Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?

The US Army has an exceptionally well-crafted field manual on leadership. No fluff, but also no chest-thumping. It's honestly the best resource I've ever seen on what constitutes a good leader, how good leaders are developed, and how good leaders develop their teams.

Being a DOD publication, it's in the public domain: https://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/misc/doctrine/CD...

I can't stress enough how excellent it is.

The best book on leadership IMO is the Tao Te Ching, Ch. 17.

It's very short, about ten lines, but it contains all that you need to know. The final verse, especially, destroys or subsumes pretty much all concepts of leadership.

YMMV:

http://taoteching.org.uk/chapter17.html

http://www.egreenway.com/taoism/ttclz17.htm

https://www.taoistic.com/taoteching-laotzu/taoteching-17.htm

https://taoteching.daodejing.org/17.htm

http://tao-in-you.com/lao-tzu-tao-te-ching-chapter-17/

Everything by Simon Sinek, but most important for me is "Leaders Eat Last" [0]. I haven't read the last one (The Infinite Game), but I've heard it's pretty good as well.

Also Extreme Ownership [1] and Dichotomy of Leadership [2] by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.

All of these books had tremendous impact on me as a leader and I highly recommend them.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Leaders-Eat-Last-Together-Others/dp/B...

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs-eboo...

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Dichotomy-Leadership-Balancing-Challe...

Most books on leadership give principles and science, which don't hurt to know, but leading is a practice -- an active, social, emotional, expressive, performance-based field.

We learn to perform by practicing the basics in any field.

Leadership Step by Step https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-Others/... gives a set of 20 exercises that teach the basics of leading yourself and others. If you practice, you'll develop the skills, experiences, and beliefs of an effective leader. Other books are like music appreciation. This book is like learning to play the piano.

Written by a PhD in physics (me) then started several companies, got an MBA, and teaches leadership at NYU to stellar reviews. http://joshuaspodek.com/reviews-leadership-step-step

Leadership Step by Step: https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-Others/...

Try "The Manager's Path" by Camille Fournier.

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920056843.do

When managing people in tech, I think it is equally as important to know how to organize as it is to know how to lead. I would recommend "The Phoenix Project" and "The Unicorn Project" and "The Goal" to all tech managers.

No matter how good your communication/leadership skills are, your team will be severely handicapped if they are working in an inefficient/limiting environment.

Coming at the same lessons from a different perspective, I have also found "Turn The Ship Around!" to be a very good resource.

Extreme Ownership https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs-eboo...

How to Win Friends and Influence People https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People-eboo...

The Phoenix Project https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine...

Don't worry about "tech specific". Core leadership principles are universal. The first two books on the list show the principles, and the mindset you should approach them with to be successful.

The 3rd book will help set the tone for leading in a modern tech environment, and what kind of business decisions you should prioritize.

Any of the classic books of the late Jerry Weinberg is full of wisdom. Oldies but goldies. Leanpub has all of them: https://leanpub.com/u/jerryweinberg

There's the People Skill bundle: https://leanpub.com/b/peopleskillssoftbutdifficult with the books: Are Your Lights On?, What Did You Say? The Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback, Exploring Requirements One, Exploring Requirements Two, Becoming a Change Artist, More Secrets of Consulting, and Becoming a Technical Leader

But maybe the better for you are his classic The Psychology of Computer Program (to understand the mind of programmers) https://leanpub.com/thepsychologyofcomputerprogramming

Becoming a Technical Leader (to grow to a leadership position) https://leanpub.com/becomingatechnicalleader

Managing Teams Congruently (to manage groups) https://leanpub.com/managingteamscongruently

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin

This book is about the lessons learned on leadership by two Navy Seal Officers and how they are applied in business. It learned me to take ownership on what is happening, always work together, keep it simple, focus on a single priority, and give ownership.

Turn the ship around! by L. David Marquet

This book tells the story of a submarine captain that turns his subordinates into leaders and his submarine goes on becoming the best submarine in the US Navy. It learned me to move authority to information, train competence, and the power of clear communication.

You can find more good books at https://www.norberhuis.nl/books/

"Peopleware" is a great one -- https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-...

I think this is a more complicated question that it first appears. What do you mean by leadership? Getting things done for some strict definition? Managing a team? Managing a huge enterprise? I think reading books across the spectrum of leadership and management is critical, as each gives you some feeling of the underlying “truth” that you’re trying to find.

