Three Leadership Books That Are A Quick Read For Great Influencing Skills
The best leaders are learners. There are two ways to learn: through direct experience and through the experience of other people. Books are an incredibly efficient way of distilling other people’s ideas. A book that took the author many months to write, after many years of experience and processing, will take only a few hours to read. That’s an incredible return on wisdom for the time invested. With that in mind, here are books on leadership influence that deserve your valuable attention.
Leadership effectiveness starts from within before connecting with others.
Leadership Book 1: The Loudest Guest: How to Change and Control Your Relationship with Fear by Dr. Amy Silver
Psychologist Dr. Amy Silver reveals all the juiciness of fear: why it dominates our thinking, sidesteps our goals, and gets in the way—all to keep us safe. She offers a step-by-step approach to recognizing and reframing our experience. The steps include: acknowledgment, self-compassion, separation, evaluation, decision, and experimentation.
You may recognize that fear is controlling you in these ways:
Processing fear is crucial for a strong leadership mindset
Say yes or accept too much
trying to please others
habitual avoidance
And even FOMO: fear of missing out
Self-compassion is one of the best steps in the process. Much better than ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ or ‘squash the fear’.
Amy’s book is a lovely and warm journey through fear, with stories from others of how they have found themselves and spoken in their strongest voice of fear, finding a gentle way to overcome it.
Storytelling is one of the critical leadership skills we must master in order to have influence.
Leadership Book 2: Magnetic Stories – Connect with customers and engage employees with brand storytelling by Gabrielle Dolan
This leadership book is easy and delicious; read. Why? They are mostly stories, of course! Ral brings his points to life with great example stories for the five types of brand stories every business needs: Creation Stories, Cultural Stories, Customer Stories, Challenge Stories, and Community Stories.
Ral’s witty asides in the footnotes and comments make this book fun and useful. Includes practice questions and steps to get started with your own business stories.
Service is one of the leadership qualities that you will never regret.
Book 3: Habits of Service: Small Steps to Strengthen Relationships with the People You Serve by Jaquie Scammel
As Jaquie reminds us, all business is about relationships. Customer service is the key ingredient for this. The book takes us through 27 key habits, all of which are excellent for leadership empathy. Mindfulness is one of the first starting habits: it brings our full attention to others and helps us not to be disengaged (and rude). Many of the garments are a deep dive into emotional intelligence. I felt like a better human being for reading the book.
What books are you reading right now? How are you honoring your leadership attributes and skills?
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