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Being an employee, you work independently and usually perform tasks on your own. You do your fair share, make your contribution, and the work is done. But when you are a manager or more precisely a leader, everything changes. Your results depend not on your output but rather on other people’s. Here your main goal is to motivate and inspire other people to produce their own output. However, establishing yourself as a leader can be really challenging. So, check out these three books that are devoted to improving leadership skills.
High Output Management by Andy Grove
Main points: Working as Intel CEO in the 1970s, Grove applied some principles that helped him climb a career ladder. In his book, the author outlines that as a leader, you should always push other to improve their productivity. Your team’s results are the main criteria for assessment of your work. Additionally, Grove mentions five key things that every leader should focus on and work on: information gathering, decision making, encouraging, information sharing, and role modeling.
Best quote: “The output of a manager is the output of the organizational units under his or her supervision or influence.”
Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround by Lou Gerstner
Main points: If you are into thrillers, you will definitely like this book. Gerstner’s renowned memoir on the rise of IBM is a riveting account that concerns leadership during rough times and turmoil. The author emphasizes that it is of utmost importance to clearly convey your principles, especially if you work for such a giant as IBM was at that time. Also, Gerstner brings up the problems large companies confront with mediocre management: “People do what you inspect, not what you expect.”
Best quote: “I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.”
The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World’s Most Disruptive Company by John Rossman
Main points: This book is easy to absorb, and yet it is also the most effective at giving sensible and fruitful leadership advice. Rossman worked as an Amazon executive, which provided for him an immense insight into leadership. He stresses that decision making and ownership carry much weight in a company. No matter how old the owner of a project is, he /she should take full responsibility for the project’s outcome.
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Best quote: “True collaboration is only possible in an atmosphere of trust. And that atmosphere is always set by a leader who has earned his team members’ trust and who trusts them in return.”
These are the main sources of inspiration and development as a leader. We encourage to you to carve out some time daily to immerse in one of these readings. The bottom line: by reading, you are investing in your future and your efforts will be paid off.
