My leadership and management book recommendations. These books are curated based on my own experience building high performing teams, values, biases, and my dedication to continuous growth as a leader.

My top picks I’ve chosen for their ease of reading and ability to serve as quick references.

  • Drasner, Sarah. Engineering Management for the Rest of Us. 2022.
    • If you’re pressed for reading time and can only pick one book from my list, read this one. It covers many aspects of management in plain language that are broadly applicable. Easy to read with some unique insights.
  • Hogan, Lara. Resilient Management. Book Apart, 2019.
    • Staying grounded, growing teams, effective communication, and adapting energy. Really good reference guide.
  • Flyvbjerg, Bent, and Dan Gardner. How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between. Crown Currency, 2023.
    • Alternate title: How Jodie’s Brain Works. This is the first book I’ve found that aligns with my thought processes and explains how I’m able to continuously stay ahead. I naturally adapt a lot of things in this book to my leadership styles.
  • Friedman, Ron. The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace. 2014.
    • A conversational book all about psychological factors that affect businesses. When reading this, you may dismiss it as common sense, but ah, turns out it’s not so common. TL;DR a book that I wish more people had read before they begin spouting off about work-life balance.
  • Scott, Kim. Radical Candor: Revised Edition. 2019.
    • Kim is always learning and incorporating the lived experiences of others, while dispensing practical advice. See also Radical Respect.
  • Stainer, James. Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager: How to Be the Leader Your Development Team Needs. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2020.
    • Incredibly practical and easy to read. From getting yourself organized, how to have effective 1:1s, writing good job descriptions, performance reviews, how to mentor vs coach, breaking silos, bias, team culture, deciding how to gatekeep certain information, etc. This book has a bit of everything.
  • Zhuo, Julie. The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You. Random House, 2019.
    • This reads similar to The Leadership Challenge (Kouzes and Posner), but is more digestible and practical. While the ideas are not new, the concise way in which it is written make it stand out.

Worth mentioning…

Tackling bias

  • Eubanks, Virginia. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. St. Martin’s Press, 2018.
  • Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press, 2018.
  • Perez, Caroline Criado. Invisible Women. Random House, 2019.

Leadership ecosystems

These books come with supplemental material to make the most out of their content. They can be fairly academic and information dense. They’re all great first steps into something more.

  • Horstman, Mark. The Effective Manager: Completely Revised and Updated. Wiley, 2023.
    • A lot of how-to practical advice (updated for remote teams!) around the behaviours that help define how to be an effective manager. Works best when paired with Manager Tools: podcasts, training, workbooks, tools, etc.
  • Kouzes, James M., and Barry Z. Posner. The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations. Wiley, 2023.
    • First published in 1987, this book was my formal introduction to leadership as part of post-secondary school course work. It has had many revisions. Additional material includes: training, LPI® (Leadership Practices Inventory®), data-driven framework of The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership®, etc.
  • Skelton, Matthew, and Manuel Pais. Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow. IT Revolution, 2019.
    • Academic and dense to read, but has some good key concepts to consider when understanding how real work happens and optimizing for flow (Conway’s Law theory, performance, processes, team design, etc.). Additional material includes: Readiness Assessment, Adoption Tools & Practices, Team Topologies Academy (training), workbooks, certifications, etc.
    • Consider the workbook Remote Team Interactions Workbook: Using Team Topologies Patterns for Remote Working as an entry point for remote team guidance.

Company culture

  • Schneider, William. Lead Right for Your Company’s Type: How to Connect Your Culture with Your Customer Promise. AMACOM, 2017.
    • Having gone through an acquisition where they gutted the leadership and drastically changed the customer promise, this was a somewhat cathartic read.
    • It does come across a lot like a Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment for your enterprise, in that it has four “dichotomies” that are aimed at making you look at your enterprise with more introspection. It does this in a way that helps identify potential strengths and weaknesses.
    • This is a very Americentric book, and while the ideas seem simple to comprehend and execute, I’d caution applying the information too broadly. Eg. A customer promise from an enterprise in one country can fall flat in another country (particularly when it comes to customized enterprises). Like the book emphasizes: listen to your leaders, your employees, and your customers. Keep a pulse on your industry. Then adapt or fail.