Recommended Reading

We all know how impactful and motivational reading the right words at the right time can be. On a Friday is a brilliant new book is bursting with ‘right words’ - 27 short, impactful and wise chapters each written by a member of the Like Hearted Leaders community (LHL), including me!

How to be a 6 Star Business shares the stories, inspiration and genius of 22 entrepreneurs from around the world who provide insights and action steps to go BEYOND the everyday in your business. Connect your heart to your purpose and join the 6 Star Business Movement to collectively create the biggest and kindest impact possible on the world, and personally leave a lasting legacy

The international best ranked, bestseller Visionary Male Leaders features 15 global male leaders who share their current best thinking on identifying, integrating and implementing your inherent feminine and masculine leadership traits. Authentic, whole-hearted leadership is genuinely a key topic of discussion amongst male business leaders, world wide who are running established organisations.

Radical Candor is the sweet spot between managers who are obnoxiously aggressive on the one side and ruinously empathetic on the other. Great bosses have a strong relationship with their employees, and Scott has identified three simple principles for building better relationships with your employees: make it personal, get stuff done, and understand why it matters.

Today’s best companies get it. From retail to finance and industries in between, the organizations who recognize that doing good is good business are becoming the ultimate value creators. Firms of Endearment shows they’re changing their culture and generating every form of value that matters: emotional, experiential, social, and financial. And they’re doing it for all their stakeholders. 

Cannibals with Forks passionately demonstrates how all businesses can and must help society achieve the three interlinked goals of economic prosperity, environmental protection and social equity, issues which are already at the top of the corporate agenda. Global in scope, it describes seven linked revolutions which will define the business environment of the first few decades of the 21st century.

It’s time to toss aside the touchy-feely notions of love in business and recognize the real power it holds. Love is Just Damn Good Business shows love is not only appropriate in the context of business, it’s the foundation of great leadership, and, therefore, the very foundation of a thriving, competitive enterprise. When love is part of an organization’s framework and operationalized in its culture, employees and customers feel genuinely valued.

Company of One is a refreshing new approach centered on staying small and avoiding growth, for any size of business. By staying small, you can have freedom to pursue more meaningful pleasures in life, and avoid the headaches that result from dealing with employees, long meetings, or worrying about expansion.

A game-changing approach to marketing, sales and advertising. For the first time Seth Godin offers the core of his marketing wisdom in one compact, accessible, timeless package. This is Marketing shows you how to do work you're proud of, whether you're a tech startup founder, a small business owner, or part of a large corporation.

Moore’s life’s work has focused on the market dynamics surrounding disruptive innovations. His first book, Crossing the Chasm, focuses on the challenges start-up companies face transitioning from early adopting to mainstream customers. It has sold more than a million copies, and its third edition has been revised such that the majority of its examples and case studies reference companies come to prominence from the past decade. 

Are you wondering what the next killer app will be? Do you want to know how you can maintain and add to your value during these rapidly changing times? Are you wondering how the word love can even be used in the context of business? Instead of wondering, read Love is the Killer App and find out how to become a lovecat = a nice, smart person who succeeds in business and in life.

Man's Search for Meaning tells how a prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Viktor Frankl was uniquely able to observe the way that both he and others in Auschwitz coped (or didn't) with the experience. He noticed that it was the men who comforted others and who gave away their last piece of bread who survived the longest - and who offered proof that everything can be taken away from us except the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances.

Do Purpose provides insight that the most important brands in the world make us feel something. They do that because they have something they want to change. And as customers, we want to be part of that change. These companies connect with us because they have a reason to exist over and above making a profit: They have a purpose.

After a five-year research project, Jim Collins concludes that good to great can and does happen. In Good to Great, he uncovers the underlying variables that enable any type of organisation to make the leap from good to great while other organisations remain only good. Rigorously supported by evidence, his findings are surprising - at times even shocking - to the modern mind.

In an increasingly superficial and disconnected world, Jungian psychology offers a more soulful alternative. A Jungian Approach to Coaching provides a frame within which we can more easily notice and understand the voice of the unconscious and its implications, allowing us to build deeper relationships and lead more meaningful lives.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why even the best teams often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.

Founder Brand is a tactical guidebook that first shows you how to tell your story, then how to put your story to use as a marketing strategy. You’ll learn how social media provides a bridge between you and your customers, the platforms that are appropriate for your business, and how to measure results to truly determine value. The ultimate resource for founders, CEOs, and marketing teams trying to find their company’s niche, strategize for the future, and create brand awareness.

A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation" trilogy.  All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces.

The Soul of a Firm is about people and values. It demonstrates the difference they can make in the ultimate success of any organization, not simply because of their work ethic and commitment to success, but because of the impact that all of us can make in the lives of those we have the opportunity to associate with and serve. Leadership in the firm has a responsibility to the ethical, professional and personal development of every individual in the organization.

