Leaders are readers: What books should leaders read?

Recently I became involved in a LinkedIn discussion group suggesting 40 books to read before you turn 40.  The majority of the recommendations were either ‘New Age’ or ‘Organic/Health food’.  I had only read three of the 40 books, David Copperfield (highly recommended), Think and Grow Rich, and The Power of Positive Thinking and had no inclination to read any of the remaining 37..  As the group called itself Leadership Skills & Development for Business a subgroup of Small Business Evolution | Entrepreneurs & SMEs I thought I would expound on what books a prospective Leader should actually read.

If I could only recommend one book it would be what easily the best business book is ever written: Up the Organization by Robert Townsend. Peter Drucker wrote the first books on management, Townsend wrote the first and best book on leadership. There is a great video of him on YouTube. Search Robert Townsend Avis or link here. Also Marsha Evans has produced a reasonable introduction to the book on YouTube. The book was published in 1970 and I read it when I started my MBA at London Business School in 1971. There is a lot of drivel published on leadership but this book is the big exception.

Lists of what books leaders should read appear continually.  Here is another: 7 Business Books You Can Read In The Time It Takes To Eat Lunch.  This time the list is mercifully shorter and I have also read three, On Bullshit, The Peter Principle, and Parkinson’s Law.

What books should leaders read?  This question became personally relevant to me in 2005 when my elder daughter, Louisa began her career as a supervisor for Skandia and then was head hunted to run a team of 30 people at Perpetual before she was 30.  She asked me a good question, "Dad you have read all the business books, what do you recommend for me to read?"  

I began by quoting a study to her.  In 1994 the Karpin Industry Task Force on Leadership and Management Skills commissioned a research project to be carried out by Barraclough & Co.  The researcher asked 100 experienced business managers from Australia’s largest organisations what was the most important management component from the following list:

Change Agent, Ethics, Flexibility, Intelligence, People skills, Self management, Strategic thinker, Team player, Visionary

“People skills” was ranked far and away the most important component.  (Ethics, by the way was ranked stone motherless last.)  Thus I said to Louisa she should read a book that would improve her people skills.  After some thought, I realised that there was no practical handbook written to help new managers develop their people skills so I decided that I had to write one myself. Thus The Humm Handbook: Lifting Your Level of Emotional Intelligence was born and published in 2007.  If you want more information go to my website.  To me the secret to improving your people skills is to have a good profiling system.  People drive performance, emotions drive people, temperament drives emotions. So the best profiling system will be based on temperament.  I have found the Humm-Wadsworth model of seven core emotions the most practical tool for people to use and once understood (takes a day) dramatically lifts their emotional intelligence.

However I did recommend to Louisa that in the meantime she read Steven Covey’s excellent book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

1: Be Proactive

2: Begin with the End in Mind

3: Put First Things First

4: Think Win/Win

5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

6: Synergize

7. Sharpen the Saw