I think the best book on the topic as I think you mean it is High Output Management by Andy Grove. It’s a classic. Incredibly well written. Direct.

From there, I’d actually take a pivot and read MCDP 1 Warfighting, which is concise, brilliant, generally applicable, and completely aligned with the thinking of Grove. Along the same lines, I’d consider reading about OODA (I like “Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War” but not strictly necessary to read an entire biography). I think then you start to see that “Management” began to mean something particular in the post-war era for those who could see it, that it’s been lost in most organizations. Agile, lean, blah blah blah is all sort of derived from here.

Then get some conditioning on how it all goes wrong, for which I would suggest the classic “The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering”, which is generally applicable.

Then personally, I era toward thinking about organizations that have accomplished great things, so suggest “Creativity, Inc”, “Doing the Impossible: George E. Mueller & the Management of NASA's Human Spaceflight Program”, and books of those type.

The best definition of what's a good leader is found in the book "the captain class" : https://www.amazon.com/Captain-Class-Hidden-Behind-Greatest/...

What's interesting is that the author have a data oriented strategy to find a good definition of a leader: he processed a lot of data to find which teams had really exceptionnal success IN THE HISTORY OF ALL SPORTS.

When he found the 8 teams with the most exceptionnal success, he looked for what they share. He found that all of those exceptionnal team success coincide with the arrival and departure of a captain.

Then he looked for shared trait between all those captain. What he found is the best definition of a leader.

The best management book I read this year was "The Making of a Manager" by Julie Zhou [1]. The book is concise, clearly written and actionable. It's specifically written for first time managers and the author is a design lead at Facebook.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Manager-What-Everyone-Looks/dp...

A few recommendations from me and peers in my company who highly value some of the following:

- "Managing Humans" by Michael Lopp very insightful and easy to read.

- "Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations" by Dr Nicole Forsgren brings a long research on how to organize teams for success.

- "The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change" by Camille Fournier which I especially recommend for new managers.

Lastly, and this time not tech-specific, but by far my best read of 2019: "Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell" written by Eric Schmidt & others.

High Output Management by Andy Grove, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink & The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz would be my top 3.

It depends on what your definition of "leadership" is - personally I found "Managing Humans" by Michael Lopp to be really insightful. It's really more a collection of anecdotes than a seminal work on the topic, but I think there's a bunch of good components in understanding team dynamics around technical / software engineering teams.

It's years since I read it but Gerald Weinberg's Becoming a Technical Leader. The best general book on leadership I've read for a while is Marquet's Turn the Ship Around – great also as an audiobook. I referenced the latter in my own Right to Left: The digital leader's guide to Lean and Agile (arguably a leadership book too)

Leading Snowflakes is written specifically for new engineering managers. In my opinion, it nails it: https://leadingsnowflakes.com/

Unlike many books on leadership, this one is specific about the challenges of leading a technical team:

  * Carving out maker vs manager time

  * "Code reviewing" your management decisions with your teammates

  * How to delegate without losing visibility or quality

I run Developer to Manager (https://devtomanager.com), where we interview tech leaders and ask them for advice they have for someone new to this field.

I'm of course biased, but I do feel it's turning out to be a good resource. Feedback is always welcome!

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink -> https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs-eboo...

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek -> https://www.amazon.com/Leaders-Eat-Last-Together-Others/dp/B...

Creativity, Inc. [1] It's not a textbook but a really fun read for the inside stories that pushed Pixar to its success. Maybe it's just me personally but I found it hard to follow some syllabus to learn management --- instead, I enjoy being inspired by other great managers through their concrete stories.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FUZQYBO/

I'm reading High Output Management by Andy Grove at the moment. Definitely one of the best practical guides on being a leader and a people manager I've ever read.

"Manager tools" and "career tools" podcasts have been eye-openers for me about corporate relationships and management politics.

I think "Team Geek" [0] is probably worth a mention in this light.

It's written in that infuriating cutesy techy-language that seems to infuse a lot of the "hipper" books of this genre but there really is some good advice in there.

FYI these are the guys that did Subversion, which was a pretty successful project for a while, back in the day. This same writing style pervades the SVN docs as well. Yeuch.

