25 Books to Help You Grow as a Leader
A few months ago a friend asked me for some book recommendations. As a result of the lockdown, he had quite a bit more downtime than he was used to and wanted to use his time wisely, so reading naturally jumped to the top of the to-do list. “Anything about leadership, coaching, or mental performance is what I’m most interested in” he told me.
This is the list I gave him.
It’s a list of 25 books that can help you grow as a leader, improve as a coach, and generally obtain a stronger mindset. I’ve read most of the books on the list, but there’s a few I haven’t gotten to yet. I hope this list gives you some good reading material, as reading good books is the quickest, easiest, and most direct way to gain knowledge.
25 Books to Help You Grow as a Leader
59 Lessons: Working with the World's Greatest Coaches, Athletes, & Special Forces - Learn how the most successful coaches, athletes and special forces lead, manage and win in the most demanding environments. Find out how the best teams create winning cultures. Understand what the most elite military units look for in their operators. Learn what makes great players truly special and how the best organizations use technology and people to create sustainable success.
Conscious Coaching : The Art and Science of Building Buy-In - Readers learn the foundational principles of improving relationships, enhancing engagement, and gaining the trust of athletes through targeted communication. And, every bit as important, readers also learn concrete strategies to apply these principles in day-to-day coaching situations they will inevitably encounter. The result is a game-changing book that sets the stage for coaches to create a culture of success not only within sport, but also beyond.
Talent Is Overrated : What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else - Bringing together extensive scientific research, bestselling author Geoff Colvin shows where we go wrong and what actually makes world-class performers so remarkable. It isn't specific, innate talent, nor is it plain old hard work. It's a very specific type of work that anyone can do--but most people don't.
Peak Performance : Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success - In a concise and relatable manner, Peak Performance explains the strong connection between mind and body and how everyone can apply certain techniques to enhance their own achievements. This book is an entertaining and actionable guide to optimizing personal performance that shows readers how to get the most from themselves.
Why the Best Are the Best : 25 Powerful Words That Impact, Inspire, and Define Champions - Why the Best Are the Best examines strategies to help you overcome mistakes and failures, as well as ways to turn them into your own personal success plan. More importantly, this book will help you see that these same mindsets, habits, and strategies are not just for elite athletes or the otherwise famous. We can all insert them into our lives and careers to help us become our best.
The Captain Class : A New Theory of Leadership - Featuring analysis of the five-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots and their captain, Tom Brady The seventeen most dominant teams in sports history had one thing in common: Each employed the same type of captain--a singular leader with an unconventional set of skills and tendencies. Drawing on original interviews with athletes, general managers, coaches, and team-building experts, Sam Walker identifies the seven core qualities of the Captain Class--from extreme doggedness and emotional control to tactical aggression and the courage to stand apart.
Togetherness : How to Build a Winning Team - Togetherness is a powerful state of connection between individuals that can lead to amazing triumphs. In sport, teams win matches, but teams with togetherness win championships and make history. If you want the individuals on your team to develop their skills and reach their potential, get them 'together'. The key to this, is to understand your players' group memberships and how to harness them, to create a unique team identity that is special to "us".
The Dichotomy of Leadership : Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win - Every leader must be ready and willing to take charge, to make hard, crucial calls for the good of the team and the mission. Something much more difficult to understand is that, in order to be a good leader, one must also be a good follower. This is a dichotomy; a Dichotomy of Leadership.
All in : Driven by Passion, Energy, and Purpose - From one of the most inspiring and driven Division I basketball coaches today, Porter Moser offers a practical and motivating guide to help build character, transform failure into success, find purpose, and live an authentic life through energy and positivity.
Extreme Ownership : How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win - The blockbuster bestselling leadership book that took America and the world by storm, two U.S. Navy SEAL officers who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War demonstrate how to apply powerful leadership principles from the battlefield to business and life.
Every Moment Matters : How the World's Best Coaches Inspire Their Athletes and Build Championship Teams - How do the world's most successful coaches get the best from their athletes? How do top coaches design practices, inspire their players, and build teams that sustain their excellence season after season? How do they instill high-performing behaviors? Do they coach men and women differently? What about coaching their own children? Most importantly, are these secrets available to the rest of us coaching youth, high school, and college teams?
