What a delightful and challenging task to put down on paper a list of books and resources on the general

theme of leadership! I have been a student of leadership for almost 40 years (when I first began to realize my
own need to grow in this area as a teenager). Of course, as I quickly learned, there is no amount of reading
or study that can substitute for actually ‘hanging out’ with a leader. Leadership is more effectively caught
than it is taught. With that caveat, here are some of my favorite resources.

John C. Maxwell
John began his career as a church pastor and he is a prolific author with dozens of books to his credit (OK,
Wikipedia says over 50!). The appeal of his writing is that he speaks directly to someone who is just getting
interested in leadership. He is also a life-long collector of great quotations and he uses them very effectively in
his books. If I were to recommend some of John’s more important books they would be:
 Today Matters (and its subsequent ‘gift version’ Make Today Count) which covers the fundamental
principle that the combination of the key decisions we make in life plus the daily disciplines that we
embrace to support those decisions are what make us who we really are in the end.
 Developing the Leader Within You
 The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
 The 21 Indispensible Qualities of a Leader
 Put Your Dream to the Test
 The Journey from Success to Significance
 Talent is Never Enough
 Failing Forward
 Everybody Communicates Few Connect
 101 Series (Relationships, Leadership, Ethics, Equipping, Attitude…)

Peter F. Drucker
“The man who invented management.” — Business Week
The story of Peter Drucker is the story of management itself. It's the story of the rise of the modern corporation and
the managers who organize work. Without his analysis it's almost impossible to imagine the rise of dispersed, globe-
spanning corporations. But it's also the story of Drucker's own rising disenchantment with capitalism in the late 20th
century that seemed to reward greed as easily as it did performance. Drucker was sickened by the excessive riches
awarded to mediocre executives even as they slashed the ranks of ordinary workers. The doubt and disillusionment
with business that Drucker expressed in his later years caused him to turn away from the corporation and instead
offer his advice to the nonprofit sector. It seemed an acknowledgment that business and management had somehow
failed him. But Drucker's tale is not mere history. Whether it's recognized or not, the organization and practice of
management today is derived largely from the thinking of Peter Drucker. His teachings form a blueprint for every
thinking leader. In a world of quick fixes and glib explanations, a world of fads and simplistic PowerPoint lessons, he
understood that the job of leading people and institutions is filled with complexity. He taught generations of
managers the importance of picking the best people, of focusing on opportunities and not problems, of getting on
the same side of the desk as your customer, of the need to understand your competitive advantages and to continue
to refine them. He believed that talented people were the essential ingredient of every successful enterprise.
 The Practice of Management (1954)
 The Effective Executive (1966)
 The Essential Drucker
 The Effective Executive in Action
 ‘Managing Oneself’ (HBR) http://academy.clevelandclinic.org/Portals/40/managingoneself.pdf
 See also: http://www.druckerinstitute.com/
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Peter_Drucker/

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Jim Collins
 Built to Last (with Jerry Poras)
Why are some companies able to achieve and sustain success through multiple generations of leaders, across
decades and even centuries? Among the findings are: Preserve the Core / Stimulate Progress, BHAGs (Big Hairy
Audacious Goals), and the Genius of the And.
 Good to Great
Can a good company become a great company, and if so, how? Based on a five year research project comparing
teams that made a leap to those that did not, Good to Great shows that greatness is not primarily a function of
circumstance; but largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline. This book discusses concepts like Level 5
Leadership, First Who (first get the right people on the bus, then figure out where to drive it), and the Flywheel.
Also: Collins issued a smaller companion monograph: Good to Great and the Social Sectors.
 How the Mighty Fall And Why Some Companies Never Give In
How the Mighty Fall presents the well-founded hope that leaders can learn how to stave off decline and, if they
find themselves falling, reverse their course – in part by understanding the five step-wise stages of decline
uncovered in the four year research project behind the book. Every institution, no matter how great, is
vulnerable to decline. Anyone can fall, and most eventually do. But decline, it turns out, is largely self-inflicted,
and the path to recovery lies largely within our own hands. We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our
history, or even our staggering defeats along the way. As long as we never get entirely knocked out of the game,
hope always remains. The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.

