Leadership Reading – Part 2

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For the second part of this series on books, I’ll look at some that are a little different.

Let’s start with Bad Leadership by Barbara Kellerman. One of my constant mantras is that leadership isn’t necessarily good. There’s good leadership and bad leadership. Kellerman makes this point very well with clear examples of leaders, sometimes well-known leaders, who were not really good leaders. Bad Leadership explores a concept that leaders really need to understand.

Next is What I Didn’t Learn in Business School, by Jay Barney and Trish Clifford. I especially like this book because it lays bare the fact that understanding all the great management principles taught in most business schools is great, but doesn’t make you a leader of people. Writing as a business novel, Barney and Clifford take their protagonist through a consulting job as he learns there is more to the business than just numbers.

Jim Collins is a well known author of leadership books which he writes based on very extensive research. Both Good to Great, and How the Mighty Fall are the result of that study. In Good to Great, Collins links leadership to financial performance of large companies. It’s an interesting analysis that shows the benefits of good leadership. In How the Mighty Fall he takes a closer look at companies that had been successful by his analysis and presents a theory to explain what happened.

Finally, an older book, The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. This is actually the first in a series of business novels by Goldratt. Though his focus is on some basic management principles like choke points and efficiencies, there is a lot of leadership spread throughout.

Leave a comment and let us know about some of the books you’ve found valuable?