The Power of Positive Leadership : How and Why Positive Leaders Transform Teams and Organizations and Change the World - We are not positive because life is easy. We are positive because life can be hard. As a leader, you will face numerous obstacles, negativity, and tests. There will be times when it seems as if everything in the world is conspiring against you and your vision seems more like a fantasy than a reality. That is why positive leadership is essential!
Above The Line : Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Program - Urban Meyer has established himself as one of the elite in the annals of his sport, having lead his players to three national championships. In Above the Line, he offers readers his unparalleled insights into leadership, team building, and the keys to empowering people to achieve things they might never have thought possible.
The Score Takes Care Of Itself - The last lecture on leadership by the NFL's greatest coach: Bill Walsh Bill Walsh is a towering figure in the history of the NFL. His advanced leadership transformed the San Francisco 49ers from the worst franchise in sports to a legendary dynasty. In the process, he changed the way football is played.
Raise Your Game : High-Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best - Performance coach Alan Stein Jr. shares the secret principles used by world-class performers that will help you improve your productivity and achieve higher levels of success. Raise Your Game will inspire and empower you to commit to the fundamentals, create a winning mindset, and progress into new levels of success.
Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court - In honest and telling passages about virtually every aspect of life, Coach Wooden shares his personal philosophy on family, achievement, success, and excellence. Raised on a small farm in south-central Indiana, he offers lessons and wisdom learned throughout his career at UCLA, and life as a dedicated husband, father, and teacher.
Relentless : From Good to Great to Unstoppable - For more than two decades, legendary trainer Tim Grover has taken the greats, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, and dozens more and made them greater. Now, for the first time ever, he reveals what it takes to get those results, showing you how to be relentless and achieve whatever you desire.
Give and Take : Why Helping Others Drives Our Success - Give and Take changes our fundamental understanding of why we succeed, offering a new model for our relationships with colleagues, clients and competitors. Using his own cutting-edge research as a professor at Wharton Business School, as well as success stories from Hollywood to history, Grant shows that nice guys need not finish last.
Start With Why : How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action - Why are some people and organizations more inventive, pioneering and successful than others? And why are they able to repeat their success again and again? Because in business it doesn't matter what you do, it matters why you do it. Steve Jobs, the Wright brothers and Martin Luther King have one thing in common: they STARTED WITH WHY. This book is for anyone who wants to inspire others, or to be inspired. Based on the most-watched TED Talk of all time.
The ONE Thing : The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results - In The ONE Thing, you'll learn to: cut through the clutter, achieve better results in less time, build momentum toward your goal, dial down the stress, overcome that overwhelmed feeling, revive your energy, stay on track, and master what matters to you. The ONE Thing is the New York Times bestseller which delivers extraordinary results in every area of your life-work, personal, family, and spiritual.
InSideOut Coaching : How Sports Can Transform Lives - In this inspirational yet practical book, the man Parade called "the most important coach in America," subject of the national bestseller Season of Life, Joe Ehrmann, describes his coaching philosophy and explains how sports can transform lives at every level of play, from the earliest years to professional sports.
Legacy - Champions do extra. They sweep the sheds. They follow the spearhead. They keep a blue head. They are good ancestors. In Legacy, best-selling author James Kerr goes deep into the heart of the world's most successful sporting team, the legendary All Blacks of New Zealand, to reveal 15 powerful and practical lessons for leadership and business.
The Obstacle is the Way : The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage - The Stoic philosophy - that what is in the way, is the way - can be applied to any problem: it's a formula invented more than 2,000 years ago, whose effectiveness has been proven in battles and board rooms ever since. From Barack Obama's ability to overcome obstacles in his election races, to the design of the iPhone, the stoic philosophy has helped its users become world-beaters.
Ego is the Enemy : The Fight to Master Our Greatest Opponent - In Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday shows us how and why ego is such a powerful internal opponent to be guarded against at all stages of our careers and lives, and that we can only create our best work when we identify, acknowledge and disarm its dangers. Drawing on an array of inspiring characters and narratives from literature, philosophy and history, the book explores the nature and dangers of ego to illustrate how you can be humble in your aspirations, gracious in your success and resilient in your failures.
Atomic Habits : An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones - People think that when you want to change your life, you need to think big. But world-renowned habits expert James Clear has discovered another way. He knows that real change comes from the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions - doing two push-ups a day, waking up five minutes early, or holding a single short phone call.