The Best Leadership Reading List From June 2024

As the saying goes, read, read, read. Here are some of my favorites from June to help with your business leadership learning.

Welcome to July 2024!

Before we get to the list, I wanted to add a few comments on the mid-year review. See the post, Your Mid-Year Leadership Review: The Most Important Questions To Ask.

I hope you've had a chance to reflect on the first six months and make any necessary adjustments for the rest of the year. If not, now is the perfect time to reflect on your leadership during the first part of the year.

In my review, I was least satisfied with the time we allocated for team development activities. Due to multiple demanding projects, we had to postpone several training sessions until the year's second half.

With all the work to be done and the time pressures, postponing the training seemed like the right decision. Would the teams have been able to focus on learning when there was so much left to work on?

Looking at the decision several months later, I regret the statement it sent to the team. There will always be work to do, but you can never get that time back if you delay sharpening your skills. The compounding benefits of learning only happen when you make the time to learn and improve.

I will take this learning and work to improve going forward - that’s the goal of reflection!

Now, onto the reading list.

"If it’s wisdom you are after, you are going to spend a lot of time sitting on your ass and reading.” - Charlie Munger

Here are some insightful articles and books I came across last month.

Around the Web

1. Add More Rigor to Your Reference Calls With These 25 Questions - get better at making reference calls for those key hires.

2. I am not a fan of heroism in the engineering industry - a valuable perspective on long-term, consistent performance. It's worth reading, even if you are not in software engineering.

3. Effective Leaders Articulate Values and Live by Them - ensure you communicate your key values and then live up to them.

4. Leading With Trust - Great leaders build a foundation of trust with their team.

5. Stop Playing Favorites - are you unintentionally sending your team messages, causing them to feel undervalued?

6. 3 Questions to Ask Yourself As A Leader - an insightful list of questions to ask yourself. The first one on the list is a definite must to think about.

7. Are Your Individual Contributors Feeling Isolated? - how to help your team from feeling isolated when working on projects that don’t require collaboration.

8. Secrets of Clear Thinking - an excellent overview of a fantastic book about getting better at making decisions.

Books

1. The Innovative Leader: Step-By-Step Lessons from Top Innovators For You and Your Organization - a collection of interviews from leaders sharing their ideas and lessons on driving change and organizational transformation.

2. Leading with Vulnerability: Unlock Your Greatest Superpower to Transform Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization - can vulnerability be a superpower? Learn how it can help leaders build trust and create a work environment that excels in collaboration and driving change.

3. A Leader's Destiny: Why Psychology, Personality, and Character Make All the Difference - looking at how leadership is developed and the myriad of ways that promise quick fixes but don’t deliver.

4. How Leaders Learn: Master the Habits of the World's Most Successful People - lessons in active learning and stories of running one of the largest restaurant companies in the world make this a fun and helpful read. Highly Recommended.

Looking for more to read? Here are my lists from 2024: May, April, March, February, January, and 2023.

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