface by the author on the new definition of a career as a series of transitions; and notes the growing need for effective and repeatable skills for moving through these changes. As well, updated statistics and new tools make this book more reader-friendly and useful than ever.As hundreds of thousands of readers already know, The First 90 Days is a road map for taking charge quickly and effectively during critical career transition periods—whether you are a first-time manager, a mid-career professional on your way up, or a newly minted CEO.

Toy Box Leadership: Leadership Lessons from the Toys You Loved as a Child


Ron Hunter Jr. - 2008
    Reach back into your childhood and recapture the leadership principles you learned from your favorite toys.What can LEGOS teach you about building your business through connection? How can Slinky Dog demonstrate the value of patience when you're growing your organization? What has every little boy learned from his Little Green Army Men that he can use in business strategy? Whether you are an executive, a manager, or a parent, in Toy Box Leadership you will find the toy box a great place for lessons to successfully influence and lead others.

The Power of Positive Leadership: How and Why Positive Leaders Transform Teams and Organizations and Change the World


Jon Gordon - 2017
    We are positive because life can be hard. As a leader, you will face numerous obstacles, negativity, and tests. There will be times when it seems as if everything in the world is conspiring against you and your vision seems more like a fantasy than a reality. That’s why positive leadership is essential! Positive leadership is not about fake positivity. It is the real stuff that makes great leaders great. The research is clear. Being a positive leader is not just a nice way to lead. It's the way to lead if you want to build a great culture, unite your organization in the face of adversity, develop a connected and committed team and achieve excellence and superior results. Since writing the mega best seller The Energy Bus, Jon Gordon has worked and consulted with leaders who have transformed their companies, organizations and schools, won national championships and are currently changing the world. He has also interviewed some of the greatest leaders of our time and researched many positive leaders throughout history and discovered their paths to success. In this pioneering book Jon Gordon shares what he has learned and provides a comprehensive framework on positive leadership filled with proven principles, compelling stories, practical ideas and practices that will help anyone become a positive leader. There is a power associated with positive leadership and you can start benefiting yourself and your team with it today.

The Case of the Bonsai Manager: Lessons from Nature on Growing


R. Gopalakrishnan - 2009
    Will take 25-35 days

Moral Courage


Rushworth Kidder - 2005
    Enron, Arthur Andersen, the U.S. Olympic Committee, abusive priests, cheating students, domestic violence -- all these remind us that taking ethical stands should be a higher priority in our culture. Why, when people discern wrongdoing, are they sometimes unready, unable, or unwilling to act?In a book rich with examples, Rushworth Kidder reveals that moral courage is the bridge between talking ethics and doing ethics. Defining it as a readiness to endure danger for the sake of principle, he explains that the courage to act is found at the intersection of three elements: action based on core values, awareness of the risks, and a willingness to endure necessary hardship. By exploring how moral courage spurs us to strive for core values, he demonstrates the benefits of ethical action to the individual and to society -- and the severe consequences that can result from remaining morally dormant.Moral Courage puts indispensable concepts and tools into our hands, equipping us to respond to the increasingly complicated moral challenges we face at work, at home, and in our communities. It enables us to make clear, confident decisions by exploring some litmus-test questions:Is the benefit worth the risk?Am I motivated by my desire to uphold my beliefs or just to impose them on others?Will my actions create collateral damage among those with no stake in the outcome? While physical courage may no longer be a necessary survival skill or an essential rite of passage out of childhood, few would dispute the growing need for moral courage as the true gauge of maturity. Treating this subject not as an esoteric branch of philosophy but as a practical necessity for modern life, Kidder deftly leads us to a clear understanding of what moral courage is, what it does, and how to get it.

Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness: The book that inspired the England football team


Owen Eastwood - 2021
    You belong here.Whakapapa is a Maori idea which embodies our universal human need to belong. It represents a powerful spiritual belief - that each of us is part of an unbroken and unbreakable chain of people who share a sacred identity and culture.Owen Eastwood places this concept at the core of his methods to maximize a team's performance. In this book he reveals, for the first time, the ethos that has made him one of the most in-demand Performance Coaches in the world.In Belonging, Owen weaves together insights from homo sapiens' evolutionary story and ancestral wisdom. He shines a light on where these powerful ideas are applied around our world in high-performing settings encompassing sport, business, the arts and military.Aspects of Owen's unique approach include: finding your identity story; defining a shared purpose; visioning future success; sharing ownership with others; understanding the 'silent dance' that plays out in groups; setting the conditions to unleash talent; and converting our diversity into a competitive advantage.

