Top five leadership reads
In 2019, I became a Clore Leadership Fellow. At the time, I was working at the Museum of London, and the Clore Fellowship is the top leadership programme for individuals in the arts and culture sector. Despite an interruption due to a small matter called Covid-19, I spent much of 2020 on a sabbatical, delving into leadership best practices.
During my fellowship, I devoured numerous leadership and management books. Four years on, it's high time I share some of the books and ideas that have made a lasting impact on me. It's something I always intended to do but never found the time for. Perhaps this blog will inspire your leadership style too. I certainly hope so.
What is leadership?
Before I dive in, it's essential to acknowledge that "leadership" is quite a nebulous term. It took me a while to grasp what leadership truly means and how it differs from management. With this in mind, I’ll propose a definition.
To me, leadership is the act of setting the conditions for people to flourish.
This definition is undoubtedly influenced by everything I discovered during my Clore Leadership Fellowship, especially the insights from these five books below. Read on to find out how. Depending on availability, I’ve included either a Kindle preview or Spotify audiobook sample for each one.
Dare to Lead by Brené Brown
Brené Brown is rightly famous for her work on vulnerability, but for me, the standout idea from Dare to Lead is prioritising getting it right over being right. This is about being a learner, not a knower. To me, it's about approaching work with openness, curiosity, and humility. It’s about being a good team player.
There are numerous resources to accompany the book in Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead Hub, worth checking out even if you don’t read the book.
The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier
Clore Leadership introduced me to coaching, and The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier made it wonderfully simple. His approach is that coaching is simply about asking questions and listening to the responses. After lots of coaching training in recent years, I can say for certain that he couldn’t be more right. Michael Bungay Stanier offers seven simple coaching questions that are useful in almost any scenario. This book immediately revolutionised how I, as a line manager, conduct weekly meetings. I won’t give away all his secrets here, apart from my favourite question: The Strategic Question:
“If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?”
Good to Great by Jim Collins
This modern leadership classic was recommended to me by the Museum of London’s Chair, Clive Bannister. Jim Collins’ leadership advice is simple: first who, then what. In other words, nothing is more important than having the right team around you. There’s a reason why, almost fifty years after it was first published, Good to Great is still a staple in every bookshop’s leadership and management section.
The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
Priya Parker’s thesis is that every time you gather a group of people, your role is to host. Even a humble meeting must be hosted properly. This is the art of gathering. As a professional facilitator, I think often about this book and its advice that each gathering is a temporary world to be designed with a purpose, a beginning, and an end. One simple takeaway for me is to never start a workshop with housekeeping. Following Priya Parker’s advice, I always start with an activity to set the session's tone and then move on to housekeeping. As she cautions, you wouldn’t want to bore people with admin before the session has even begun.
Unleashed by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss
Unleashed is genuinely unique as it is written by a lesbian couple. I cannot think of any other business text authored by two wives who are also Harvard Business School academics. Some of the most powerful insights come from Frances Frei and Anne Morriss’ firsthand experience of working at Uber to rebuild trust in the brand after a series of crises, which is also the topic of an excellent TED talk. Unleashed excels in its coverage of diversity, inclusion, and belonging. If reading or listening to a book isn’t your thing, you can watch the TED talk on YouTube.
Cover image created using DALL-E by OpenAI