HR and L&D leaders
How do we choose a leadership book for our management cohort?
Choose one with a framework your managers can actually use in a conversation on a Tuesday morning — one they can apply on the Tuesday after the workshop, not merely recall from it. The most common mistake is selecting a book because it was popular, won an award, or is by a well-known author. Those are signals of quality but not of usefulness. A book that your managers find insightful but don’t know how to apply is a reading programme. Useful. Worth more with a plan.
Framework: Brian Hartzer’s Leadership Star · Practices: All five practices
Does it tell managers what to do?
Good leadership writing describes principles. Great leadership books tell managers what to do differently on Monday. The test is: after reading it, does a manager have one or two specific behaviours they can change? If the book is all insight and no practice, it will make for a good discussion and not much else.
Will it produce genuine conversation?
The best leadership books surface the things managers already know but haven’t said out loud — that holding people to account is hard, that recognising people’s work feels awkward to some, that giving honest feedback to a high performer is more difficult than it looks. A book that lets a group of managers say “yes, that’s true for me” opens the door to genuine change. A book that tells them what they should think closes it.
Is the senior leader willing to discuss it honestly?
A book discussion programme without the senior leader in the room is a training exercise. With the senior leader in the room — genuinely engaged, willing to reflect on their own leadership, able to say “I think I’ve been getting this wrong” — it’s something else. Choose a book the senior leader will find useful personally, not one they’ll present as useful for others.
Where judgment matters
The right book for a new manager cohort is a different book from the right one for an experienced leadership team. Don’t choose the same text for both audiences and expect the same result.
Would the senior leaders in your organisation read the book you’re considering and find it genuinely useful — or would they treat it as something for their teams?
Books for your team
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