My leadership and management reading list

A former member of my team at Coursera asked me to share my favorite “books, articles and concepts” on leadership and management, so here they are. If you have a favorite article/book on leadership that’s not on this list, please let me know!

• Crucial Conversations by Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler, Ron McMillan: At Coursera everyone went through Crucial Conversation training. The training (and this book) gives people a structure to have those difficult but crucial conversations. The book will help you in your personal life too. :)
• The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane: Leadership comes in all shapes and sizes. Many of the strongest leaders I have worked with are not the most naturally “charismatic”. This book does as a great job of breaking down what charisma is, and how you can harness it, while retaining your own authentic leadership style.
• Radical Candor — the Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss by Kim Scott: Especially new managers struggle giving honest and direct feedback. They are afraid of not being liked or not being nice. But what is actually not nice is failing to give people the feedback that they need to grow in their career. This article (and book) does a great job of laying this out.
• Results from Google’s analysis of what makes a good manager: Through surveys Google has identified ten behaviors of it’s best managers. These behaviors provide a great framework to reflect on your own leadership — -where are you strong and where could you improve?
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni: This is a great read if you are trying to turn around a dysfunctional team or to be just aware of the pitfalls that can lead a team to become dysfunctional.
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath: So much of being an effective leader is being able to motivate people to lead change. But motivating people involves tapping into two (sometime conflicting) systems — -the emotional and the rational. This book provides a pattern for being able to do so. It’s also just a really fun read.
• Strengths Finder by Tom Rath: I read this a long time ago, and found it helpful for me to reflect on my own strengths. It’s also a great approach to leadership more generally — the idea being that while some weaknesses may need to get mitigated, it is ultimately someone’s strengths that make them successful. As leader you should therefore focus on people strengths rather than just their weaknesses.
• MBTI (free test here): this is a great tool to help you become more aware of your own personality and why it might be easier or harder for you to work with others of different types. It’s also great to do with teams to provide a framework to discuss differences in personalities and working styles, and to figure out how to work together more effectively.
• The Alliance by Reid Hoffman: This book provides really useful framing for today’s employee-employer relationship. I often used this framework when discussing new project or roles with my direct reports.
• Discover your True North by Bill George: This is a classic leadership book focused on authentic leadership. This is a great read for new manager struggling to be themselves in their new role.
• Measure what Matters by John Doerr: I worked at two of the organizations featured in this book — Google and Coursera. At this point, I can’t imagine running an organization or team without OKRs. This is a must read if you are new to OKRs.
• 5 Common Myths About Management that you Need to Stop Believing by me :) : I wrote this at a time when I was managing several new managers. This post was my advice to them.

Other useful concepts:

• Staying on your side of the net
• Interests vs. positions (from Getting to Yes)
• The power of being vulnerable
• Importance of Psychological Safety (TEDtalk and overview)
• “I” statements vs. “you” statements