Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of my time diving into leadership books to see how some of the best leaders in the world work. I wanted to see if there were common themes, methodologies, and practices that the best leaders all utilized.
Each book was unique & I gathered new insights into each one that I read. The biggest thing that I do when I read is highlight and take notes from passages that stick with me while I’m reading.
What you’ll find below is basically a notes dump from some of my favorite leadership books I’ve had the pleasure of reading the past few years.
Some common themes I found:
- Relationships mean everything as a leader
- Give each day your best effort
- Accountability is paramount
- Failure and crisis can and will happen. Your response is what will define you as a leader
- Success isn’t handed to you; you must go out and get it
- A positive attitude goes a long way
- Systems and principles will help paint a clear picture for your team of who you are as a leader
But enough of what I think, take these lessons from over 20 of the best leadership books out there. Each title has a link to purchase the book. Don’t worry, I don’t get any affiliate money or anything like that. If the book is on this list, it’s because I genuinely recommend others reading it.
Pound the Stone: 7 Lessons to Develop Grit on the Path to Mastery by Joshua Medcalf
We often get caught up seeking the remarkable, instead of doing the unremarkable with remarkable consistency.
Unfortunately, most people don’t operate this way. In business and in life, most people lack patience, and play the short game instead of the long game. They chase quarterly bottom lines, instead of a lasting legacy. Cutting corners to maximize short-term profits might work for a little bit, but it will always come at the expense of what truly matters: the relationships and consumer trust that build a legacy.
Failure is an event, not your identity.
The funny thing about blame is that while it might temporarily make us feel better, it does absolutely nothing to create a better tomorrow.
The hard truth is that so often, what we see in others says a lot more about us than it does about them.
You know, a wise man once said, ‘perspective is the only thing that can dramatically change the results without changing any of the facts.
You want to always stay humble and hungry. There is always more to learn and always room to grow. Mastery isn’t a destination, it is a continual process and never-ending journey.
Lots of leaders like to call people out, hypocritically I might add, but very few are willing to go first and then call people up.
I once had one of the most respected people in coaching tell me that he wants to see a kid play poorly when he is watching. You know why? Because seeing how he handles adversity will tell him a lot more about how that kid will handle the next level more than anything else.
The true greats are on a perpetual journey of constant and never-ending improvement.
Burn Your Goals: The Counter-Cultural Approach to Achieving your Greatest Potential by Joshua Medcalf
You aren’t entitled to your dreams.
Make sure your willingness to sacrifice and how you use your 86,400 seconds every day are in direct proportion to the size of your dreams.
EVERYONE WANTS TO WIN. EVERYONE WANTS TO GROW. Very few are willing to do what it takes.
When we focus on the process of growth and true mental toughness we steer the souls of those we impact away from the treacherous emotional rollercoaster of results-based identity and towards the journey of growth and development.
We have to face the hard truth that the people we lead might be becoming more entitled, more likely to cheat the process, less resilient, and carrying a victim mentality because of the way we are conditioning them with our outcome-based goal focus.
So, people in leadership, the question you need to ask yourself is this: Am I trustworthy? Am I consistent? If you aren’t consistent, it is hard to trust you.
Comparison is about worth. He beat me so he is a better person. She trains with the national team so she is always going to get the starting spot. He has closed more deals for the company this year so why should I even bother to try harder? Comparison usually leads to diminished or inflated worth and takes our focus and energy away from things we can control.
Whatever happens today, don’t just go through it, grow through it!
Focus on having a great attitude, giving your very very best, and treating people really really well, EVERY single day.” In my experiences, we sometimes forget simple doesn’t mean easy. We also forget that if it is easy to do, it is also easy not to do.
If you focus on equipping people for the future and maximizing their potential you shift from survive mode to thrive mode. That doesn’t guarantee you will win or even keep your job, but it does create a culture with the foundation necessary to sustain success.
What is one thing I can do to make the situation better?” Rather than, “why is this happening to me?
Many times in life we experience trials that are outside of our control and the most dangerous thing we can do is feel sorry for ourselves and become immobilized.
Gold is refined in the fire, diamonds are formed under pressure, but most of us run and hide every time we have an opportunity to be refined.
When you switch from living by your feelings to living by principles, you will start to see very different fruit in your life. It isn’t easy and sometimes we will slip up and make choices based off of our feelings. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back on the road to living by your principles rather than your feelings.
