Books on leadership and teamwork

Five management books, five angles on leadership and work

This article lists, transparently, the leadership and productivity books that have served as sources for Personaramic’s content on work and productivity.

They are management writing by consultants or applied researchers, complementing the academic framework that underpins the category (Bales and Belbin on team roles, Deci and Ryan on motivation, Bass on leadership, Steel on procrastination). In each article, the research comes first, and the book, when it appears, is presented as what it is: applied reading.

Beyond stating where each idea comes from, this article says plainly what each book offers, what you can expect from reading it, and where it demands more effort.

• Goldsmith: the habits that get you to success aren’t the ones you need to lead well.
• Martin: “integrative thinking,” holding two ideas in tension until you find a third way.
• McChrystal: delegating real authority, not just tasks, in decentralized structures.
• Bungay Stanier: the question “and what else?” before offering your own solution.
• Clear: the cue-craving-response-reward loop behind any habit.

Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

An uncomfortable book, in a good way. Goldsmith coached senior executives for decades and writes without pulling punches: he names twenty specific behaviors that sabotage successful people, and most of them sting a little to read.

His central idea, that the habits that get someone to a position of responsibility aren’t the same ones needed to do it well, is developed in inspirational leader from the leadership style test, and mentioned in passing in results driver.

It reads fast, almost like an annotated list, which is both its greatest strength and its only limit: it doesn’t go deep on any single point, so it works better as a mirror than as a step-by-step manual.

Roger Martin, The Opposable Mind

The densest of the five, and the one that reads most like an academic management essay. Martin was dean of the Rotman School of Management and builds his argument from interviews with dozens of executives, not loose anecdotes.

His concept of “integrative thinking” (holding two ideas in tension without discarding either until you find a synthesis better than both) is used in organizing leader and in quality analyst.

It demands more concentration than the rest of this list, but it rewards you with an idea that genuinely changes how you look at a hard decision: there’s almost always a third option better than the two that seem to force a choice.

Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams

A book with more real authority behind it than most management manuals: McChrystal led the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) during the Iraq war and tells, with names and dates, how he had to break a rigid command structure to be able to react in time.

His experience leading decentralized military structures brought the concept of delegating real authority, not just tasks, used in delegating leader; his idea of information shared across teams also appears in liaison communicator.

The early chapters, focused on the military context, can feel far removed from any regular office, but the turn toward practical application in the second half more than justifies the detour.

Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit

The most practical of the five, meant to be read and applied the same day. Bungay Stanier wrote it as a deliberately short manual, with brief chapters and a central argument that fits in one sentence.

His finding that most team leads default to giving solutions too fast, and his question “and what else?” for drawing out the other person’s best idea before offering your own, is used in hands-off leader and in the cohesion builder role.

Its brevity is both its strength and its limit: anyone looking for an extensive theoretical treatment won’t find it here, but few books on this list translate so quickly into something recognizable in your very next team conversation after reading it.

James Clear, Atomic Habits

The book with the most weight in this category, and the best-selling of the five worldwide, for good reason: Clear explains fairly technical behavioral mechanisms (the cue, craving, response and reward loop) in language anyone can grasp right away.

His ideas about environment design, immediate reward, progress tracking and identity appear in several profiles on procrastination, motivation and decision-making styles, for example in extrinsic motivation or steady planner, each with a different idea so the same one isn’t repeated.

Strictly speaking, it isn’t a leadership book but a book about behavior change in general, so its application to teams and work roles, the one this site makes, is a reasonable extension of its framework, not something the book itself develops in depth.

Sources

• Bungay Stanier, M. (2016). The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever. Box of Crayons Press.
• Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Avery.
• Goldsmith, M. & Reiter, M. (2007). What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful. Hyperion.
• Martin, R. L. (2007). The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking. Harvard Business Review Press.
• McChrystal, S., Collins, T., Silverman, D., & Fussell, C. (2015). Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World. Portfolio.