In the same vein, I also enjoyed "rework" by Jason Fried [1] though that's more about modern work, than purely management. Also kind of "hip" in style, but not so insufferable ;-)

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14514115-team-geek

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6732019-rework

The Great CEO Within (great for non-CEO leaders too). Free here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZJZbv4J6FZ8Dnb0JuMhJxTnw...!

My favorites are Good to Great and Principles

* https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0...

* https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/150...

Turn The Ship Around!: A True Story of Building Leaders by Breaking the Rules

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Turn-Ship-Around-Building-Breaking/...

HN post about this book recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21662941

Extreme Ownership is an excellent book on the topic (or so peoole tell me, I started reading it today actually).

This is a little bit out-of-left field. But I'd recommend the classic Foreign Policy essay "Why Arabs Lose Wars". On the surface it's obviously about military doctrine, and how it's affected the various conflicts in recent Middle Eastern history.

But fundamentally its about management culture, and what factors distinguished well-run organizations from dysfunctional ones.

[0] https://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars

This isn't specifically about tech, but The Culture Map by Erin Meyer is really worth reading.

I'm not 100% sold on it being correct, but it does give you a framework to think within when you're working with other people, no matter which culture you're from.

Forbes have a decent write-up:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rawnshah/2014/10/06/the-culture...

Question is, do you want a book about the input factors to how people end up leading, or one on evaluating the output effects of other leaders against?

Leadership is not an activity or an action you can mimic, it it is an effect. Most books are the stories people tell afterwards about how virtuous they were and they call that leadership. Jeffery Pfeffer says this specifically as well.

Pfeffers books on management provide the insight into the dynamics leadership emerges from. His triad of, "performance, credentials, and relationships," that describe power in a situation also describe the necessary factors we look back on as leadership.

https://www.amazon.ca/Power-Some-People-Have-Others/dp/00617...

I like Jocko Willnick's whole attitude about ownership, respect, delegation, and working with people to leverage their skills to achieve outcomes. He says the hierarchy in the military isn't as much of a factor as how you relate to your team and the world, but I suspect Pfeffer would disagree in that its hierarchy and training culture provides the credential piece in his triad, where in business, that's more dynamic.

There are lots of good books about leadership, but reading them without having read Pfeffer's "Power.." is exploring the territory without the map, imo.

I found "An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management" by Will Larson quite good for advice on practical management challenges one comes across in technology companies.

"Extreme Ownership" by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. I highly recommend the audiobook, it is narrated by the authors and is very engaging.

Some of the comments in this thread say that military orders and life and death situations don't apply in the business world. But that isn't what this book is about, the advice is really the opposite of giving orders the must be followed without question. And the lessons are explained in ways that clearly relate to business management.

I've been a team lead for close to four years now in two different companies, both times my teams spanned multiple time zones!

I really enjoy this subject and read a lot about it. My favorite books so far are:

- Radical Candor -- Gives a great framework for candid conversations and empathy which IMO are the most important thing! Clear #1 in my list.

- Leading by Alex Ferguson -- A great successful leader in another area - Soccer - that had many years building effective teams. It's incredible how many concepts can be mapped over, he talks for example on how having "rockstars" in a team that aren't team players isn't worth it.

- Ride of a lifetime by Bob Iger -- It's mostly a biography of Disney's most successful CEO, I thought it was very authentic and gave good advices on how to deal with creative people, empathy, setting goals and navigating hard situations (compartmentalizing)

- Creativity Inc Amy / Ed -- Pixar's president biography on how to manage creative teams, it is a bit repetitive but it is golden! Lots of good ideas and insightful chapters that make you think about how to build a successful culture.

- The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders -- IMO a bit shallow compared to the other books I mentioned but it was a pleasant read.

On the topic of

General Management - High Output Management by Andrew Grove

Visibility and Alignment - Measure What Matters by John Doerr

Understanding People and Teams - Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson

Radical Candor by Kim Scott. By far the best management book that I have read, it changed my way of thinking when it comes to leading a team.

"An elegant puzzle", "High output management" and "Behind Closed Doors" have all been useful to me.

I think leadership stems from engineering cultures. So I guess you may find Netflix Culture Code interesting [1]. It's introduced by Reed Hastings, the CEO

[1] https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/reed2001/culture-1798664

This comment is for anyone like the OP who is looking for resources beyond books.

