A Reading List for Emerging Leaders

One week ago, I had the privilege and honor to attend and speak at the annual mcn.edu conference in New Orleans, LA.

The MCN community is remarkable: welcoming, supportive, energetic, positive, open and the organization itself is entirely volunteer-driven. For me it is a deeply-valued and important group of colleagues from whom I am continually learning. I was so happy to be there and honored to be selected as a presenter.  

One of the topics that I wanted to focus on, and one I'd like to continue to support and drive to success, is the development of new leaders in our sector. From within the MCN community and across the cultural heritage sector, that's likely to be the next wave of CIOs, CTOs, Chief Digital Officers, and (hopefully, eventually) Executive Directors. I participated in a couple of sessions that focused on career development, and after one such session I saw this tweet:

Chris was responding to a few things I had been mentioning that I'd read which had been valuable in forming my theory and practice of leadership. My twitter reply was:

Therefore, I am going to fulfill that promise. But first, a caveat:

Dear Reader,

Please note that this list of resources on leadership is not - nor could it be - comprehensive. I have learned so much over so many years, and I'll never be able to recall every book, article, blog post or conversation that contributed to what I've managed to remember and apply. Also, while I strive to be a good leader and work on it constantly, I make no proclamation of expertise or wisdom. I'm a work in progress, what I try to do is improve consistently over time. Finally, I'm certain this list will suffer from the Recency Effect, and thus reflect primarily the things I've been reading *lately* that have had an impact on the way I approach my role.

All of that being said, here we go:

Ari Weinzweig
A Lapsed Anarchist's Approach to Being a Better Leader

This book, written with intelligence and humility plus a dose of humor, has been a wonderful and validating read for me. It brings together the servant leadership model with the spirit of human independence and agency - as expressed via Anarchism (but not Anarchy, which is ... well, read the book, he explains it better than I can). 

Stephen Denning
The Leader's Guide to Radical Management

While I am actually on a mini-crusade to ban the word "management" from our collective vocabulary, I learned a lot from this book about being truly open and transparent as a leader, and about the concept of "servant leader". While not a specific recommendation from the book, it helped inspire me to share my own performance evaluation results with everyone on my team. I believe that kind of radical transparency builds trust.

Mark Murphy
Hiring for Attitude

I admit to mixed feelings about this book - at times it comes across too much like a sales pitch for the author's consulting firm. That being said, if you ignore those paragraphs, this book will help you determine and implement a truly effective way to hire the right people for the right reasons - and especially how to conduct interviews to find them from among your pool of applicants. I make no bones about it: hiring the right people is a leader's number one priority. Knowing how to do this right will set you on a path to success.

Joel Spolsky
Smart & Gets Things Done

Oh no, another book about talent strategy! Trust me, not only is that your first priority, but this book (even with it's healthy dose of snark) will motivate you never to accept mediocre. While Mr. Spolsky's recommendation that top software developers get the corner office is an unlikely outcome in the cultural heritage sector, this book will offer useful tips on finding and keeping stars.

Carol Dweck
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Dr. Dweck lays out an effective argument about the deep impact of mindset on the ability of people to make change and work hard to overcome obstacles. At the core of this is the difference between the fixed mindset and the growth mindset: the first assumes that talent is innate and effort relatively pointless; the second that hard work and continuous learning + a deep sense of optimism will win the day. Probably not hard to guess that I agree with the latter! 

Eric Reis
The Lean Startup

I've met plenty of entrepreneurial types who consider this book a sort of bible. While I wouldn't go that far, I do find inspiration in Reis' perspective on running fast with practical resource limits - sounds pretty familiar for the non-profit sector IMHO. Like a lot of other resources on this list, this book will point to several others that will be of use to you as you grow into your role as a 21st century leader. 

The Harvard Business Review

I can imagine that some of you are wondering if I've lost my mind on this one. Harvard Business Review? I might as well be recommending the Wall Street Journal! Well, actually, that might be on the next list. Why? Look - I understand that most of my readers are from the non-profit, cultural sector. We are not MBAs. But perhaps that actually increases our need to learn about how the business sector conceives of and implements leadership models. Not every issue of this (rather expensive) magazine will add directly to your leadership knowledge, but the access to their deep archive that comes with the subscription is well-worth that cost.   Here are some of the reprints you'll want to dig up and dig into right off the bat:

The Work of Leadership R. Heifetz and D. Laurie (Dec 2001)
The Passive-Aggressive Organization G, Neilson, B. Pasternak and K. Van Nuys (Oct 2005)
Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams L. Gratton and T. Erickson (Nov 2007)
Why Teams Don't Work, An Interview with J. Richard Hackman (May 2009)
Accelerate! J. Kotter (Nov 2012)
Building a Game-Changing Talent Strategy D. Ready, L. Hill and R. Thomas (Jan-Feb 2014)

The New York Times Corner Office

Each Sunday, in the Business Section of the New York Times, you'll find a feature called Corner Office. Read it. It's short, often inspiring, and in it you'll see not only what's foremost on the minds of contemporary leaders but almost always some tips about how they look at talent strategy. Then you can go do the crossword!

Jim Whitehurst
The Open Organization

At Redhat, they operate as an open organization, breaking down silos and hierarchies so that only the best ideas get implemented - no matter who came up with them. This bold approach, as told from the perspective of an executive who joined the organization without ever working in such an environment, results in a workplace that is energetic, intense and often filled with debate. Not for the weak of heart, but really interesting. 




Blogs and Social Media
There seem to be hundreds of Leadership-themed blogs out there. To be honest, I haven't really found one that I feel I can't live without. One of the most-popular in the world is authored by Michael Hyatt (scroll down a bit to the blog link) - I find it a bit self-promotional but many of the posts are spot on. I'm also a fan of Dan Pink's work - his books and his online resources. 
Sometimes simply perusing Twitter under #leadership yields fascinating rabbit holes that I get lost in for way too much time!

As a parting thought: This topic is on my mind, so I speak and tweet and get interviewed and sometimes write about it myself here on this blog (which I should do with more consistency, I know). I hope you will follow along as you see fit and join in the dialog, we can learn from each other.