You never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul
Legacy by James Kerr
If you’re not growing anywhere, you’re not going anywhere.
At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.
How Champions Think by Bob Rotella
Refusing to lose, though, doesn’t mean you’re never going to come out on the short end of a particular game. It doesn’t mean your commitments will never be broken. It doesn’t mean your perseverance won’t occasionally waver. It doesn’t mean that bad habits won’t occasionally reemerge.
It means that you never give up. You never give in to doubt, fear, or fatigue. Giving up is the only true loss.
there’s a difference between learning from failure and wallowing in it.
People tend to become what they think of themselves.
An individual who feels burned out has two options. He can decide that he’s going to renew his passion for the work by reminding himself of the things he loves about it. Or he can change jobs.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn, if provided with the appropriate prior and current conditions of learning.
Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training.
I believe ability can get you to the top,” says coach John Wooden, “but it takes character to keep you there.… It’s so easy to … begin thinking you can just ‘turn it on automatically, without proper preparation. It takes real character to keep working as hard or even harder once you’re there. When you read about an athlete or team that wins over and over and over, remind yourself, ‘More than ability, they have character.’
He resorted to the key weapons of the fixed mindset—blame, excuses, and the stifling of critics and rivals.
The great teachers believe in the growth of the intellect and talent, and they are fascinated with the process of learning.
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
I won’t just have a job; I’ll have a calling. I’ll challenge myself every day. When I get knocked down, I’ll get back up. I may not be the smartest person in the room, but I’ll strive to be the grittiest.
Some people are great when things are going well, but they fall apart when things aren’t.
I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be outworked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me. You might be all of those things. You got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple.
Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t. With effort, talent becomes skill and, at the very same time, effort makes skill productive.
Nobody wants to show you the hours and hours of becoming. They’d rather show the highlight of what they’ve become.
I began to think about the fact that infants and toddlers spend most of their time trying to do things they can’t, again and again—and yet they don’t seem especially embarrassed or anxious. No pain, no gain is a rule that doesn’t seem to apply to the preschool set.
Watch a baby struggle to sit up, or a toddler learn to walk: you’ll see one error after another, failure after failure, a lot of challenge exceeding skill, a lot of concentration, a lot of feedback, a lot of learning.
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them”
I figured, if I try, I have a chance. If I never try, then I have no chance at all.
Do not let temporary setbacks become permanent excuses.
Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts
And while happiness and success are related, they’re not identical.
We all face limits—not just in talent, but in opportunity. But more often than we think, our limits are self-imposed.
Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization by John Wooden
Condition Your Team to Love the Struggle.
Remember That Success Can Take Months—or Years—to Achieve but Can Be Undone in Minutes.
Every leader should create his or her agenda of things that make a difference. It could be everything from being punctual to completing projects on deadline.
A leader who tries to lead without love will turn around one day and find there is nobody following. The family will have disappeared. Love is essential—for the competitive struggle itself, for the people on your team, and for the journey you and they are taking.
The things you hope to teach those under you are best taught by your own behavior—demonstration—whether it’s the act of showing respect for others, being on time, shooting a free throw, or exercising self-control. Action speaks louder than words.
Peaks and valleys belong in the Alps, not in the temperament—the emotions—of a leader.
Control Emotion or Emotion Will Control You.
Give me 100 percent. You can’t make up for a poor effort today by giving 110 percent tomorrow. You don’t have 110 percent. You only have 100 percent, and that’s what I want from you right now.
Remember That a Great Quarter in Basketball or Business Starts with a Great Minute.
The Roman Empire, I told them, collapsed because of what they did to themselves.
The purpose of criticism is to correct, improve, and change. It is not to humiliate, demean, or punish. It is a task that requires great skill and judgment and is best left in the hands of able management and coaches.
The leader’s attitude, conscious and subconscious, inevitably becomes the attitude of those he leads.
Things turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out.
Don’t Make “Woe Is Me” Your Fight Song.
The Leadership Playbook: Become Your Team’s Most Valuable Leader by Jamy Bechler
Lead wherever you may go because it can be quite contagious!
A year from now, you’ll wish you started today.
Most choices that we have in life are simple. Knowing the right thing to do is not the hard part, choosing to do the right thing is the difficult part.