I run a free mentoring service for managers, and most (but not all) tend to come from the tech side of the world. My sessions are 45 minutes long, and I did over 120 in 2019.

I’m currently on hiatus till January as I just had a baby boy I’m spending time with (actually sleeping on me as I type this out!), but feel free to grab some time in January if you’d like to talk to someone live.

https://freemanagermentor.com

A lot of people in comments below have talked about struggling with the “How” when it comes to taking the concepts they’ve learned and putting them into practice. This is the value of a live conversation with another human being, where we can talk through specific examples, play around with the scenarios, and either prepare for a future challenge, or come up with a plan to address the current one head on.

I strongly recommend the following:

Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap and Others Don't The Goal: A process of Continuous Improvement Team of Teams Strategy that Works: Bridging the Stategy to Execution Gap

There isn't a single book that will teach you everything you need to know, but these 5 books taken together will cover nearly everything. The points I suggest paying the most attention to are level 5 leadership, the hedgehog concept, the flywheel concept, Kaizen style continuous improvement, how to organize groups of teams to avoid micromanaging, and how to work with a company culture to make decisions supported by real data that tells you what the most effective decisions would be and how to achieve this by choosing concepts to promote to employees in order to guide their decision making.

What Every Body is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People [1]

This book has allowed me to understand what the people around me are saying, without even saying a word!

"Read this book and send your nonverbal intelligence soaring. Joe Navarro, a former FBI counterintelligence officer and a recognized expert on nonverbal behavior, explains how to "speed-read" people: decode sentiments and behaviors, avoid hidden pitfalls, and look for deceptive behaviors. You'll also learn how your body language can influence what your boss, family, friends, and strangers think of you."

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1173576.What_Every_Body_...

Here is my favourite; David Packard's (of HP fame) address to HP managers - https://gizmodo.com/the-hp-way-how-bill-hewlett-and-i-built-...

Read and memorize the above.

There is a whole lot of BS in the Leadership Industry and we should first educate ourselves on the realities. Start with Jeffrey Pfeffer's "Leadership BS".

The above same charge of BS can also be laid at the door of of various Management "theories". A good antidote is Ted Stephenson's "Management: A political activity".

Leadership/Management is more about understanding People/Organizational psychology and behaviours and not "feel good" theories.

Gerald Weinberg's "Becoming a Technical Leader" is an often overlooked classic.

[0] The Score Takes Care of Itself.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Score-Takes-Care-Itself-Philosophy/dp...

For being immensely practical, I'm a big fan of 1. "An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management" 2. "High Output Management" 3. "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams"

There is a nice compilation of articles in a github repo, divided by topic. https://github.com/charlax/engineering-management Leadership is an expansive topic and I don't think it's possible to nail it. "Turn the Ship Around" I think really nails the strategy of Functional Leadership, plus it's a true story. Keep in mind that Leadership and Management are two very different topics that people often conflate.

Not specific to just tech teams, but I loved The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike. So many great notes about leadership and successfully running a business in general.

https://www.amazon.com/Outsiders-Unconventional-Radically-Ra...

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Not really about leadership per se, but it helps you get out of your own way which allows a lot of other good things room to happen.

Recently I have been relying on two good sources for leadership:

- Book: The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker: I think this is an excellent book to teach the part of the brain that wants to execute to think more strategically and concentrate on the leadership side.

- Podcast: Modern CTO: This podcast has lots of interviews CTO's from all kinds of companies. It's pretty casual and entertaining but also seems to always motivate me to be a better leader.

While i really value the books from the US and British armies that were shared, I think "Principle Centered Leadership by Stephen Covey" is a really good book on the topic of Leadership. https://www.amazon.com/Principle-Centered-Leadership-Stephen...

You learn from history and what other people did well and didn't do well. Leadership is a combination of your own innate abilities combined with self-awareness and feedback. From this, you can apply historical knowledge (understand you may not have Washington's height and strength, but may be a better tactical decision maker).

Read biographies on others:

Washington: A Life

Hamilton

Grant

Fighter Pilot (Robin Olds)

Boyd

Anyone you admire - read about them - find out what was good and what was bad.

Mattis's new book is good: Call Sign Chaos.

"On Becoming a Leader" by Warren Bennis

This book is not very big but is exceptionally dense and easy to read. I found a lot of useful information that I apply to my daily life - reflection, being authentic, allowing oneself to make mistakes and much more.