Snow Leopard is the first writing advice book ever written through a Category Design lens. Inside, what you will not find are a bunch of nose-picky suggestions for how you can make your writing “better.” There will be no talk of comma placement, grammatical correctness, or a recap of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey.” Instead, you will internalize a completely new way of framing your ideas, stories, and insights to reach and resonate with the most people possible.

How to Find What You Love, Love What You Do, and Do It for the Rest of Your Life. In this eye-opening, uplifting book, Buckingham shows you how to break free from this conformity—how to decode your own loves, turn them into their most powerful expression, and do the same for those you lead and those you love.

Presenting 12 breakthrough practices for bringing creativity into all human endeavours, The Art of Possibility is the dynamic product of an extraordinary partnership. The Art of Possibility combines Benjamin Zander's experience as conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and his talent as a teacher and communicator with psychotherapist Rosamund Stone Zander's genius for designing innovative paradigms for personal and professional fulfillment.

The first book to deal with the problems of communicating to a skeptical, media-blitzed public, Positioning describes a revolutionary approach to creating a "position" in a prospective customer's mind-one that reflects a company's own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of its competitors.

A succinct, engaging, and practical guide for succeeding in any creative sphere, The War of Art is nothing less than Sun-Tzu for the soul.

What keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do?

Why is there a naysayer within? 

The War of Art emphasizes the resolve needed to recognize and overcome the obstacles of ambition and then effectively shows how to reach the highest level of creative discipline.

What if you tried to stop doing everything, so you could finally get round to what counts?
Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations.
Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

Category Design is a business discipline that helps companies earn the majority of the value created in a specific new or different category of products or services. The 22 Laws Of Category Design is a groundbreaking guide for the select few business professionals, entrepreneurs, and innovators who dare to think different. It challenges conventional business and marketing wisdom, to create new markets, dominate existing ones, and build lasting companies.

Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he’s developed, refined, and used over the past forty years to create unique results in both life and business—and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.

The founders of a respected Silicon Valley advisory firm study legendary category-creating companies and reveal a groundbreaking discipline called category design.

Winning today isn't about beating the competition at the old game. It's about inventing a whole new game--defining a new market category, developing it, and dominating it over time. You can't build a legendary company without building a legendary category. If you think that having the best product is all it takes to win, you're going to lose.

Al Ries and Jack Trout, two of the world's most successful marketing strategists, call upon over 40 years of marketing experise to identify the definitive rules that govern the world of marketing. Combining a wide-ranging historical overview with a keen eye for the future, the authors bring to light 22 superlative tools and innovative techniques for the international marketplace. 

The authors examine marketing campaigns that have succeeded and others that have failed, why good ideas didn't live up to expectations, and offer their own ideas on what would have worked better. The real-life examples, commonsense suggestions and killer instincts contained are nothing less than rules by which companies will flourish or fail.

Most people want to be successful in life. And of course, everyone wants to be happy.  Based on the largest study ever conducted on happiness and human potential (a survey conducted by the author of more than 1,600 students), Harvard lecturer Shawn Achor shares seven core principles of positive psychology that each one of us can use to improve our performance, grow our careers, and gain a competitive edge at work. He reveals how happiness actually fuels success and performance, not the other way around. Why? Because when we are happier and more positive we are more engaged, creative, resilient to stress, and productive. The Happiness Advantage will appeal to anyone who wants practical advice on how to become happier and also more successful.

Daniel H. Pink explains in his paradigm-shattering book Drive, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and the world.

Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation, and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward.

Many manufacturing business owners see marketing as nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

When they do invest in marketing, they expect a measurable return on their investment. It doesn’t help when marketing executives themselves get addicted to the rhythms of tactical efforts and focus on generating output instead of outcomes. That “more, more, more” approach results in a reactive, whack-a-mole cycle that delivers burnout, turnover, and increased costs instead of long-term ROI. Before long, marketing itself seems pointless. Christopher Peer knows that there's another way.

In this book, Teichert fuses the ubiquitous topics of leadership and innovation, written by a leader to leaders! It powerfully weaves together traditional leadership principles with unorthodox innovation tactics to spur success. It is jam-packed with fascinating aviation analogies, little-known stories of Chuck Yeager, intriguing tales from the highest visibility base on the planet, internationally impactful activities in war-torn Iraq, and compelling real-life applications. It takes the reader along on a massively effective innovation journey while offering a roadmap for replication.

‘The secret to a future of financial freedom is to break bad money habits and develop better ones. In this book, Rob shows you how.’ Mike Harris, Founder of First Direct and Egg

Achieve financial freedom with three money habits – earn it, keep it, and grow it. Use this book as your toolkit to make your money work for you. Whether you’re managing debt, saving for a rainy day, or investing in your future, this proven approach to financial planning makes complex money concepts easy to understand.

In The Song of Significance, legendary author and business thinker Seth Godin posits a new view of what industry leaders must do now. If you want your employees to live up to their full professional potential, you must give them the respect and autonomy they deserve as humans. 

The choice is simple: either keep treating your people as disposable and join in the AI-fueled race to the bottom, or build a significant organization that enrolls, empowers, and trusts employees to deliver their best work, no matter where they're working.