Being positive does not mean ignoring the negative. Being positive means overcoming the negative.
The great thing about positivity is that it never decreases when you share it. When you share positivity with others it grows and expands in their lives and yours.
If you develop the habits of success, you’ll make success a habit.
If you are in a sinking boat, you should not be glad that the hole isn’t on your end of the boat.
Having humility doesn’t mean that you think less of yourself, rather that it means you think of yourself less.
Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up.
Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts, but about one life influencing another.
A leader knows the way, shows the way and goes the way.
If you left your team tomorrow what would your teammates say about you?
Each member of the team is contagious and every day you all are either sharing positive or negative energy with each other.
I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.
A good leader gets people to follow him because they want to, not because he makes them.
A leader without followers is just someone taking a nice walk.
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago but that the second best time to plant a tree is now.
In calm waters, every ship has a good captain.
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools speak because they have to say something.
Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
A $ 100,000 car can be sidelined by a bad spark plug that costs $ 10. Cars need all the parts working together properly for them to operate effectively. It is the same with teams.
Are you okay with having 99% effort? Did you know that if pilots were successful 99% of the time that there would be 24 plane crashes per day? If hospitals were correct 99% of the time when matching up a baby with its’ correct parents that roughly 11 babies would be given to the wrong parents each day?
Tiny snowflakes can come together to form a snowball or even an avalanche, your small actions can cause an avalanche of change and positive results.
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle
Culture is a set of living relationships working toward a shared goal. It’s not something you are. It’s something you do.
When you encounter a group with good chemistry, you know it instantly.
Group performance depends on behavior that communicates one powerful overarching idea: We are safe and connected.
But the successful groups I visited paid attention to moments of arrival. They would pause, take time, and acknowledge the presence of the new person, marking the moment as special: We are together now.
So if you’re a new guy and you see me standing in front of a window in Fallujah, what are you going to say? Are you going to tell me to move my ass, or are you going to stand there quietly and let me get shot? When I ask new guys that question, they say, ‘I’ll tell you to move.’ So I tell them, ‘Well, that’s exactly how you should conduct yourself all the time around here, with every single decision.’
I realized that how we treat each other is everything. If we do that well, everything else will fall into place.
Here’s a surprising fact about successful cultures: many were forged in moments of crisis.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
We all deal with setbacks but in the long run, the quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits.
It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.
If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.
Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees.
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it—but all that had gone before
Every Olympian wants to win a gold medal. Every candidate wants to get the job. And if successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers. It wasn’t the goal of winning the Tour de France that propelled the British cyclists to the top of the sport. Presumably, they had wanted to win the race every year before—just like every other professional team. The goal had always been there. It was only when they implemented a system of continuous small improvements that they achieved a different outcome.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
The process of behavior change always starts with awareness. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them.
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
Once people stop making excuses, stop blaming others, and take ownership of everything in their lives, they are compelled to take action to solve their problems.
Leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield and the principles of good leadership do not change regardless of the mission, the environment, or the personalities of those involved. Leading is leading.
For all the definitions, descriptions, and characterizations of leaders, there are only two that matter: effective and ineffective.
The best leaders are not driven by ego or personal agendas. They are simply focused on the mission and how best to accomplish.
If an individual on the team is not performing at the level required for the team to succeed, the leader must train and mentor that underperformer. But if the underperformer continually fails to meet standards, then a leader who exercises Extreme Ownership must be loyal to the team and the mission above any individual. If underperformers cannot improve, the leader must make the tough call to terminate them and hire others who can get the job done. It is all on the leader.
But it was a glaring, undeniable example of one of the most fundamental and important truths at the heart of Extreme Ownership: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.
The leader’s attitude sets the tone for the entire team. The leader drives performance—or doesn’t. And this applies not just to the most senior leader of an overall team, but to the junior leaders of teams within the team.
When it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.
But when ego clouds our judgment and prevents us from seeing the world as it is, then ego becomes destructive. When personal agendas become more important than the team and the overarching mission’s success, performance suffers and failure ensues.”
If the overall team fails, everyone fails, even if a specific member or an element within the team did their job successfully.
