6 Engaging Reads to Help You Grow as a Leader
Even the savviest business leaders can benefit from finding new ways to engage and support their employees. But discovering new resources takes time – not something leaders have laying around.
So here are six reads for founders, directors, managers, and anyone who wants to hone their leadership abilities.
Image Source: Scorpio Books
1. An Industry Titan’s Book on Cultivating Authentic Connections
Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
In her latest book, Brown encourages readers to label the feelings behind certain thought processes. For instance, she clusters emotions like pride and humility under the umbrella experience “Places We Go to Self-Assess.”
When you identify these underlying emotions, you get one step closer to understanding where they come from and how they inform your connections with others.
Brown also highlights miscues that get in the way of building authentic connections. One useful example: she draws the distinction between advice-giving and problem-solving.
Image Sources: Make Time
2. An Action-Oriented Guide to Managing Workloads
Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
Knapp and Zeratsky lay out a simple framework for how to balance obligations:
Highlight: Choose a single activity to prioritize and protect in your calendar.
Laser: Identify specific tactics to stay laser-focused on your highlight.
Energize: Find ways to charge your battery.
Reflect: Think of how to adjust and improve your system for completing work.
As a leader, you need to balance business strategies, review others’ work, and complete your own projects, while addressing any emergencies that spring up.
The next time your to-do list starts to resemble a to-do scroll, consider what you need to accomplish your most pressing tasks, whether it’s a private office space or structured break periods.
If Knapp and Zeratsky’s framework sounds helpful to you, check out other strategies to create space for deep work.
3. A Timely Article on Galvanizing Employees
How to Motivate Your Team When People Keep Quitting by Rebecca Zucker and Dina Smith
What's the best way to retain employees and maintain workplace culture during a time of record-high turnover? Zucker and Smith outline multiple methods, from reassuring your team that you’re staying put to soliciting feedback on your management style, staff workloads, and company culture.
The best leaders use turnover as an opportunity to better support the employees who stay and more effectively welcome the new folks who come on board. Sound interesting to you? Check out the article for additional insights.
Source: The Empany Edge
4. A Deep Dive into Harnessing the Power of Empathy
The Empathy Edge by Maria Ross
It’s easy to overlook the value of empathy in professional contexts. Author and brand strategist Maria Ross wants to change that – and help you grow as a leader in the process.
In The Empathy Edge, Ross asks readers to consider how they integrate empathy into their business model. Do you hire people who are passionate about supporting others? Does your mission respond to customers’ pain points?
Whether you want to attract Millennial and Gen Z talent – who care more about company missions than previous generations – or anticipate customer needs, prioritizing empathy benefits your business.
Image Source: Start With Why
5. A Quintessential Read for Aligning Actions with Purpose
Though more than a decade old now, Sinek’s Start with Why lays out timeless tips on how to engage your workforce and stay true to a mission.
Sinek introduces his golden circle to illustrate a deeper point: effective leaders understand their organization's long-term purpose (the “why”) and tether every strategy to it.
Driving innovation does require a level of buy-in from employees, though, and Sinek offers two avenues to instill that trust.
The first is to emphasize the importance of the work, i.e., The Why. The second is to share company victories. In other words, give everyone a stake in your success.
Image Credit: Emergency Strategy
6. A Fresh Look at Building Interdependence
Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown (note: the author intentionally spells her name using lowercase letters).
In this book-turned-vessel for poems, speeches, and research studies, brown spells out how fostering interdependence between your team members helps build resiliency and trust.
Multiple times throughout her book, brown pushes readers to embrace change. The idea here is that once you’ve fostered interdependence at your company, adapting to changes like newly-hybrid environments gets progressively easier.
If you’re looking for a self-help book that reads more like a call to action, Emergent Strategy is a fantastic option.
Great Leaders Acknowledge There’s Always More to Learn
After two years of seismic shifts in how and where we work, it’s clear how a consistent and attentive leader can be a steadying force.
There are plenty of important leadership traits, but perhaps most important among them is a willingness to learn. Nobody has all the answers. Understanding this reality helps leaders more effectively support their people.
If you’re looking for a private space that helps you focus on completing your work and grow as a leader, check out your local Firmspace office.v