Are you looking for new Leadership ideas or recommendations from influential experts? While knowledge is power, it can be a challenge to find the right option among so much information.

For those seeking the best strategies, we’ve compiled a list of 10 essential books on Leadership.

  • Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

Stephen R. Covey’s classic text gives inspiration for shaping your personal and professional life. He eschews ready-made answers and focuses on seven techniques that encourage each person to develop in their own way.

The key words for Covey are character, competence, and confidence. This book is absolutely essential for anyone seeking personal and professional growth.

  • The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

This book is quick and easy to read, given that Lencioni bases his model in a story, the subtitle “A Fable of Leadership” being a clue to its style.

This is not a psychological book, but an empirical one: Lencioni identifies problems and offers solutions. Specifically, Lencioni describes five problems (dysfunctions) that can hinder a team’s success, and includes warning signs and possible interventions.

  • Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Whether you’re a company manager or someone who needs to motivate others, the ability to inspire and guide is essential for reaching goals. And though there are different ways to be successful in this type of work, emotional Leadership is one of the most effective.

Daniel Goleman has studied this concept his entire career and has written several books that focus on how emotional intelligence fosters better leaders.

  • Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

According to Viktor E. Frankl, our industrial-technological society alienates man and removes him from his traditions and values. The world-famous Austrian neurologist and psychologist, and Holocaust Survivor, captures the ways in which the majority of modern people suffer—not because their needs aren’t being met or because they want more power—but because they experience a lack of meaning in their lives.

In a time marked by the lack of faith in politics and institutions, former Spanish president Felipe González analyzes how today’s political, business, and social leaders need to act in order to regain citizens’ confidence.

González bases his diagnosis on his firsthand experiences over the course of his long career in politics.

  • Start With Why by Simon Sinek

Start With Why is divided in seven chapters that aid the reader in uncovering his or her personal “why”, or the “why” of a company or organization. This book is about understanding how we came to be who we are, thanks to the influence of past experiences.

Sinek offers instruction and concrete advice on how to follow the steps rooted in this discovery that can drive Leadership.

Heart, habits, and harmony. These are the three basic pillars that, according to Margarita Mayo, set real leaders apart.

To this end, this book is handbook for adopting new learning habits and improving harmony in the context of real situations. The books avoids the usual approach of describing a leader’s innate, almost magical, charisma in favor of a less mysterious and more practical process that can be very useful.

  • Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

Successful author Charles Duhigg explores the secrets of productivity in life and business, using research and science to explain how our habits influence our productivity, and connecting them to real examples, including significant historical events.

The result is a book that offers guidance using the relationship between psychology and productivity and points to the ways a leader can use them to his or her benefit.

  • The Dip by Seth Godin

We’re used to hearing authors insist on the idea that we should strive to reach our goals at all costs. But in this short 80 page book, Seth Godin offers a very different perspective on what he terms “the art of quitting.”

Godin argues that understanding when to quit is part of learning how to be the best, and that knowing when to give up can be perceived as a victory because of the high cost of investing your time something that isn’t going to improve. This book is aimed at those who are involved in numerous projects without settling on any of them.

  • Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant

In many companies, creativity is an under-appreciated value. Preference is given to the people who try to fit in as opposed to putting forward their own ideas. But it’s precisely those very non-conformists who drive business and society with innovative change.

Prestigious organizational psychologist Adam Grant discusses which characteristics differentiate these original thinkers from the rest, and explains how to capitalize on a person’s particular distinctiveness, gain allies, and choose the right moment to act.

Do you need help developing your leadership skills to their full advantage? At Thinking Heads, we provide expert leadership positioning and professional consulting to help you develop and execute the strategy you need.