5 Books to Stuff Your Stocking This Holiday Season

Looking for the perfect gift for the entrepreneur on your list (or maybe a little something to stuff in your own stocking)? Give the gift of thought leadership! This holiday season, we invite you to join us in using some of your extra time away from the office to be inspired and challenged by great books.

To get you started, we asked some of our team members what they’ve been reading this year. Here are five of our favorites. What’s on your list?  

Wooden on Leadership

John Wooden & Steve Jamison

Get a glimpse inside the mind of one of basketball’s greatest coaches, John Wooden. Over the course of his career, Wooden coached the UCLA Bruins to an 88-game winning streak including ten NCAA championships in twelve years. In this book, he provides step-by-step guidance on the leadership qualities and style that earned his reputation as a winning coach and effective leader. Wooden’s well-known Pyramid of Success and 12 Lessons in Leadership are just as applicable in corporate offices as they are on the basketball court. We guarantee you’ll come away with actionable insights and strategies to play your best leadership game.

“To my way of thinking, when you give your total effort—everything you have—the score can never make you a loser. And when you do less, it can’t somehow magically turn you into a winner.”

 – Wooden on Leadership, John Wooden

The Go-Giver

Bob Burg & John David Mann

The Go-Giver is the quintessential book on how to achieve success through authentic, others-focused leadership. Follow the story of Joe, an ambitious business leader whose encounters with five “go-givers” teach him that go-giving can be much more fruitful than go-getting. You’ll walk alongside Joe as he learns the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success and discovers that putting others’ interests before his own in both professional & personal settings is the true secret to success.

“Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.”

– The Go-Giver, Bob Burg and John David Mann

Authentic Leadership

Bill George

In this leadership classic, you will discover the five dimensions of authentic leaders and learn why authenticity is the foundation for leadership success in every context. Bill George candidly talks about the ethics and values of character-based leadership and demonstrates how these dimensions are just as important for creating value as more traditional metrics of success. In our changing business landscape and uncertain economy, Authentic Leadership is just as poignant today as it was when it was first published in 2003. 

“We need authentic leaders, people of the highest integrity, committed to building enduring organizations. We need leaders who have a deep sense of purpose and are true to their companies to meet the needs of all their stakeholders, and who recognize the importance of their service to society.”

– Authentic Leadership, Bill George

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

James Clear

Want to build better habits in the new year? This book will show you how. Atomic Habits takes a fresh look at transformation through the lens of actions that we repeat every day. James Clear discusses the power of habits to help us achieve our goals and walks readers through four simple steps to build habits that make a difference. If you always have trouble keeping your New Year’s resolutions (or if you just want to be more productive in your daily activities), this book is for you.            

“We all deal with setbacks, but in the long run, the quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits. With the same habits, you will end up with the same results. But with better habits, anything is possible.”

– Atomic Habits, James Clear

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know

Adam Grant

Innovation starts with questioning the status quo. In Think Again, Adam Grant shows us how to do that by getting comfortable with what we don’t know, challenging our assumptions, and becoming lifelong learners. He invites us to unlearn the thought processes that aren’t serving us well so we can embrace new perspectives and sift through our limitations to find the truth.

“Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded. It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrong—not for reasons why we must be right—and revising our views based on what we learn.”

– Think Again, Adam Grant