Powerful References for Collaborative Leadership
Team Business Development
http://www.teambusinessdevelopment.co.uk/collaborative_leadership.html
Community Toolbox
- What, Why, When, Who and How of collaborative leadership?
http://ctb.ku.edu/en/tablecontents/sub_section_main_1874.aspx
How to Succeed in an Interconnected World
http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Collaborative_leadership.html?id=8YOsvLFolNcC&redir_esc=y
Recommended Reading List – Part A
Effective leaders are eager to learn and receive feedback on their performance. A major resource for learning is reading books. Some highly effective people we have met read on average 15-20 books a year, while mere mortals typically read 2 – one in the first week of their holiday and one in the second!
As you journey towards greater effectiveness as a leader, here are some recommendations from us of books that will inspire, educate and encourage you.
Why not consider consider these first, and plan to read them over the coming year?
“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” – Stephen Covey
This practical book is the fundamental guide on principle-centred living, personal effectiveness and inter-personal skills. The book is available in over 20 languages and is a 15 million copy best seller.
“The 8th Habit – From Effectiveness to Greatness” – Stephen Covey
No! We do not get commission for recommending Covey’s books!
In the 7 Habits book Stephen Covey gives us a framework to become more effective in every aspect of our lives. In his “The 8th Habit”, he opens up an entirely new dimension of human potential, and shows us how to achieve greatness in any position and any setting. All of us, Covey says, have within us the means for greatness. To tap into it is a matter of finding the right balance of four human attributes: talent, need, conscience, and passion. At the nexus of these four attributes is what Covey calls voice – the unique, personal significance we each possess. Covey exhorts us all to move beyond effectiveness into the realm of greatness – and he shows us how to do so, by engaging our strengths and locating our powerful individual voices.
“First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently” – Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
This book results from two surveys over a 25-year period, involving a million employees and managers from a range of companies, industries and countries. The first survey asked what talented employees needed from their organisations. The answer? Great managers. So the second study explored how great managers find, focus and retain talented employees.
This study identified 12 questions that measured the strength of a workplace and the core elements needed to find, focus and keep talented employees. It found that people leave managers, not companies. Affirmative answers correlated with the higher levels of productivity, profit, retention, and customer satisfaction. UK-born, US-based Buckingham’s book highlights four ‘keys’ to what the best managers do differently. It provides plenty of material for managers to work through with their teams.
Good to Great: Why some Companies Make the Leap… and Other’s Don’t – Jim Collins
This is a book that will re-pay careful reading. Warm to his ‘homely’ style or not, Jim Collins’ arguments as to what makes an organisation sustainable are based on a significant amount of research and should be taken seriously.
Not just limited to the ‘bottom line’, he suggests the winning formulae he has identified work as well with the social welfare sector (and proves this in a follow-up monograph).
This book could be read with profit by anyone in a leadership role – if for no other reason than for Collins’ definition of ‘level 5 leadership’ – “a combination of personal humility and professional will”. Something to which we can all aspire.
Part – B Additional Reading.
There is a bewildering array of books in the business section of bookshops, so we have provided a selection here that we would recommend. All are generally available online. Some of the books are also available as audio books.
It is not intended to be a definitive or complete list, so please add to this with books that you find helpful, informative or inspiring – and tell us so we can benefit, too!
People
Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
Creating a Purposeful Life – Richard Fox
Synchronicity Joseph Jaworski
The Road Less Travelled – M Scott Peck
The Hero’s Journey – A Voyage of Self-Discovery – Stephen Gilligan & Robert Dilts
Why Men don’t Listen & Women can’t read Maps – Allan & Barbara Pease
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus – John Gray
Leading Teams and Coaching Others
Leading your Team Andrew Leigh & Michael Maynard
Trust Matters Ken Blanchard, Cynthia Olmstead and Martha Lawrence
Coaching for Performance John Whitmore
Leadership and Management
Inspirational Manager – Judith Leary-Joyce
Built to Last – Jim Collins & Jerry Porras
The Dance of Change – Peter Senge
Our Iceberg is Melting – John Kotter
The New Leaders (Emotional Intelligence) – Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatsis and Annie McKee
Finding our Way: Leadership For an Uncertain Time – Margaret Wheatley
Servant Leadership – A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness – Robert K Greenleaf
The Leadership Challenge – Kouzes and Posner
Effectiveness
Who Moved my Cheese? – Dr Spencer Johnson
The Art of Possibility Rosamund & Benjamin Zander
First Things First – Roger Merrill & Stephen Covey
Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway – Susan Jeffers
The Heart of Success – Rob Parsons
The Fifth Discipline – Peter Senge
Personal Power – Anthony Robbins
NLP at Work – Sue Knight
Learning and Creativity
The Inner Game of Work – Timothy Gallwey
The Learning Revolution – Gordon Dryden & Jeanette Vos
Time to Think – Nancy Kline
Creative Thinking – Edward De Bono
Six Thinking Hats – Edward de Bono
How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci – Michael Gelb