Leadership books infuse leadership competencies, skills, and best practices. They help you analyze what kind of qualities great leaders share and give frameworks for creating effective teams.
The best leadership books act as great companions and let you determine your role in changing and improving the skills and abilities of dedicated leaders. There are a number of leadership books available out there, but we have listed the 20 best leadership books that you should read.
Best Leadership Books That You Should Read
1. Leadership from the Inside Out
“Effective leaders buffer their teams and organizations from the stress of change by managing, neutralizing, and/or transcending their own stress.” -Kevin Cashman
This book is all about individual growth behind leadership and business theory. Moreover, it is based on case studies, strategies, and research, it shares leadership principles for everyone to gain. It will act as a guide for you in the world of leaders and competition.
2. The Truth About Leadership
“Leadership is an affair of the heart.”- James M. Kouzes, Barry Z. Posner
This book involves 30 years of research about trust, ethics, and the credibility of influential leadership. Read this book to learn about the most significant thing about being a leader.
3. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
“But until a person can say deeply and honestly, “I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,” that person cannot say, “I choose otherwise.”- Steven R. Covey
This book is paramount for every leader as it talks about personal development that focuses on powerful life and business transitions. The author has shared research-driven guidance on becoming a powerful personality with effective habits and life principles.
4. The 4 Hour Work Week
“Don’t follow a model that doesn’t work. If the recipe sucks, it doesn’t matter how good a cook you are.”-Tim Ferriss
This is one of the best leadership books that lets you enhance your efficiency and productivity. It also offers ways to lead a stress-free and prosperous life, take the lead with minor tension, and overcome challenges more effectively.
5. The Tanning of Americ
“Great ideas can come from anywhere. There are no titles around an idea.”- Steve Stoute.
The Tanning of America emphasizes the relationship between marketing and culture and people and culture.
6. The Art of the Pitch
“Make a choice about what’s important and let everything else go.”- Peter Coughter.
This book teaches people how to gain success. You can have ideas about principles and presentations to convey a story interestingly. This book is an excellent aid for making you more interactive and expressive.
7. The Lean Startup
“We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.”-Eric Ries.
Ries highlights situations that lead to failure. Business people can have a lot of valuable ideas from this book. This book also highlights how we perceive things and how that can lead to disappointment.
8. The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”-Stephen R. Covey.
Covey talks about the basics of becoming an efficient and productive person in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. This book is quite famous among youngsters who desire to become notable leaders. Various successful personalities and habits are also conferred in this book, which acts as a basis for understanding how to get success.
9. The 48 Laws of Power
“When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity… you cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others”- Robert Greene.
In this book, Greene shows us different laws to rule efficiently. These laws are demonstrated fruitful for becoming a successful leader. Learning how to rule with dignity is something that every leader should know.
10. On Becoming a Leader
“If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn’t be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out.”- Warren Bennis
Warren Bennis, a leadership expert, gives insights on why leaders are rather created than born. You’ll learn research-based qualities and features that define true leaders, learn to apply those qualities, and become a better leader yourself.
11. How to Win Friends and Influence People
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”- Dale Carnegie.
This book teaches influential lessons on leadership and dealing with people. Even if those people are the worst individuals you have ever encountered in your life.
12. Primal Leadership
“Today, as leaders are called on to build their companies by creating the future rather than investing in the past, vision matters more than ever. Vision requires what looks like to others a leap of faith; the ability to go beyond the data and to make a smart guess.”-Daniel Goleman
It helps you learn how to deal with people through compassion and empathy. The book focuses on emotional intelligence and its ability for influencing others, sharing neuroscience insights on how to guide others.
13. Extreme Ownership
“the most fundamental and important truths at the heart of Extreme Ownership: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.”-Jocko Willink
Jocko Willink and Leif Babin have compiled this book. They have understood different things from experience and put these principles in their life to achieve success.
This book emphasizes some points related to leadership and achieving it by practicing the mentioned laws and ideas.
14. Meetings Suck
” Start building a network of fellow entrepreneurs that understand your passion and don’t make you feel guilty about always chasing it”-Cameron Herold
This book is a worthwhile read for all leaders, entrepreneurs, and socialites who need to organize meetings and conferences in a productive and approachable way. Organizing brief but successful meetings improve the chances of getting popular among your social circle and enhances your repertoire.
15. The Art of Seduction
“The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways”-Robert Greene
This book represents the relationship between power and influence. Influencing others is the major leadership characteristic, and this book is the most suitable choice if you want to learn the art of influencing others. It also explains how power influences people’s behaviors and how power can lead people in the right direction.
16. The Leader Who Had No Title
“What society thinks is of no interest to me. All that’s important is how I see myself. I know who I am. I know the value of my work.”-Robin Sharma
Compassion, modesty, consideration. The Leader Who Had No Title shows significant qualities that every leader should have. They are what guides us to success in business and life, and they are what makes you convince those you lead.
17. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
“Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.”-John C. Maxwell
All you have to do is follow these laws for others to follow you. All 21 are simple to understand and apply. They are strong principles that make us actionable and ready to take the role of a leader, building necessary qualities and modern leadership thinking.
18. Leaders Eat Last
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”-Simon Sinek
This book will make you understand why some teams pull together, and others don’t. Discover how to instill trust in your team for you and work. Also, how to love their pastime there, and come back home happy and fulfilled.
19. Leadership Without Easy Answers
“To survive and succeed in exercising leadership, you must work as closely with your opponents as you do with your supporters.”- Ronald Heifetz
Read this book if you are a leader who needs to make tough decisions and strategies as it will help you do that effectively. The author shares the outcomes of his long-term research on leaders in education, business, and politics, summarizing them into clear steps for those wanting to build leadership.
20. A People’s History of the United States
“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it”- Howard Zinn.
This book provides a detailed account of the lives of people who were not powerful yet worked hard to achieve notable status in American society. This book has acted as an eye-opening and inspiring leader to many.
Conclusion
In this post, we have compiled the best leadership books that will inspire you and develop an interest in readers to strive for perfection. We hope you find this post helpful.
Description- Do you want to become a leader? If yes, then read some of the best leadership books that will not only inspire you but also let you enhance your leadership skills.
Read More:
- Boss Vs Leader: 12 Defining Characteristics of Leader and Boss
- 10 Best Leadership Podcasts you Should Follow.
- How to be a Leader? Top 10 Effective Tips.
- What Makes a Good Leader Everything you Need to Know
- 10 Effective Team Leader Qualities You Must have to Succeed
- 5 Levels of Leadership: To Maximize Your Influence on People
- Top 10 direct selling company in India
- Top 10 pharma companies in India
Business Talk is a digital business magazine that caters to CEOs, Entrepreneurs, VC, and Corporates. While working with entrepreneurs and business executives, we focus not only on their achievements. Our mission is to shed light on business entities, including their innovations, technological benchmarks, USPs, and milestones/accolades.
