There are countless leadership books, manuals, and “Bibles” that are published and updated each year, but which ones create the most immediate impact? Are the most helpful? Foster the most change?
There are the rare few that have stood the test of time while others, including those written by celebrities turned leadership gurus, have created leadership fads that quickly died off. No book you read will compare to lessons learned from on-the-job experience or the time spent with a mentor or coach, but brushing up on leadership terms, articles, and practices will help you make the most of those experiences. That being said, leadership books can sometimes be, to put it nicely, rather dry and tedious. So why not learn leadership skills from a source that provides a more exciting read, better real world examples, and better insight into thought processes? These books exist, they’re just novels instead of how-to guides. Even more, literature can “show you reality in a way that case studies and biographies and other things that are supposedly about reality can’t touch.”
The sheer number of books in the world to choose from allows leaders at all levels and across all industries to find a story that resonates with their current work situation. To help get you started, the Stanford Graduate School of Business put together what “might be the most thought-provoking — and most beautiful — business reading list of all time”:
- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
- The Stranger, Albert Camus
- Zuckerman Bound, a trilogy by Philip Roth
- The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
- Death of A Salesman, Arthur Miller
- Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
- The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fizgerald
- Jasmine, Bharati Mukherjee
- Miramar, Naguib Mahfouz
- All My Sons, Arthur Miller