Deric – thank you for your thoughts and your suggestions – I’ll definitely check out the ones you mention. Part of what’s been fun about this is getting recommendations of great reads from other readers.

Start with Why appealed to me in part for the analytical approach, but you can’t go wrong with Leaders Eat Last. As a veteran, the approach resonated with me, as you might imagine.

Just finished Never Eat Alone, and am working through What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School and Seneca – Letters from a Stoic – all candidates for the next list…

Thanks again for your comment!
Ken

A book I’ve found very insightful and made my required reading list of the leadership staffs I’ve been a part of or supported as their executive coach and mentor was Liz Wiseman’s “Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter.

I had Simon Sinek’s Start with Why on my recommended list for a long while, however I found most on my leadership staffs or staffs I coached and mentored didn’t completely read it; citing it was too researched based and analytical. I believe Simon has stated as much in the past as well. So I choose to use Simon’s “Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t” on my list.

A book by Stephen M.R. Covey that’s been around for 3 / 4 years that I recently completed and still digesting is “Smart Trust: The Defining Skill that Transforms Managers into Leaders.” I like this one more than his better known work, “Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything.” Since I believe leadership is a personal relationship between two or more people it relies on a foundation of trust this will most likely land on my list.