People are always asking me for book recommendations for learning skills. Here’s where those books go. Updated periodically. (I get a tiny kickback if you buy from the link.)
* = I have a blog summary, search for it
Leadership
- The Seven Principals of Making Marriage Work – using the Gottman method, you can learn to use this for working with peers, managers, and customers to get to what’s going on, de-escalate issues, and make people feel validated
- The Wisdom of the Enneagram – there are lots of business-focused books out there about personality types, but none serves me as well as this book.
- Portable MBA in Management* – get insights from the best business schools lickety split
- The Making of a Manager – Required reading. Specifically dictates what’s expected of you, how to get there, and how to help your team.
- The E-Myth Manager* – How to actually manage people
- Fix This Next* – A system designed to get you to stop focusing on feelings and focus on actual priorities, and help others as well
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – I typically don’t appreciate the fable format, but this one was very present-minded for me and super useful.
Communication
- 48 Laws of Power – I hate how bro and Machiavellian this is, but it also helps you harness the power of what real power looks like
- Never Split the Difference* – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used the skills here to get what I want.
- Influence* – How do get people to do what you want, but also how to see through other schemes.
- Spin Selling* – This is really good both for sales folks and just to get people to do what you want – proposals and the like
- Crucial Conversations* – Tools for talking when the stakes are high
- Get Scalable – I like how this book is like, “forget OKRs and 1year plans because those aren’t practical, here’s what you need to do right now. Takes a lot of what we’re already doing and makes it so much better.
Money
- Rich AF – I am replacing my old recommendation of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, with this bad boy. Annoying title but it’s chock full of the practical knowledge I wish I had at 18 that I have in midlife that I know most people don’t have at all.
Business
- Personal MBA – After 20 years in business, I can assure that the author is correct, this is really all you need.
- The Dip* – I refer to this book all the time because it’s so important to know that the biggest part of business success is endurance and faith.
- Guerilla Marketing – I simply don’t believe that traditional advertising works and this book inspired me to make an award winning promotional video and keeps inspiring.
- Buy Back Your Time* – This book freed me from doing everything, everywhere, all at once.
- Your Next Five Moves – I was torn between this and Leadership, but I’ll put it here. Tons of good things in there for anyone looking to achieve something.
Sales
- Contagious* – What makes a thing go and how to
Self Improvement
- How to Change* – Need to break a habit or build one? This is your book.
- Outlive* – If you don’t have your health, you have nothing
- Almanack of Naval Ravikant – Wowzers, I don’t love being seen so much by a guy I’ve never met, but this book is a compilation of all the wisdom I’ve gathered over the years to live well. Like, you could start here and just go forever.
Just good life reads
- Braiding Sweetgrass – handed to me by one of my favorite Native friends in the National Museum of the American Indian after a deeply personal tour . . . it’s meditative, it’s instructive, and it’s reverent.
- What is the What – I taught this to college students for nearly a decade in sync with
- The Story of B – both of whom came together to put people outside their own heads and think about the experiences of others. They really shaped my passion, politics, and life values.
- East of Eden – living near the town this took place in doesn’t hurt, but it’s just dark enough for me to love it and expansive enough to relax into
- Jude the Obscure – go back in time but still dark, still expansive
- The Stand – I have a type, okay? Gimme a solidly research dystopia (also like Hunger Games and World War Z)
- Charlotte’s Web – No, hear me out. I read this again, after getting advanced degrees in English lit, and a lot of life experience and I was gobsmacked reading this to my kids. It’s eloquent. It’s a master class in plot, character, scene building.