There’s nothing a team with steadfast and efficient leadership can’t achieve. A good leader can detect new trends, help develop talent in the company, and strike a balance between work and culture, hence ensuring that the firm evolves with time. One of the best ways to ensure that is to read the best leadership books.
Most, if not all, entrepreneurial leaders never fail to state the importance of reading in their lives. These books help answer the critical questions of business life and provide wisdom as authors writing about this have often gone through it themselves. Having said all that, let’s look at the topic at hand i.e. the best 7 books on leadership for entrepreneurs:
1. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
The same way Willink and Babin lead their team on the most violent battlefield in Iraq and go on to create history, the same way they show how to be winning leaders in this practical and revelatory piece of text. They’ve trained many leaders, across budding startups and successful companies, over the years they’ve been teaching in their SEAL leadership training center, and they lay out their wisdom and knowledge in this book.
Engaging and impactful, the book helps you understand what it takes to be a leader and how to improve yourself in different fields. The lessons provided are easy to follow and imbibe in your daily life, and teach how to perform and lead in situations involving high risks. These principles can be applied to all areas of life, be it business or personal, making it even more useful for its readers.
2. Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts by Brené Brown
Leading isn’t really about power games or gaining status for yourself, but more about how to see potential in others and derive maximum efficiency from a group of people. This book is written for all those who dare to do something different, who dare to take charge of a situation, who dare to lead. Using her program designed to build courage, she provides tactics and strategies that can be implemented easily.
Leaders need empathy and courage for them to be able to suitably lead their teams, and Brown shows how to learn these qualities. With these skill sets and behaviors, leadership is attainable and even desirable. Using examples and anecdotes, she shows what it takes to be a leader and how to get there.
3. High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove
Businesses run primarily with one thing: managing. If you can manage everything efficiently, you can start a new business and/or take it to new heights in no time. It won’t be far-fetched to say that the art of entrepreneurship lies in the art of management. And that’s what this book focuses upon. Grove, the former CEO of Intel, shares his wisdom on how to start and run a successful company.
Useful not just for entrepreneurs but also for accountants, teachers, and other occupations equally, this book gives management lessons that help create efficient teams and derive the maximum output from a fixed resource pool. Practical and important, the piece can change your perspective and how you work.
4. The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential by John C. Maxwell
Just by having the position of a leader, one simply doesn’t become a leader. A leader has to also be a visionary, a person that others follow and get inspired by. As Maxwell mentions, every person must go through five levels to truly become a leader. The first level, position, means that people follow you because they must. From there on, it depends on your skill sets and performance. The second level, permission, is reached once you master the art of inspiring others, making them believe in themselves, and so they follow you because they want to.
The third stage is that of production where you must prove your mettle by getting results and creating groups with high efficiency. The fourth stage, development, is reached by helping others realize their own skill sets, and therefore they follow you because of that personal connection. The last stage, pinnacle, which often takes years to reach, is achieved when you get to influence hundreds and thousands of people, outside of your business and generation. With examples and simple instructions, Maxwell takes you through these different levels to help you become the leader that you’re meant to be.
5. Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute
Often leaders end up acting in ways they know aren’t right, which is termed as self-deception. This book is all about identifying that and getting rid of behavior patterns that can be destructive. The book renders complex ideas into accessible ones and can be useful for not only business leaders, but anyone, be it their professional lives or personal lives. It helps you take a hard look at your life and make your way through it in a more fulfilling and productive manner.
Leaders often tend to blame their group for causing problems for which they, at least partially, are to blame, and the book helps in shifting the direction and focus, and with it, it helps in finding an effective solution to problems rather than stalling for time. Easy and realistic, the book can be life-altering if applied to its fullest.
6. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
It’s all wonderful and attractive until it’s not. Opening a business sounds like a charming plan, but like everything else, the ground reality is starkly different. Co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Ben recounts his experiences over the years of how he founded, ran, sold, bought, managed, and invested in companies, and tells how to harbor the mentality of a CEO.
Blunt and concise, the book is especially useful for owners and managers of businesses as it shows how to run a company, how to sell it, how to hire, how to fire, and much more. Using lyrics from rap songs, Horowitz emphasizes the different lessons in this entertaining and comprehensive guide.
7. Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
Founder of the successful and reputed investment firm Bridgewater Associates, Ray Dalio shares some of the wisdom he’s acquired over years of running his company. Putting forth the concept of radical transparency that seeks to build stronger teams and ensure that individuals make the most effective decisions. He puts forth the argument that every sphere of life and the world can be neatly classified into simple rules and dissected like machinery, be it economics or personal lives.
Including numerous lessons that are practical as well as easy to apply, he suggests that the principle of meritocracy should be used to encourage healthy competition inside the firm while also improving the overall productivity. Be it on an individual or group level, the book has simple ideas to improve the decision-making quality in people, thus making it easier to progress through different hurdles.
Article made possible by Nishil. Nishil is a passionate writer, hungry for new innovation. New trends fill him with tons of enthusiasm to uncover hidden topics. Speakaudible covers a wide range of subjects related to audiobooks. You can check out our latest article on self-improvement audiobooks.
