I love getting book recommendations from friends and colleagues. So I asked a bunch of people for the best book they read in 2015. Becky Robinson helped me reach out to the LeadChange Group for more recommendations. The result is more than fifty recommendations for books to read.
They’re not all business. There are novels and mysteries and history and sociology and theology and science fiction. Here’s a really interesting fact about the list. Only four books were mentioned more than once. Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, Greg McKeown’s Essentialism, Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat, and Laszlo Bock’s Work Rules were mentioned twice each.
So browse the list below for some great ideas about books to read in 2016. Think of it as a crowdsourced list of the best books to read.
The recommendations are in no particular order. There are links to the recommender’s web site when one was provided.
Susan Finerty chose Political Savvy by Joel DeLuca
Bob Burg chose Everybody Matters by Bob Chapman and Raj Sisodia
Michael Bungay Stanier chose Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Mary Jo Asmus chose The Soul of an Octopus: a Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery
Bob Sutton chose Who Says That Elephants Can’t Dance? by Louis Gerstner
Jennifer Miller chose Mastering Leadership: An Integrated Framework for Extraordinary Performance and Breakthrough Results by Bob Anderson and Bill Adams
Ann Bares chose Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
Kare Anderson chose Stand Out by Dorie Clark
Mike Myatt chose Edmund Morris’s Theodore Roosevelt Trilogy Here’s a link to Colonel Roosevelt
Mick Yakes chose The Silk Road: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan
Bob Tiede chose Dare to Serve: How to Drive Superior Results by Serving Others by Cheryl Bachelder
Stephen Lynch chose Playing to Win by A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin
Michael McKinney chose Everybody Matters by Bob Chapman and Raj Sisodia
Mike Figliuolo chose The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
Lolly Daskal chose Leadership: Essential Writings by Our Greatest Thinkers by Elizabeth Samet
Paula Kiger chose THE BOYS IN THE BOAT: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
Jane Perdue chose Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Cheryl Bachelder chose Values, Inc by Dina Dwyer-Owens
Pam Fox Rollin chose Co-Active Leadership by Karen & Henry Kimsey-House
Mary Schaefer chose Playing it Forward: Because Fun Matters for Employees, Customers and Bottom Line by Nat Measley and Nick Gianoulis
Ben Eubanks chose The Front-Line Leader: Building a High-Performance Organization from the Ground Up by Chris Van Gorder
Mick Ukleja chose The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
Byron Ernest chose A year with Peter Drucker: 52 weeks of coaching for leadership effectiveness by J. A. Maciariello
Sean Glaze chose The Culture Engine by Chris Edmonds
Marion Mouton chose Chess Not Checkers: Elevate Your Leadership Game by Mark Miller
Phil Gerbyshak chose Think Big, Act Bigger by Jeffrey Hayzlett
John Perkins chose This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein
John Mertz chose The Road to Character by David Brooks
Bill Pence chose Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity by Tim Challies
Marcella Bremer chose Cultures and Organizations – Software of the Mind – Intercultural cooperation and its importance for survival by Geert Hofstede, Gert-Jan Hofstede and Michael Minkov
Wil Davis chose Focus by Daniel Goleman
Dan McCarthy chose The Burning Room by Michael Connelly
Pooja Rathore chose Aging As A Spiritual Practice: A Contemplative Guide To Growing Older And Wiser by Lewis Richmond
Mike Henry, Sr. chose The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller
Stacey Hoffer chose The Gaia Codex by Sarah Drew
Paul LaRue chose Connection Culture by Michael Lee Stallard
Julie Winkle Giulioni chose Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle
Kathryn Bingham chose Essentialism: The disciplined pursuit of less by Greg McKeown
Rebecca Henderson chose Heart in the Right Place by Carolyn Jourdan
Ron Karr chose Activate Your Brain by Scott Halford
Paul Hebert chose Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value by Thomas Lockwood
Patricia Rossi chose The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Nina Simosko chose The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Rod Santomassimo chose Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden
Terry Moore chose Essentialism: The disciplined pursuit of less by Greg McKeown
Dorothy Dalton chose Brooklyn: A Novel by Colm Toibin
Tanveer Naseer chose No One Understands You And What To Do About It by Heidi Grant Halvorson
Suzi McAlpine chose Triggers – Creating Behaviour that Lasts, Becoming the Person You Want to Be by Marshall Goldsmith
Stephen J. Gill chose THE BOYS IN THE BOAT: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
David Ballard chose Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock
Debra Bachar chose The Courage to Act by Ben Bernanke
Scott Eblin chose Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
James daSilva chose The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry
Chantal Bechervaise chose The Updated Go-Giver by Bob Burg
If you’d like to see another “crowdsourced” list of reading recommendations, Dan Rockwell posted one on his site. He called it “Books the “Freaks” Recommend.”
Tim Hurson chose On Writing by Stephen King
Mike Haberman chose Culture that Rocks by Jim Knight
Eric McNulty chose Turn This Ship Around by David Marquet
Jesse Lyn Stoner chose The Innovators by Walter Isaacson
Shawn Murphy chose Work Rules by Laszlo Bock
Anne Perschel chose A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age by Matt Richtel