10 books like It's Your Ship

Marshall Goldsmith is a renowned executive leadership coach. In this book, he lays out the secrets to getting promoted and moving up in an organization. While not a traditional book about leadership, it’s an essential text for figuring out what you need to do to be successful as you climb the corporate ladder. Goldsmith writes about the need to figure out what knowledge and skills to let go of at your current level as you move up to the next level, where different tasks and responsibilities await you (e.g., being a star as an individual contributor does not mean you’ll be great as a manager). This is one of the best books ever written about what it takes to be a successful leader at different levels of an organization.

This classic by Max De Pree (the former CEO of Herman Miller) looks at leadership as a kind of stewardship, stressing the importance of building relationships, initiating ideas, and creating a lasting value system within an organization. Rather than focusing on the “how” of corporate life, he stresses that leaders need to explain the “why.” He writes that the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality and the last is to say thank you. De Pree offers dozens of memorable leadership anecdotes that will have you wishing you’d worked for him at some point in your career! A wonderful gem of a book, it’s lessons will resonate with any leader who is trying to build a winning culture. 

The Extraordinary Leader is a remarkable combination of expert insight and extensive research. The authors analyzed more than 200,000 assessments describing 20,000 managers—by far the most expansive research ever conducted for a leadership book. This book will take you inside the process of becoming a successful leader, as the authors detail the various skills needed to earn the respect of the people you lead. This is a must read for aspiring and experienced leaders alike and is one of my go-to manuals on how to develop leaders. One of the few books I’ve read cover-to-cover more than once, I’m confident you’ll come away with data-driven insights that you can begin to implement in your leadership role.

While Rumelt’s and Ohmae’s books are primarily about formulating strategy, this one is about executing strategy. Former Honeywell CEO Larry Bossidy and academic guru Ram Charan have combined to produce this outstanding book on implementation in organizations. The discipline of execution means understanding how to link together people, strategy, and operations, the three core processes of every business. Leading these processes is the real job of running a business, not formulating a vision and leaving the work of carrying it out to others. Having led a large organization myself, I really appreciate their clarity on what leaders have to do. I used this book as the basis for my Executive MBA elective on strategy execution at China Europe International Business School, my toughest-ever teaching challenge.

As a lifelong rugby fan, inspired by my late brother Charlie, this book was recommended to me by a course delegate. And the messages transcend the world of rugby.

There are again the recurring themes with my other choices, of respect for the contribution others… and yourself, of course. The value of giving and receiving effective feedback and that getting something ‘wrong’ is simply a springboard to making improvements.

This book has influenced by approach to training team leaders: the importance of clear goals, loyalty, courage, and that wonderful elusive blend in a leader or a team member, of confidence and humility. The enduring success at the top of World Rugby of the All Blacks is testament to what happens when it comes together.

Peter Drucker, the great 20th-century leadership thinker, called Frances “perhaps the finest leader I have ever known.” Although Frances led a non-profit for girls, the Girl Scouts USA, she influenced corporate giants along with public sector and military leaders around the world with her philosophy, her wisdom, and her clarity about mission and values. She was also a pioneer when it came to valuing diversity and living those values. She wrote many books, but My Life in Leadership is my favorite, telling the highly detailed story of how a young girl from Johnson PA developed into a force that would subtly influence how excellence in leadership is defined.

Learning how to deal with people effectively is often a challenge for those who are promoted by an organization into management roles, and especially those promoted from within the company. This is because conscientious people who get themselves promoted generally expect the same level of commitment from those who will report to them. However, people are complex creatures and life is never quite that simple.

An entertaining and informative book that anyone engaged in a management or leadership role would do well to read, I once used it as the basis of the management course I used to teach many years back. Within a few simple principles that may be somewhat counter-intuitive to many people, the authors outline the management style that really gets results.

I recommend this book because of its accessibility and tie to the new age theories of consciousness. This book has the depth to bring value to experts, yet is accessible to anyone who wants to be a better leader. The authors demonstrate that hard work is not enough, recognizing how we’ve been conditioned to survive instead of thrive. They tout the benefits of compassion, empathy, resilience, and authentic engagement and encourage readers to rewire their thinking to manifest real change. This book doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that real change isn’t easy. It requires intention, finding purpose, and practice. But the authors also give you the tools and empowerment to make change a reality.

Business books tend to be stuffy and over technical, but Iger’s book was the model I was going after when writing my own book. Iger shares the hits and misses (but mostly hits) of his time running one of the most prestigious brands the world has ever seen. But even though they’re mostly showbiz and Disney-focused, any human can relate and learn from his stories.

Managing Oneself is a 60-page book that will effectively help you manage and develop yourself. On your road to success, you must learn how to manage yourself or you will fall apart. Therefore, self-management is an essential key to becoming successful in life. Imagine if you knew how to discover and improve your strengths, how powerful would you be? No more weaknesses. Imagine overcoming your intellectual arrogance, how much smarter would your decisions be? Managing Oneself can help you stay mentally alert and identify which environments are right or wrong for you.