My favorite time to catch up on my reading is during long road trips with audiobooks. The second is holidays and vacations. The time away from work helps me sharpen the saw by considering new ideas I might not encounter during my regular routine.
As the Christmas holiday season arrives, I’d like to share a few book recommendations in case you find some down time and want to expand your leadership thinking.
It’s May. Graduation season is upon us. The kids are close to getting out of school for the summer. Maybe you have your vacation all planned out. Regardless, nearly everyone has some collection of summer activities in mind.
I’ve posted about reading before. I’ve shared reading strategies, a comprehensive list of leadership books and inspirational quotes such as Charlie “Tremendous” Jones,’ “You’ll be the same person in a year as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” Unfortunately, not everyone enjoys reading as much as I do. So for now, let me use a more subtle approach and simply recommend five leadership books. Whether you read one or five this summer, I’m positive each one will help take your leadership to the next level.
In my previous posts, I explained why reading is crucial to growth and development and listed my favorite leadership books – the ones that inspire me or provided the most insight. But choosing the right book to read next can be tricky sometimes, especially given there are literally hundreds of thousands just a click away. With so many choices and so little time to read, how can you be sure you are picking the “right” one?
Here are a few strategies I’ve had a lot of success with:
It’s pretty common that my friends or folks in my network will ask me what book they should read. I love the question, but it always puzzles me just a bit. Without any context, it feels kind of like they are asking me what outfit they should wear that day! But after a couple interchanges, it turns out they are usually referring to some kind of leadership book that will help them get to the next level.
I came across an alarming statistic awhile back from Dan Miller that college graduates on average will spend more money on soft drinks than on post-graduate education. Right then and there, I resolved that this would never be true of me. I heard Dave Ramsey say that the average millionaire reads one non-fiction book a month. So I committed to read two a month. And I heard Charlie “Tremendous” Jones used to say that you’ll be the same person in five years that you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read. So I decided I would never stop reading.
