My favorite books on leading with character

Dr. Angela Duckworth’s New York Times best seller identifies the key ingredients for success – whether you are an NFL professional football player, or an aspiring Army officer at West Point. Grit plays a key role in achieving one’s goals, and Duckworth shows by both testimony and research how these traits develop one’s “grit,” and, in turn, develop one’s opportunities for success. 

Stephen Covey does a masterful job demonstrating how “trust” influences an organization’s success. If trust is present within all levels of leadership and management, then Covey maintains these organizations move with quick and productive efficiencies that otherwise bureaucratic organizations would labor through. But Covey also brings it to the next level, because he illustrates the connection between trust and character and integrity. This is important because without character, you cannot develop trust, which is the essential element for any relationship within high-performance, successful organizations.

This book shows what it takes to transition from an average (good) organization to becoming a great organization.  With specific data and analysis of organizations that have successfully made this transition, Jim Collins masterfully illustrates the culture, character, leadership, and management that was necessary to become “great”! What I loved in Jim Collin’s assessment, is that the CEO’s who successfully made this transition were not rabble-rouser leaders with flamboyant personalities. They were strategic leaders with a vision that everyone identified with, who created a culture defined by the values of their organization, and who persevered through all challenges and adversity. 

This is an incredibly insightful book about the travails and successes of the Lewis and Clark expedition pioneering the opening of the Pacific Northwest. Ambrose does a masterful job analyzing the tremendous challenges Meriwether Lewis and William Clark encountered during their mission and what it took to persevere. This book is a great study on successful small-unit leadership, and Ambrose could not have used a better example of what right looks like than this study of what Lewis and Clark did to successfully accomplish their mission.

As the United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin E. Dempsey was named one of the most influential leaders in the world by Time magazine in 2015. Ori Brafman has multiple New York Times bestsellers and his work specializes in building organizational cultures and leadership. As the author of the great book Starfish and Spider, Brafman is also the founder and president of Starfish Leadership and co-founder of the Fully Charged Institute. 

This is a book about leadership, and no one does it better than Marty Dempsey and no one can capture it better than Ori Brafman. Dempsey has led American troops in harms-way over many of our Iraq and Afghanistan war years, and has advised our executive branch of government during these tough and challenging times. If you want to see what outstanding leadership looks like, both at the tactical level in the crucible of ground combat, and at the strategic level advising our Nation’s president and Congressional leadership, read Radical Inclusion.