By Michael Holland –
Great people leaders are life long learners consuming blog posts, podcasts, articles, videos and books to gain perspective and increase knowledge.
Leverage your vacation time this summer with a good book!
Here are 4 books I recommend for this summer.
Get Your Leadership Geek On. . .
Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall
You crave feedback. Your organization’s culture is the key to its success. Strategic planning is essential. Your competencies should be measured and your weaknesses shored up. Leadership is a thing.
These may sound like basic truths of our work lives today. But actually, they’re lies.
We encounter these lies every time we show up for work. They cause dysfunction and frustration, ultimately resulting in workplaces that are a pale shadow of what they could be.
This provocative book, from the author of First Break all the Rules, challenges our thinking on what it takes to lead well.
Get Perspective. . .
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook’s COO) felt certain that she and her children would never feel pure joy again.
Her friend Adam Grant, a psychologist at Wharton, told her there are concrete steps people can take to recover and rebound from life-shattering experiences. We are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. It is a muscle that everyone can build.
This book goes beyond Sheryl’s loss to explore how a broad range of people have overcome hardships including illness, job loss, sexual assault, natural disasters, and the violence of war. Their stories reveal the capacity of the human spirit to persevere . . . and to rediscover joy.
Get Educated. . .
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, and Ola Rosling
When asked simple questions about global trends―what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.
Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases.
It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.
Get Your Mind Thinking. . .
Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI by Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson
Look around you. Artificial intelligence is no longer just a futuristic notion. It’s here right now–in software that senses what we need, supply chains that “think” in real time, and robots that respond to changes in their environment.
Companies are already using AI to innovate and grow fast. The bottom line is this: Businesses that understand how to harness AI can surge ahead. Those that neglect it will fall behind.
Based on the authors’ experience and research with 1,500 organizations, the book reveals how companies are using the new rules of AI to leap ahead on innovation and profitability, as well as what you can do to achieve similar results.
Be a life long learner and lead well!
I strive read 30 to 40 books a year. Here is a list of the books I’ve read in 2019 on my personal blog, Instigating Men.