I reread it three times already and I always found new ideas.

(As a technical guy) I developed a great passion for philosophy and arts in general thanks to his book.

Tribes by Seth Godin is good as it talks about how communities grow around ideas not individuals.

Also read things written by great leaders. i.e. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html

Most of my responses are covered already, and I know this is cliche, but Art of War by Sun Tzu.

One thing that has always stayed with me about leadership is his five traits that define a great leader.

1) Wisdom 2) Courage 3) Sincerity 4) Benevolence 5) Discipline

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And on a side note, I love seeing the increased submissions around leadership!

Not strictly management, but related:”The Trusted Advisor” is a book about consulting. Which is really the same soft skills you would need in leadership positions where you have a lot of domain experience and leadership is more about helping the team make their own tech decisions

Managing the Unmanageable, a second vote for Peopleware, The Mythical Man-Month, and The Conviction to Lead

https://b3n.org/programming-management-leadership-books/

One of my personal favorites is Tribal Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/Tribal-Leadership-Leveraging-Thriving...

I found this podcast very interesting https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leadership-is-a-person...

A variant on the OP's question.

What are good books on leadership that are written by people who have actual experience of being great leaders?

Most books on leadership seem to be written by people who have no experience of leadership, they just know how to market their books.

Not a book but Software Lead Weekly is a great newsletter that curates content from around the web about leadership in tech: https://softwareleadweekly.com

Just so you know, leadership is completely different for middle managers and founders. A lot of the "leadership books" are targeted at middle managers, and if you follow their advice word for word, it won't work.

High Output Management by Andy Grove. Great resource that I re-read every year or so

The only one you need:

https://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Fab...

Leadership for me is "influencing people to create change".

We use many books, but my favorite is 5 dysfunctions of a team.

After that is first break all the rules

Both of these are extremely practical and give a model for how to operate on a daily basis.

“Score takes care of itself” By Bill Walsh

While not necessarily a “tech” book, the parallels to leading high performing teams are incredible. For me, this was the book that changed the way I think about leading my team.

Most bookstores would put leadership books and self help books in different sections of the bookstore. And these are the folks who put science fiction books and fantasy books in the same section!

My boss gave me a copy of _Talking with Teach Leads_ by Patrick Kua. I enjoy it. It's an anthology of testimonials by tech leads. It helped give me some perspective on what I need to focus.

edit: grammar

Relevant discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21663254

Lots of good recommendations here; two I would add are "Debugging Teams" and "The Geek Leader's Handbook"

The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard. It's simple but effective and malleable once you've had some experience.

Satya Nadella’s ‘Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone’

Hey, I really like your contribution with such a great collective approach, I loved reading them, l would really appreciate it if you add me in your collection to lend me a thumbs up also and keep up the good work though. besides, I'll be reading them whether it would be yes or no :) https://studioelitechicago.com/

Thank you

Just FYI your search input goes over your header on mobile, looks a bit odd. Give that header a z-index :)

I recently bought 'Talking with tech leads' by Patrick Kua. Very applicable to tech companies

My favorite is 'Multipliers'

Here's my shortlist:

- The Art of the Advantage (33 stratagems)

- Winning By Jack Welch

- Tribal Leadership

- Creativity Inc

- The Lean Startup (~leadership in the face of uncertainty)

The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz and The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins.

see a famous Harvard Case study, with an emphasis on leadership in crisis, about Ernest Shackleton's race to the South Pole: "Leadership in Crisis: Ernest Shackleton and the Epic Voyage of the Endurance"

I liked Bossidy's "Execution" and "Facing Reality", like all such books they wander a bit but they have some good insights. "Managing Humans" was okay but I guess I may have come to it a bit later in my managing experience so it seemed pretty obvious. "The 5 dysfunctions of the team" is useful for understanding how to look at root causes of teams that become dysfunctional, can be depressing when you recognize your own team in its pages :-). And not a management book per se but "The Sociopath Next Door" was a useful read because it better helped me understand and identify people who were very different than I am in terms of their emotional investment in things.

The Phoenix Project

Brene Brown 'Dare to Lead' is excellent

Dynamics of Software Development, by McCarthy.

This is a great thread!

Read Watership down.

Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths

is pretty good on this topic.

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