Post Published on June 1, 2013.
Last Updated on April 29, 2016 by davemackey.
I began writing an article on Safari Books Online, but then I decided I wouldn’t do it justice if I wrote about all of Safari Books Online – so let me just focus in on one of the audiences Safari targets – leaders.
Safari Books Online is an online, subscription library with 24,000+ books and videos on a variety of subjects – 840+ of those are on leadership.
For $10/mo. (not shown in advertising on their site) you can sign up for a 5-slot bookshelf. This means you can read any five books out of that 24k+ library in its entirety anytime you want. After you are done reading a book, return it and a slot frees up and choose another book to utilize that free slot.
But what sort of books am I talking about? Old books? Crappy books? Books by authors and publishers you’ve never heard about? Nope. I’m taking about the good stuff, lots of it, by well-known authors and publishers.
Sorting the results for leadership books these are the top ten most popular currently:
- Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal’s Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2008).
- Scott Cromar’s From Techie to Boss: Transitioning to Leadership (Apress, 2013).
- Daniel Goleman’s Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence (More Than Sound, 2011).
- James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner’s The Leadership Challenge 4th Ed. (Jossey-Bass, 2007).
- Nicole Lipkin’s What Keeps Leaders Up At Night (AMACOM, 2013).
- Jamshid Gharajedaghi’s Systems Thinking 3rd Ed. (Morgan Kaufmann, 2011).
- Maria Gonzalez’s Mindful Leadership: The 9 Ways to Self-Awareness, Transforming Yourself, and Inspiring Others (Jossey-Bass, 2012).
- William F. Baker and Michael O’Malley’s Leading with Kindness: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results (AMACOM, 2008).
- Niamh O’Keeffe’s Your First 100 Days (Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2011).
- Michael Armstrong’s Handbook of Management and Leadership 3rd Ed. (Kogan Page, 2012).
I browsed through the books quickly and stumbled upon Patrick Lencioni’s books. I loved his Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators (Jossey-Bass, 2005) and I see that The Four Obsessions of An Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable (Jossey-Bass, 2000) and The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable (Jossey-Bass, 2008) are available as well.
I also noticed Andrew J. DuBrin’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Leadership, 2nd Ed. (Alpha Books, 2000). No, I’m not calling you an idiot – but I personally find the idiot’s and dummies’ guides to be really helpful – especially as first-look primers for jumping into a subject.
One will also notice some well-known names such as John Wooden (On Leadership, McGraw-Hill, 2005), Ken Blanchard (Leading at a Higher Level, FT Press, 2006), Warren Bennis (On Becoming a Leader, Basic Books, 2009), and Peter Druck (as seen in William A. Cohen’s Drucker on Leadership, Jossey-Bass, 2009).
If we constrained ourselves only to the leadership category we’d have plenty of reading material for quite some time, but there are also several other relevant categories for leaders such as Personal and Professional Development (2922 books).
Yes, one could buy these books…But one book will set you back the cost of a month’s subscription – and for that same month’s subscription you can read five of these leadership books. Pretty slick, eh?