First Look: Leadership Books for January 2024

HERE'S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in January 2024 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month.

All In: How Great Leaders Build Unstoppable Teams by Mike Michalowicz

It’s never been harder building successful teams. With challenges of work-from-anywhere, flex-schedule and generational divides, business leaders bend over backwards searching for solutions that work. They’ve tried everything from food perks and ping pong tables to endless team-building exercises and training—but nothing sticks. Now, in his long-awaited book for leaders at all levels, bestselling author Mike Michalowicz reveals his proven formula to build an unstoppable team for any work environment.

Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings by Steven G. Rogelberg

There are an estimated 200-500 million 1:1 meetings held each day around the world, but are they run as transformatively as they could be? Or are they just talk? In Glad We Met Rogelberg helps us maximize the potential of these crucial conversations. 1:1s are arguably one of the most critical meeting types for the success of team members, managers, coaches, teams, and organizations. The best managers recognize that 1:1s are not an add-on to their role as a manager. Conducting 1:1s successfully are foundational to being a manager. At the same time, these meetings are the core of a direct report's experience and development at work, including how well they engage and attach to their role, perceive the effectiveness of their manager, and envision their future at the organization.

Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day by Daniel Goleman and Cary Cherniss

There are moments when we achieve peak performance: An athlete plays a perfect game; a business has a quarter with once-in-a-lifetime profits. But these moments are often elusive, and for every amazing day, we may have a hundred ordinary and even unsatisfying days. Fulfillment doesn’t come from isolated peak experiences, but rather from many consistent good days. So how do we sustain performance, while avoiding burnout and maintaining balance? In Optimal, Daniel Goleman and Cary Cherniss reveal how emotional intelligence can help us have a great day, any day. They explain how to set a realistic, attainable goal of feeling satisfied that you’ve had a productive day — to consistently work at your ‘optimal’ level. Based on research of how hundreds of people build the inner architecture of having a good day, they sketch what an optimal state feels like, and show how emotional intelligence holds the key to our best performance.

The Six Disciplines of Strategic Thinking: Leading Your Organization into the Future by Michael D. Watkins

Michael D. Watkins presents an actionable new framework to help aspiring leaders learn to think strategically—a set of skills more necessary than ever in a world of constant change. Pattern recognition. Systems perspective. Mental agility. Structured problem-solving. Visioning. Political savvy. For every good leader who has mastered of one of these disciplines is a great leader who knows and has mastered all of them. Watkins presents the six disciplines that separate the great from the good. Developed over the course of his storied career, Watkins’ approach to strategic thinking—"a set of mental disciplines leaders use to recognize potential threats and opportunities, establish priorities, and mobilize themselves and their organizations to envision and enact promising paths forward”—is the model followed by some of today’s most successful first-time CEOs and new business leaders.

The Goodwill Jar: Reflections on Leadership and Legacy by Nick O. Rowe

Sometimes it seems that too many people are suffering from a crisis of identity, not sure what they stand for or what they want to do with their lives. The Goodwill Jar answers this problem. It teaches that when we focus on the good, offer the benefit of the doubt, and open our hearts to love, we can all live a richer life full of meaningful relationships. After all, humans are social creatures. Imagine what kind of world we would live in if everyone shared the goal of leaving others better than we found them. Follow the path of a typical person as they navigate the relationships that occur in every stage of life, from childhood to the grave. It starts with the foundational values of our youth, proceeds through those tumultuous teen years, on to early adulthood, mid-life, and finally ends at retirement. Every choice builds a legacy. Our leadership foundation begins when we are very young, setting the core values that drive choices for the rest of our lives. Once you know how to fill the goodwill jar of others, you can’t help but to live with a full goodwill jar yourself.

The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder by Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao

Every organization is plagued by destructive friction. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, The Friction Project by bestselling authors Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao teaches readers how to become “friction fixers.” Sutton and Rao kick off the book by unpacking how skilled friction fixers think and act like trustees of others’ time. They provide friction forensics to help readers identify where to avert and repair bad organizational friction and where to maintain and inject good friction. Then their help pyramid shows how friction fixers do their work, from reframing friction troubles they can’t fix right now, so they feel less threatening, to designing and repairing organizations. The heart of the book digs into the causes and solutions for five of the most common and damaging friction troubles: oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast and frenzied people and teams.

For bulk orders call 1-626-441-2024

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 04:11 PM
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