As a leader employing Extreme Ownership, if your team isn’t doing what you need them to do, you first have to look at yourself. Rather than blame them for not seeing the strategic picture, you must figure out a way to better communicate it to them in terms that are simple, clear, and concise, so that they understand. This is what leading down the chain of command is all about
In order to succeed, leaders must be comfortable under pressure, and act on logic, not emotion. This is a critical component to victory.
A leader must be confident but never cocky. Confidence is contagious, a great attribute for a leader and a team. But when it goes too far, overconfidence causes complacency and arrogance, which ultimately set the team up for failure.
Raise Your Game: High-Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best by Alan Stein
Knowing without doing is the equivalent of not knowing at all.
The single most important thing a person needs for success is self-awareness. This includes who you are, what you can do, what you can’t do, where your value comes from, and where you need improvement.
Remember: if you don’t know what you do well, no one else will either.
Complaining is like throwing up,” my friend Jon Gordon likes to say. “It makes you feel better, but it makes everyone else feel worse.
It is always better to be prepared for an opportunity that never arises than unprepared for one that does.
Are the actions you take today on par with the dreams you have for tomorrow?
You can choose to work hard or you can choose to not work hard. And remember: not working hard is actually a choice.
If you don’t know—and aren’t willing to discover—how you need to get better, you will forever be stuck where you are. An ego might prevent you from wanting to hear it.
Those who see failures as walls will do nothing to get past them. Those who see them as doors will do the work to get them open.
Good habits are hard to form and easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to form and hard to live with
The role of a leader is not to come up with great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen
Don’t focus on what you want from your employees. Focus on what you want for your employees.
Holding someone accountable is something you do for them, not something you do to them.
The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy by Jon Gordon
No one can choose your attitude but you,
Every crisis offers an opportunity to grow stronger and wiser; to reach deep within and discover a better you that will create a better outcome.
Positive energy is like muscle. The more you use it the stronger it gets. The stronger it gets the more powerful you become. Repetition is the key and the more you focus on positive energy the more it becomes your natural state.
When you get excited and enthusiastic about your life and work you bring this powerful divine energy to everything you do, and people notice. They can see it and feel it. When you’re enthusiastic, people want to get on your bus. Your bus is energized and people say, ‘Hey, I want to get on that bus.
So enthusiasm gets them excited about being on your bus, but love is what keeps them on the bus.
Listen to Them—One of the most important factors that determines a high management approval rating is whether the manager listens to the employee. Does the manager hear what the employee has to say? Does the manager listen to the ideas and needs of the employee? Your employees and customers just want to be heard, so listen to them and hear them.
Serve Them—A great leader once said, the higher you get in an organization the more it is your duty to serve the people below you rather than having the people below serve you.
Every job on the planet, even that of a professional athlete or movie star, can get old and mundane if we let it. Purpose keeps it fresh.
Don’t be one of these leaders who get inspired only when there’s a big project or deadline or job at stake. It won’t last and it won’t lead to greatness. Foster spirit and allow it to move through your team by fueling up with purpose. Find the bigger purpose and vision before your product launch and let it fuel you and your team every day thereafter.
There was a study conducted where two airplane design teams were separated. One team saw a model of the finished product and was given a vision that they were building the fastest, newest, most advanced airplane ever built. The other team were separated into small groups who were told to design each piece without knowing what the end design and vision would be. Not surprisingly the team who had a vision for what they were building worked twice as long and hard and finished in half the time as the other group.
The best legacy you could leave is not some building that is named after you or a piece of jewelry but rather a world that has been impacted and touched by your presence, your joy, and your positive actions.
Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.
WHY: Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. When I say WHY, I don’t mean to make money—that’s a result. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?
It’s worth repeating: people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do.
We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire.
The formula is simple: Committed, responsible, inspiring leaders create a culture of care, which leads to quality service, which leads to Guest satisfaction, which leads to measurable business results and a strong competitive advantage.
Creating Magic by Lee Cockerell
The formula is simple: Committed, responsible, inspiring leaders create a culture of care, which leads to quality service, which leads to Guest satisfaction, which leads to measurable business results and a strong competitive advantage.
Good leaders are humble enough to admit what they don’t know, and great leaders are constantly looking for new information.
Your authority—or what you think is your authority—is nothing without good relationship skills.
Being clear about expectations is exactly what leaders need to do if they want people to perform well.
