Paul McCay is Chief Executive of the Wilf Ward Trust. In his leadership library are:
- The Leader on the Couch | Wiley Online Books – Manfred Kets De Vries is trained in economics and psychoanalysis and is one of the most renowned leadership scholars in the world. He weaves mythology and stories throughout his work and is a prolific writer but this is one of his more interesting (albeit a bit challenging texts).
- Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins | Waterstones – Goggins book is part biography part elite performance essay. In his book he talks about gaining power over your mind to achieve what may initially seem impossible, a good book focused on self-motivation.
- High Performance – both the book and the podcast are worth engaging with, they use conversations with high performers from the world of sport, business, arts to explore what mindsets they used and develop to overcome obstacles and failure and turn this into routine and high-performance outcomes. Highly recommended and highly accessible.
- Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman | Waterstones – The ultimate anti-productivity book, you only have four thousand weeks and you cant achieve everything so focus on what matters, a great philosophical book that is well worth reading.
- Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders by Marquet, L. David: Acceptable hardcover (2013) | Austin Goodwill 1101 – The book (or video on TED Talks) covers how Marquet turned around the fortunes of the worst performing nuclear submarine crew in the US Navy. A book about purpose, clarity, communication and allowing people to fail forward.
- The Advantage | Music at World of Books GB – Anything by Lencioni is usually helpful – this one is about organisational wellbeing, focuses on communication, team building and how to create advantage within a team.
- Difficult Conversations by Bruce Patton | World of Books GB – One of many on the theme of having adult conversations but this one is pretty good, will not give you a script as such but will show you the structure, approach to take and mistakes that can be made when approaching difficult conversations.
- The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People: Revised and Updated By Stephen R Covey | World of Books GB – Probably the book that acts as the foundation for all other mindset / good habit building books.
- Radical Candor: Fully Revised and Updated Edition: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean | The Book Bundle – Scott has been criticised for this book, and it is easy to see why (maybe view her TED Talk as it is less blunt), it can come across as overly direct but does provide a good insight into straight talking as a way of getting what you what – I’m less sure what it would have been like to have been on the receiving end of some of this.
- Home – The Fear-Free Organization – a deep book which uses neuroscience to explain culture and relationships worth reading alongside Behave.
- Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst – A big book that looks deeply into the causes and effects of behaviour. It may be worthwhile dipping into some of his TED Talks to ease into the book.
- Surrounded by Idiots: The Four Types of Human Behaviour (or, How to Understand Those Who Cannot Be Understood): Thomas Erikson: 9781785042188: hive.co.uk – Erikson was involved in the development of Red, Amber, Blue, Yellow thinking about character and how this causes us to behave and interact, worth reading to understand why and how people dissimilar to you are so annoying and wrong.