Patrick Lencioni
 The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
 The Five Temptations of a CEO
 The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive
 Death by Meeting

Aubrey Malphurs
Aubrey is both a seminary professor as well as a consultant to churches and non-profit organizations in the
areas of leadership and leadership development. In the works listed below are a number of valuable
assessment tools that are very helpful for individual leaders and for teams.
 Being Leaders
 Building Leaders
 Leading Leaders
 Maximizing Your Effectiveness
 http://www.malphursgroup.com/index.html

John Kotter
Since the release of his Leading Change work in 1996, Kotter has been recognized as the authority on
successfully effecting change within any group, community or organization. His books are the basis for
graduate level courses on change as well as many other commercial change training offerings.
 Leading Change
 The Heart of Change (with Dan Cohen)
 The Heart of Change Field Guide (Dan Cohen)
 Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under any Conditions (with Holger Rathgeber)
 On What Leaders Really Do
 A Sense of Urgency

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Gary Hamel
As the most reprinted author in Harvard Business Review history, Dr. Hamel has a keen insight into
management and leadership.
 Leading the Revolution
 The Future of Management (the first really good treatment of the changing dynamics of management
and leadership as a consequence of a Web 2.0 world characterized by social networking, highly
accessible information {and disinformation}, collaborative crowd-sourcing, incremental and dis-
continuous innovation, and project democratization.)
 Competing for the Future (with C.K. Prahalad)
 http://blogs.wsj.com/management/

Daniel Pink
A former speech-writer, political aide turned business writer, Mr. Pink’s two most influential books are:
 A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
In this book, he argues that today's workplace has shifted from an "Information Age" that valued knowledge
workers to a "Conceptual Age" that values creativity and right-brain-directed (R-directed) aptitudes. Consequently
creators and empathizers have the competitive advantage in today's economy, he argues. Pink considers six R-
Directed aptitudes to be most critical to success: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. By
developing and cultivating these six "senses," he writes, workers can increase their value in today's workplace.
 Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
The book examines the scientific literature on motivation, outlines the perils of extrinsic motivators, and
describes the three key elements of truly effective motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Drive concludes
with a toolkit of ways individuals, managers, parents, and companies can intensify their use of effective
motivators and decrease their dependence on extrinsic motivators.

Reggie McNeal
Reggie McNeal is Missional Leadership Specialist for the Leadership Network of Dallas, TX and for over a
decade he served as a denominational executive and leadership development coach.
 A Work of Heart
 Practicing Greatness

Bill George
 True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership
 Finding Your True North: A Personal Guide
 Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets of Creating Lasting Value
 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis

Chip & Dan Heath

Dan Heath is a Senior Fellow at Duke University's CASE center, which supports social entrepreneurs. Chip
Heath is Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.
(See: http://heathbrothers.com/)
 Made to Stick
Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? The Heath
brothers reveal the anatomy of ideas that "stick" and explain sure-fire methods for making ideas stickier, such as
violating schemas, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating “curiosity gaps.”

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  Switch
Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The
primary obstacle is a conflict that's built into our brains. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled
by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational
mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change
something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change
effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly.

Miscellaneous
The following partial list is of individual titles (alphabetized) that I have either found to be helpful with certain
aspects of the leadership spectrum or which I greatly enjoyed as a leader.
 Achievers, The (Gerald Bell)
 Art of Possibility, The (Zander, Benjamin & Rosamund)
 Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters (Barbara Kellerman)
 Carolina Way, The (Dean Smith)
 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Jared Diamond)
 Communicators, The: Leadership in the Age of Crisis (Richard Levick) **
 Effective Board Member, The (Bobb Biehl / Ted Engstrom)
 Exceptional Presenter, The (Timothy Koegel)
 Fifth Discipline, The: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization (Peter Senge)
 First, Break All the Rules (Marcus Buckingham / Curt Coffman)
 First 90 Days, The: Critical Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels (Michael Watkins)
 Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intellegences (Howard Gardner)
 Leadership (James MacGregor Burns)
 Leadership and Self-Deception (Arbinger Institute)
 Leading from the Second Chair (Mike Bonem / Roger Patterson)
 Managing the Gray Areas (Jerry Manus)
 Outliers: The Story of Success (Malcolm Gladwell)
 Team of Rivals (Doris Kearns Goodwin)
 Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The (Stephen R. Covey)
 The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Malcolm Gladwell)
 Wooden on Leadership (John Wooden / Steve Jamison)

Other thoughts…
As I mentioned at the beginning, the best way to grow as a leader is to get close to one. Ideally, that means
being ‘somewhere in the circle’ of their influence. However, it IS also very, very instructive to learn from lives
far removed from our own that we can only experience vicariously. The best way to do so is with an excellent
biography. The United States Presidents, the Founding Fathers, and the other great men and women of history
are all waiting to shape our lives and increase our capacity to lead through the pages of a well-written
biography. Don’t forget that they are waiting for you to make their acquaintance!

** Most recent addition(s)

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