Christian Leadership Alliance
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Recommended Resources: Books
Executive Leadership (CEOs)
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
The precursor to Good to Great, this book is also destined to be a business classic. Built to Last focuses on 18 world-class companies (at the time this book was written) and asks what made them so visionary compared with selected companies in their own industry. Based on six years of extensive research, Built to Last debunks twelve prevalent business beliefs. One notable finding about great companies is the importance of having a strong, shared sense of organizational purpose that focuses your products and services.
The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership
Steven Sample, the president of the University of Southern California, gives us a refreshing and insightful discussion on the characteristics and qualities of a successfully leader. Instead of the commonly expected ideals of leadership, Sample suggests things such as reading Machiavelli instead of national news papers, learning to work for your employees, proclaiming that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. These and other seemingly counter intuitive suggestions will be helpful for all leaders and managers hoping to promote good leadership and guide their organizations successfully into the future.
Courageous Leadership
This book provides a fresh perspective on leadership styles and compellingly illustrates the power of vision. Written with transparency, passion and conviction, this book reflects the culmination of 30 years of great successes and near fatal failures in Christian leadership. Hybels at his best.
Death by Meeting: A Leadership Parable … About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business
Can your staff actually look forward to business meetings? Lencioni says 'Yes!' and proceeds to give practical advice on how to revitalize the time you spend in meetings. Particularly useful for executives is the idea of promoting creativity and encouraging critical thinking by 'instilling conflict' in staff sessions. Written in his signature parable style with an explicit 'how to' section at the end. A quick read.
Descending Into Greatness
A good reminder of how true success is measured for the Christian CEO. Encouraging us to place God's desires above our natural inclinations for upward mobility, Hybels directs us to follow Jesus downward into servant leadership. A great read to keep perspective on what really matters.
The Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders
Zenger and Folkman present mountains of research and information on leadership in an attempt to quantify and demystify the seeming complexities of being a leader in today's marketplace. Analyzing nearly 200,000 assessments from 20,000 managers, it firmly establishes the need and importance of leadership development and a necessary discontent with the status quo. One of the most compelling and informative findings is the correlation between the behavior and attitude of a leader and the overall performance of an organization. This work ultimately culminates in 16 competencies that distinguish successful and effective leaders and organizations from their weaker and less productive counterparts.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
If you want to build an effective team culture within your organization, this book is a must read. Written in a parable format to answer the question, "Why do teams struggle?" it is filled with simple, practical wisdom. Lencioni realistically portrays the amount of effort and the action steps needed to bring health to dysfunctional teams.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies make the Leap…and Others Don't
Quite possibly the most significant business book of the decade. The chapter on 'Level Five Leadership' is a must read for every CEO. In an innovative research study of 1,435 Fortune 500 companies, Collins attempts to answer what it takes to move a good company to greatness. Only 11 companies made the cut in his study and their success challenges a lot of contemporary business assumptions about what it takes to be one of the best.
The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations
Superb! A follow up book to Leading Change, Kotter and Cohen examine in depth how behavior change really occurs in companies and organizations. At the heart of the book is Kotter's insight that people change more because "they are shown a truth that influences their feelings" than because they have been given a factual analysis of the situation. Packed with real-life examples and stories, and useful summaries at the end of each chapter, this book is a must read for any CEO seeking to implement change.
The Leadership Engine: How Winning Companies Build Leadership at Every Level
An outstanding book on leadership development. Using real life examples, Tichy observes that winning organizations have "good leaders who nurture the development of other leaders at all levels of the organization." The last third of the book is a how-to section titled Handbook for Leaders Developing Leaders and depicts how you can create a leadership engine within your own organization.
Leadership on the Line
More practical and personal than the earlier Leadership without Easy Answers, this book takes a realistic look at the 'perils of leadership' and how to live through them. What makes leadership so dangerous? In the words of Heifeitz and Linsky, "When you lead people through difficult change, you challenge what people hold dear—their daily habits, tools, loyalties, and ways of thinking—with nothing more to offer perhaps than a possibility." No wonder resistance is to be expected! An insightful and inspiring read.
Leadership Without Easy Answers
Brilliant. A thought-provoking discussion about leadership that will help anyone appreciate the distinction between leading with power and leading without power and position. Leadership must risk revealing the discrepancies between values and actions, and move organizations and people toward greater congruence between what they say and what they do. Very well written.
Leading Change
One of the best books on managing change that you can find. Renowned Harvard Business School professor John Kotter outlines an actionable, 8 stage process for leading organizations successfully through change. Interspersed with many examples from real life situations, this is an invaluable guide for how to make things happen.
Management of the Absurd
Human behavior is not always rational. So how does this affect your assumptions about leadership? Farson challenges leaders to embrace the paradoxes intrinsic to human nature in order to think creatively beyond simplistic solutions to managing and leading others. Thought-provoking.
Now Discover Your Strengths
To achieve excellence, build on your strengths instead of focusing on overcoming your weaknesses … but to build on your strengths, you must know what they are. This follow up book to First Break All The Rules gives you the opportunity to identify your innate top 5 strengths through an interactive Web survey.
The One Thing You Need to Know
Buckingham brings clarity to managing, leading and sustained personal success by identifying the essential, controlling insight that can produce the greatest and most comprehensive impact in each of these areas. Especially useful to CEO's is the concept of imbalance—acknowledging our weaknesses and building a leadership team whose strengths can balance our flaws. A fresh, engaging read.
Re-imagine!: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age
Management guru Peters gives an ardent wake-up call to businesses and organizations on how the business environment has changed and explores inventive ways to respond. Innovation is something everyone must own in organizations, and the CEO's role is to foster a nurturing climate for innovation to occur. Peters take his own advice in the design of this book. Using changes in words' font, size and color, icons, vibrant photos, dotted lines from the text to side bars and other items, this book reads more like a contemporary magazine than a standard business book.
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