They hire the right people, train them, trust them, respect them, listen to them, and make sure to be there for them when needed.
The reason inclusion is so important is simple: When everyone matters and everyone knows he or she matters, employees are happy to come to work, and they’re eager to give you their energy, creativity, and loyalty.
At Disney we defined our approach to inclusion with the acronym RAVE: respect, appreciate, and value everyone.
Ask yourself frequently what you have done to show that everyone is important and knows it.
Leaders who demand excellence need to model excellence, or else they have no credibility.
Remember also that you have a different reputation with every person who knows you. Work hard to make each one a good one.
Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversatoins. Whole Hearts by Brene Brown
Choosing our own comfort over hard conversations is the epitome of privilege, and it corrodes trust and moves us away from meaningful and lasting change.
Listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is a defensive move.
Catch people doing things right.” It’s much more powerful than collecting behaviors that are wrong.
Do not celebrate people who work through the weekend, who brag that they were tethered to their computers over Christmas break. Ultimately, it’s unsustainable behavior, and it has dangerous side effects, including burnout, depression, and anxiety—it also creates a culture of workaholic competitiveness that’s detrimental for everyone.
Calling Up: Discovering Your Journey to Transformational Leadership by J.P. Nerbun
Great coaches are not created in times of victory or during winning streaks, they are forged from the pain of the loss, the struggle of bouncing back, and keeping morale high when the odds are stacked against them.
Great coaches, teachers, and leaders don’t save people; they empower them to help themselves and solve their own problems.
As a servant leader, you serve the needs of the people you lead. They are not there to fulfill your needs.
The man on top of the mountain didn’t fall there.
Love is not a give-and-take equation. It must be given freely with nothing expected in return.
If you want to be a transformational leader—if you want to call people up—it takes a high standard of communication, both verbal and with your body language.
I might have the fastest car on the block, but I’m not going anywhere without any gas. Character is our fuel; without it, we go nowhere.
The Ride of a Liftime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Robert Iger
Sometimes, even though you’re “in charge,” you need to be aware that in the moment you might have nothing to add, and so you don’t wade in. You trust your people to do their jobs and focus your energies on some other pressing issue.
It’s a delicate thing, finding the balance between demanding that your people perform and not instilling a fear of failure in them.
Don’t let your ego get in the way of making the best possible decision.
If you approach and engage people with respect and empathy, the seemingly impossible can become real.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins
People are not your most important asset. The right people are.
You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit.—HARRY S. TRUMAN
Level 5 leaders set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation, whereas egocentric Level 4 leaders often set up their successors for failure
The right people will do the right things and deliver the best results they’re capable of, regardless of the incentive system.
The purpose of a compensation system should not be to get the right behaviors from the wrong people, but to get the right people on the bus in the first place, and to keep them there.
Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people.
Whether someone is the “right person” has more to do with character traits and innate capabilities than with specific knowledge, background, or skills.
You can’t manufacture passion or “motivate” people to feel passionate. You can only discover what ignites your passion and the passions of those around
Be the Boss Everyone Wants to Work For by William Gentry
Be motivated to learn because it’s fun, engaging, exciting, and you enjoy it.
To effectively lead others and shape situations, you must use your skills, be confident, and speak up!”
Treat everyone fairly, not equally.
Two things describe effective leaders: they get the job done and they are really good at relationships.
Provide “wise feedback.” “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations, and I know that you can reach them.”
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant
Unfortunately, when it comes to our own knowledge and opinions, we often favor feeling right over being right.
We might be laser-focused on changing other people’s minds, but ours is set in stone.
Recognize that we’re all wrong more often than we’d like to admit, and the more we deny it, the deeper the hole we dig for ourselves.
It doesn’t matter “whose fault it is that something is broken if it’s your responsibility to fix it,” actor Will Smith has said. “Taking responsibility is taking your power back.
We are living in space-age times, yet there are still so many of us thinking with stone-age minds.
I believe that good teachers introduce new thoughts, but great teachers introduce new ways of thinking.
It shows that we care more about improving ourselves than proving ourselves.* If that mindset spreads far enough within an organization, it can give people the freedom and courage to speak up.
Hopefully, some of these stuck with you just as they stuck with me as I read through the books. What’s one or two quotes that really stood out to you? Tweet me @CoachAdragna, or email me at [email protected].
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