Read to Lead

Learn from leaders who've been there - everyone from Rudy Giuliani to Madeleine Albright. Check out these books on leadership for firsthand advice and practical tools from experts.

•  The Servant-Leader Within: A Transformative Path by Robert K. Greenleaf, Hamilton Beazley, Julie Beggs, and Larry Spears

The question of leadership has always been a crucial one for human society. Robert K. Greenleaf answered this question with a revolutionary idea whose influences continue to be felt strongly to this day. Greenleaf proposes that truly great leaders are not motivated by the selfish desire to increase their own power or prestige, but by a yearning to help others. (Excerpt from the publisher)

•  The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes and Barry Posner

Creating a research base of 60,000 leaders and constituents, Kouzes and Posner surveyed people at all organizational levels in a variety of organizations. In doing so, they discovered recurring patterns of success and distilled a solid set of practical, concrete concepts and behaviors. The extraordinary results achieved by the ordinary people who applied these fundamental leadership skills underscore the fact that opportunities for leadership are available to all of us every day.(Excerpt from the publisher)

•  The Female Advantage; Women's Ways of Leadership by Sally Helgesen

In her bestselling 1990 book, Sally Helgesen discovered that men and women approach work in fundamentally different ways. Many of these differences hold distinct advantages for women, who excel at running organizations that foster creativity, cooperation, and intuitive decision-making power, necessities for companies of the twenty-first century. Helgesen's findings reveal that organizations run by women do not take the form of the traditional hierarchical pyramid, but more closely resemble a web, where leaders reach out, not down, to form an interrelating matrix built around a central purpose. (Excerpt from the publisher)

•  Building the Awesome Organization; Six Essential Components that Drive Entrepreneurial Growth by Katherine Catlin and Jana Matthews (Great for student organizations)

Building the Awesome Organization discusses the eight components of an awesome organization. This book will help you to realize the core competencies for growth. It describes the processes, policies and systems that support growth. Find out how to attract and retain awesome people and develop an environment that motivates and empowers people to achieve extraordinary results. (Excerpt from Amazon.com)

•  Leadership and the New Science; Discovering Order in a Chaotic World by Margaret Wheatley

Margaret Wheatley shows how the "New Science"-the revolutionary discoveries in quantum physics, chaos theory, and biology that are overturning centuries-old models of science-provides powerful insights for transforming how we design, lead, and manage organizations. In this pioneering book, Margaret Wheatley shows how the new science provides equally powerful insights for changing the ways we design, lead, manage, and view organizations. In a warm, inviting style, Margaret Wheatley takes readers on a mind-opening journey into the new science, and applies these concepts to shed new light on the fundamental issues of organizing work, people, and life. (Excerpt from Amazon.com)

•  Madam Secretary by Madeline Albright

Madam Secretary combines warm humor with profound insights and personal testament with fascinating additions to the historical record. It is a tapestry both intimate and panoramic, a rich memoir destined to become a twenty-first century classic. Besides her encounters with the famous and powerful, we get to know Albright the private woman: her life raising three daughters, the painful breakup of her marriage to the scion of one of America's leading newspapers families, and the discovery late in life of her Jewish ancestry and that her grandparents had died in Nazi concentration camps. (Excerpt from Amazon.com)

•  More Than a Motorcycle: The Leadership Journey at Harley-Davidson by Teerlink and Ozley

More Than a Motorcycle is the story behind the story of the purposeful transformation of an American icon-as told by the two individuals who were most deeply involved in that process. While marketers and the media alike have long celebrated Harley, this candid inside account goes behind the headlines to reveal the highlights and lowlights, the victories and setbacks, and the breakthroughs and dead ends experienced by Teerlink, Ozley, and others as the company engaged in this transformational change effort. (Excerpt from Amazon.com)

•  Leadership Jazz   by Max DePree

This bold and innovative work.draws a compelling and illuminating parallel between leadership and jazz - both art forms in which freedom and technique, improvisation and rules, inspiration and restraint must be precisely and expertly blended. This dynamic, inspiring book compels you to reconsider every assumption you have about work.and find your own voice in this soaring coda on the art and craft of leadership. (Excerpt from the publisher)

•  Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani

Having inherited a city ravaged by crime and crippled in its ability to serve its citizens, Giuliani shows how he found that every aspect of his career up to that point-from clerking for the formidable judge who demanded excellence (and rewarded it with a lifetime of loyalty) to busting organized crime during his years as a federal attorney-shaped his thinking about leadership and prepared him for the daunting challenges ahead. (Excerpt from Amazon.com)