Coaching Psychology Manual


Margaret Moore - 2009
    This manual will help train wellness coaches—a group comprised of fitness professionals, including personal trainers, dieticians, nurses, and physical therapists—in the techniques and concepts to work with individuals on improving all areas of wellness including fitness, nutrition, weight, stress, and management of life issues that impact health.

Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity


Kim Malone Scott - 2017
    While this advice may work for everyday life, it is, as Kim Scott has seen, a disaster when adopted by managers.Scott earned her stripes as a highly successful manager at Google and then decamped to Apple, where she developed a class on optimal management. She has earned growing fame in recent years with her vital new approach to effective management, the “radical candor” method.Radical candor is the sweet spot between managers who are obnoxiously aggressive on one side and ruinously empathetic on the other. It’s about providing guidance, which involves a mix of praise as well as criticism—delivered to produce better results and help employees achieve.Great bosses have strong relationships with their employees, and Scott has identified three simple principles for building better relationships with your employees: make it personal, get (sh)it done, and understand why it matters.Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Taken from years of the author’s experience, and distilled clearly giving actionable lessons to the reader; it shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people both love their work and their colleagues.

Detonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive


Geoff Tuff - 2018
    Until now, the relatively slow speed of marketplace evolution has allowed wasteful habits to continue without consequence. This reality is ending. Detonate explains how organizations built up bad habits, identifies which ones masquerade as "best practices," and suggests alternatives that can contribute to winning in the marketplace. With a focus on optimism and empowerment, it focuses on an approach and mindset which are critical to successfully compete in an era characterized by profound technological advances and uncertainty.  •    Core themes challenge how you think about and approach problems •    Case studies illustrate the challenges you face and how to overcome them •    Recommendations are pragmatic and steer clear of suggesting a brand-new, complicated wiring diagram •    Actionable advice provides the first steps down an evolutionary pathIf you want to compete differently in today’s marketplace and to challenge the things your company does which you have a nagging feeling are actually just a waste of time – and maybe value-destroying – Detonate gives you what you need to ignite change.

The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey


Kenneth H. Blanchard - 1989
    With a vivid, humorous, and too familiar scenario they show a manager loaded down by all the monkeys that have jumped from their rightful owners onto his back. Then step by step they show how managers can free themselves from doing everyone else's job and ensure that every problem is handled by the proper staff person. By using Oncken's Four Rules of Monkey Management managers will learn to become effective supervisors of time, energy, and talent -- especially their own.If you have ever wondered why you are in the office on the weekends and your staff is on the golf course, The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey is for you. It's priceless!

The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win


Jocko Willink - 2018
    With their first book, Extreme Ownership (published in October 2015), Jocko Willink and Leif Babin set a new standard for leadership, challenging readers to become better leaders, better followers, and better people, in both their professional and personal lives. Now, in THE DICHOTOMY OF LEADERSHIP, Jocko and Leif dive even deeper into the unchartered and complex waters of a concept first introduced in Extreme Ownership: finding balance between the opposing forces that pull every leader in different directions. Here, Willink and Babin get granular into the nuances that every successful leader must navigate. Mastering the Dichotomy of Leadership requires understanding when to lead and when to follow; when to aggressively maneuver and when to pause and let things develop; when to detach and let the team run and when to dive into the details and micromanage. In addition, every leader must:· Take Extreme Ownership of everything that impacts their mission, yet utilize Decentralize Command by giving ownership to their team. · Care deeply about their people and their individual success and livelihoods, yet look out for the good of the overall team and above all accomplish the strategic mission. · Exhibit the most important quality in a leader—humility, but also be willing to speak up and push back against questionable decisions that could hurt the team and the mission.With examples from the authors’ combat and training experiences in the SEAL teams, and then a demonstration of how each lesson applies to the business world, Willink and Babin clearly explain THE DICHOTOMY OF LEADERSHIP—skills that are mission-critical for any leader and any team to achieve their ultimate goal: VICTORY.