1. The Leader Within

The fundamental of any leadership is to Lead Oneself first. This book is authored by four well recognized leadership experts, including the legendary Ken Blanchard. This book draws on seven years of world-class research centred around how successful American executives exert influence. This book is a self-development resource; its purpose is to help you learn more about yourself so that you can change, grow and become a better leader.

This book is organized into seven chapters.

Chapter 1 discusses the leadership challenge of self-change

Chapter 2 defines the parameters of personality and leadership

Chapter 3 through 5 present in-depth discussions and models for understanding the three key aspects of personality : disposition, values and persona.

Chapter 6 discusses leader behaviours in a one-to-one contact

Chapter 7 makes the important connection among disposition, values and leadership behaviours.

The authors have written this book with a purpose to increase self awareness that would result in better leadership and fewer negative personalities in organizations. Enjoy this book if you are on a personal discovery of your leadership voyage and becoming aware of your leadership impact.

2. The High Potential Leader

This book is for anyone who wants to first analyze whether one is a high potential individual or a high potential leader. A classic example of Craig Silverstein, who was hired by Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s first employee at Google. He was hired to help build their search engine while all were still at Stanford University. Not long after joining the company, he felt he should try a managerial role. But after several months, he realized he wasn’t very good at it. He remained their director of technology a specialized technical role with no people management. High-potential leaders, on the other hand, multiply the energy and skills of others.

The high potential means, according to this classic book, written by most sought after management guru and consultant Ram Charan alongwith Geri Willigan They exhibit three characteristics and five key skills that qualify them as a high-potential leader.

1. They imagine on a large scale using tons of information and which they process for what is meaningful.

2. They seek and find out what they need to make it happen.

3. They understand the concept of the ecosystem by adapting quickly to the new, have diverse social networks and have a change-the-world mentality.

The Five Essential Skills for High Potential Leader which also form Chapters 2 through 6 are:

1.  Increase the Return on Your TIme

2. Multiply the Energy and Skills of those Around You

3. Be a Master of Big Ideas and Execution

4. Get to Know Customers, Competitors and the Macro Environment

5. Build Your Mental Capacity

Chapters 7 and 8 explains on taking charge of your growth as a high-potential leader and choosing your next big career move . It shares on How, When and Why to make a Leap and to track your mental health and work/life balance.

Chapter 9 is more of an advise for the organization and HR folks on how to take care of high-potentials once they are identified, recruited and to continuously refresh the leadership succession pool.

Each chapter of the book contains a Hipo Coaching Checklist which the person can use to analyze where he/she is on those skills.

Read this book if you are keen to analyze to know how prepared you are to be a high-potential leader; and to learn ways to be on a career growth trajectory. The authors of this book are your best personal advisors and mentors. 

3. Leadership without Excuses

This book is an ultimate guide for leaders to create accountability and high performance culture in their teams and organization. The authors Jeff Grimshaw, partner in the firm MG-Strategy is an expert on accelerating accountability and alignment and Gregg Baron, president of Success Sciences, a research based performance improvement firm persuades leaders not to put up with excuses. It is a definitive guide to taking out excuses out of the system and creating an environment where accountability and performance are consistently high. With this game-changing guide, you’ll stop the excuses in their tracks and put your team on the path to success.

The book clearly identifies three kinds of employees in any organization.Some are Saints, they are always accountable. Some are Sinners, they’re never accountable. But most are Save-ables;sometimes they make good accountable choices and sometimes they don’t. The authors help the leaders to put an end to the Save-ables poo choices and excuse-making-and convert them into saints. The book has 13 chapters divided into three parts or guiding principles which are proven strategies for

• Communicating clear and credible expectations,
• Creating compelling consequences, and
• Leading conversations grounded in empirical reality

So if you as a leader are serious and accountable to build a high performance and accountable culture, then this book is surely a fantastic resource and guide to be used often to make it happen.

4. The Leadership Pipeline