Own a Business? Check Out These 6 Life-Changing Books on Leadership

Owning a business can be both incredibly difficult and immensely rewarding—sometimes on the same day! Even the best business owners need some inspiration and guidance along their journey. Here are six excellents reads for business owners:

The Wisdom of Failure by Laurence G. Weinzimmer and Jim McConoughey

This book explains how adversity and failure are necessary parts of the journey to success in business. The key is to learn from what goes wrong. Weinzimmer and McConoughey provide insights from a seven-year study with nearly 1,000 managers across 21 industries. Read how top leaders made lemonade out of lemons sent their way.

Speak and Get Results by Sandy Linver

Not all business owners can capture a room’s attention and make something happen, but that skill can be learned. We've all known "naturals” who get the budget approved, win the big account or get the team’s support at the weekly staff meeting. Speak and Get Results teaches you how to: 

• motivate your listeners 
• choose an opening that targets your ideas
• design visuals that support you
• use your body and voice to express your energy, authority, and commitment
• handle tough Q & As, audience resistance, and even surprise media encounters

Take Care of Your People: The Enlightened CEO’s Guide to Business Success by Paul Sarvadi

You work every day to build a profitable brand and satisfy your stakeholders. It’s possible, among this frenzy, to lose your humanity, which is no fun and can hurt your business. Sarvadi provides excellent insights into taking care of your team while you grow profits.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath

Change is difficult, whether it’s in our companies, our careers or our personal lives. Often, our brains add to the challenge: we have an emotional mind and a rational mind, and they can be in conflict. In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heath brothers bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter, whether your interest is in changing the world or your waistline.

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg

Written by Facebook’s COO, this book was created for female business owners. Sandberg highlights how being a woman leader in the business world is different than being a man. She provides solutions and tips on how women can progress and achieve leadership positions.

Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute

Self-deception—our tendency to see the world around us in a distorted way—is a common problem. Leadership and Self-Deception explains how it derails relationships and keeps organizations from achieving results. Instead of focusing on producing results, many leaders are trapped “in the box”—they blame others for their own failures and can’t see how they themselves are a problem. Through a business fable, this book tells leaders how to get out of the box.

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