The books, voices, and assessments I return to for leadership, communication, and the unglamorous work of making change actually stick. Some of it’s blunt. All of it’s honest, which is the only thing that works on the humans you’re asking to change.
Start Here: Brené Brown
You cannot go wrong with anything she has written, and there is no required order. I can’t even give you a top 3 because they are all the best. The Power of Vulnerability, The Gifts of Imperfection, or Daring Greatly are my usual go-to starts. DO NOT READ Atlas of The Heart first. I don’t want to spoil it, so trust me on this.
I will and have purchased these books for team members at every level. Leadership isn’t a title. It’s a way of showing up. It’s about seeing your role clearly, stepping into it with intention, and elevating the people around you as you grow.
Maybe you never want to be a manager. Maybe ownership isn’t your dream. That’s fine. These books are not about how to climb a ladder, they are about how to stand taller wherever you are. To become the kind of team member people want to work with. The kind of human people want to follow.
My Favorite Quote
“Clear is Kind.”
This is the line I come back to more than any other, and it is the one I hand to leaders who cannot understand why their team keeps missing the mark. Vagueness feels polite at the moment. It is not. Withholding the honest expectation, the honest correction, or the honest answer protects your comfort at your team’s expense. Read her work and you will find the second half of that thought. The second half is the one that stings.
Voices That Keep You Moving
Some people you read. Some people you keep in your ear. These two are both for me.
Brené Brown, again. Her books are the foundation, but her podcasts and her talks are what I reach for on a drive to a client, and they are the reason she belongs in this section too. Hearing her work out loud, in conversation, unguarded, lands differently than reading it. If you have never started anywhere with her, start with the talk that became The Power of Vulnerability and go from there.
Gary Vaynerchuk. If you want a masterclass in being authentic to your brand, this is it. He came to me as a recommendation from a friend and I was in immediately. He is the voice that keeps me pushing forward on the days when momentum is hard to find. Fair warning on the language. Start with the podcasts.
Learning From Every Angle
Learning from every angle, and from every human, is essential. The moment you only take input from people who do your job, in your field, at your level, you stop growing and start echoing. These are the resources I use to hear from voices far and wide.
The Diary of a CEO. Long form, genuinely fascinating conversations with people who have built things and lost things. The interviews go well past the usual success narrative into the part nobody puts on a conference stage.
MasterClass. All of it, and not just the business tracks. Watching a chef, a novelist, or an architect explain how they think will sharpen how you think about your own work. Some of the best leadership lessons I have picked up came from people who have never used the word leadership.
Ologies. A masters class from every field you can think of, and a few you never knew existed. Alie Ward sits down with an expert, an “ologist,” in a different discipline every episode, and lets their genuine love for the subject carry the conversation. It is proof that brilliance and expertise show up everywhere, not just in leadership books, and every single episode has something worth stealing for your own work.
Straight Talk and Resilience
There is a theme running through this section and it is intentional. These authors do not soften the message, and they do not leave you without a way forward. They also swear, a lot.
(It is believed that brilliant humans curse…)
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and Everything Is F*cked: A Book of Hope, Mark Manson. The real subject of the first is choosing what deserves your energy, which is the single most useful skill an overextended leader can build. The second is heavier, and it takes on why hope is hard to hold onto.
Unfu*k Yourself, Gary John Bishop. Get out of your head and into your life. Tough love aimed squarely at self sabotage and the stories we repeat until we believe them.
Five More That Belong on This Shelf
Radical Candor, Kim Scott, the operational sibling to Clear is Kind.
Crucial Conversations, the most tactical framework available for the exact conversations teams keep avoiding.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni, built on trust as the foundation everything else rests on.
Multipliers, Liz Wiseman, written for the well intentioned leader who solves every problem personally and cannot understand why the team stopped trying.
Traction, Gino Wickman, with an honest caveat. It runs more corporate than my taste and most organizations do not need the full apparatus. The foundation underneath it is excellent. Take the structure, the accountability, and the meeting rhythm. Leave the rest.
Assessments: What makes the person next to your tick.. or want to choke you.
Personality Assessments is one of my favorite things to do. Not as a filing system for people, and never as an excuse for behavior. As a reset. It pulls everyone out of the grind and the accumulated frustration long enough to see each other as human again.
What To Actually Do With Them
Here is where almost every team loses it. Everyone takes the assessment, results get compared over lunch, somebody laughs about being the difficult one, and within a week the whole thing is a printout in a drawer. Nothing changed.
Assessments do almost nothing in isolation. The value is in the conversation afterward, out loud, with everyone in the room. Then honor the uniqueness of your team. Get an 8×10 picture frame with their name and picture, and add every assessment result.
Honor the uniqueness of the person behind the results. If there is a conflict, or a miscommunication, a training that isn’t sticking, go see who your audience is! I even find it fun to have these where patients can see them. I mean, your team is who spends the most amount of time with your patients; have some fun with it!
Don’t just take my favorites, do them all. Continually humanizing one another is essential for growth and opportunity. Don’t settle on just one or two of them, go big or go home!
Stephanie Wright is a leadership coach and change advisor with more than twenty years in healthcare. She works with privately owned organizations across fifteen states on leadership development, communication, and the operational change that follows. She is a Coast Guard veteran and the founder of The Great Lakes Smile Project.
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Disclaimer: This article is provided for general educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, financial, clinical, medical, human resources, employment, or professional advice, and does not create a consulting, advisory, or professional relationship. Stephanie Wright and Stephanie Wright Practice Management LLC are not affiliated, endorsed by, or compensated by any author, publisher, platform, or assessment provider referenced here, and no endorsement is implied in either direction. Third party materials are the property and responsibility of their respective owners, and some contain mature themes and explicit language. Personality and workplace assessments are self reported instruments intended to support dialogue and development. They are not diagnostic tools and must never be used as the basis for hiring, termination, promotion, compensation, discipline, or any other employment decision. Readers are solely responsible for evaluating any resource for their own organization and for compliance with all applicable federal, state, and local law, including employment and anti discrimination law. Consult qualified professionals before acting on anything contained in this material. All warranties are disclaimed and no liability is assumed for any loss or claim arising from use of or reliance on this material.
