Practical Leadership Cast

Solo Cast: Leadership Resources

• Forest Handford • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Forest gives a brief review of all the podcasts and books she's read related to leadership. Here are links to all of the podcasts. For the detailed reviews and book list please listen to the audio or read the transcript:

Podcasts:

Music credits:

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Welcome leaders. In this episode I'll be reviewing leadership resources.

Podcasts

HBR IdeaCast - Most episodes are too high level to be useful to most leaders, for example the last four episodes were all about AI. Some episodes are useful, for example I’ve been using the monkey and pedestal metaphor since I listened to the moonshot innovation episode.


Coaching Real Leaders w/ Muriel Wilkins - Muriel Wilkins coaches a different leader in every podcast. I value almost every episode, some of them I pause to consider who I might coach the leader being interviewed. The episodes I’m less interested in are with leaders I have trouble empathizing with.


> Code - Seems to be on hiatus, possibly forever. While the hosts and guests are in the software industry the topics feel fairly accessible. Not a leadership podcast per se, but most episodes discuss the importance of empathy and belonging in the workplace.


Dear HBR - Hasn’t posted an episode since 2020. Each episode covers a specific topic and then dives into answering questions listeners have asked.  I found the topics very relevant to challenges I was facing at work.


Code Sw!tch - Dives into challenges that people of color face in the US. It helps me understand challenges that others encounter.


WorkLife w/ Adam Grant - I find this podcast entertaining. At times they get into psychological challenges at work but lately it feels like the content is about interviewing celebrities that don’t often have many insights that are relevant to leaders or the workplace.


Maxwell Leadership Podcast - While I’ve enjoyed one of John Maxwell’s books I ultimately realized that his evangelical religious goals are the heart of his work. I stopped listening to this about a decade ago.


Leading with Empathy & Allyship - Great conversations between the host and guests about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. When the host began promoting her book she flooded the stream with episodes rehashing old topics and their relevance to her book which caused me to only listen to episodes that seem to have new content.


Books

Good to Great by Jim Collins (2001) 3.0 - This book shows why some companies excel where other companies flounder. This book introduced me to the concept of the Stockdale Principle which I’ve adopted as part of my philosophy.


The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (1990) 5.0 - This is a phenomenal book on self improvement, time management, and personal relations.  This book touches lightly on ethics and organizational leadership. He did a great job describing synergy and social capital. I often coach people on the importance of important non-urgent work using his four quadrants as an illustration. At some point I might do a whole episode on this one book.


Ethics 101 by John C. Maxwell (2005) 4  - I read this in 2010 and there weren’t many ethics books for leaders at the time. 


Leadership 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know by John C. Maxwell NR - I didn’t finish this book. I had enjoyed Ethics 101 but realized that his writing offers platitudes.


The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking, by Dale Carnegie, Dorothy Carnegie 4.0 - A good guide for a beginning public speaker.


Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership, by Linda A. Hill 5.0 - Brilliant review of the challenges new managers face. I read this a decade too late for me, but it helped remind me of when I faced those issues. I’ve recommended this book to several new managers and people thinking about going into management.


Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, by Kim Malone Scott 4.0 - Sadly, I’ve lost my notes on this book. I agree that it’s critical to give feedback. I think the author pushes for feedback that can be so brutal that it becomes ineffective. I think the author has bought too much into a hero culture in the tech paradigm.

Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow by Tom Roth NR - I don’t remember much about this book, except that despite buying it I never finished it. It’s based on research around Gallup’s Strength Finder and discusses how to lean into your strengths as a leader and help employees use their strengths to flourish.

The Leader In You: How to Win Friends, Influence People and Succeed in a Changing World by Dale Carnegie 5.0 - Published in ‘93 the thing that has always stuck with me from this book is a story he gives about how correcting somebody in public about something that doesn’t matter (in the example attributing a quote to the wrong author) hurts the social capital of you and the person you corrected for almost no gain.


The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin 4.0 - While he certainly did some problematic things (owned and took part in the slave trade) he did later in life become an abolitionist. He wrote this as a way of passing on leadership advice. I found it fascinating to read about his interests and motivations.


Socratic Logic: A Logic Text Using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, and Aristotelian Principles by Peter Kreeft 2.0 - I think it’s valuable to understand the socratic method as a method to better find the truth. I rated this low for two reasons, first it’s very boring . . . which I guess is unsurprising due to the subject but also because the author really pushed his christian views on the reader.


Guild Leadership, by Jeon Rezvani 4.0 - The author led groups in video games and also let IT teams professionally. His insights in the parallels of leadership in an online game and IT teams are fun to read. He gives all proceeds from the book to a scholarship program.


Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for Young Talent, by Chris Resto, Ramit Sethi, Ian Ybarra 4.0 - A great book on the topic of recruiting early career talent. The most important tip that's stuck with me is that if you want your internship program to be a recruitment pipeline you must give your interns meaningful work. A revelation I still find alarming is that (at the time this was written) college students were so competitive that in a survey about how a popular reality show gave the winner an opportunity to have the runner up also win the students overwhelmingly agreed that the winner made the right decision in being the only winner. 


Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco 3.0 - This was written originally in ‘87 and updated in 2003, so very oriented to pre-pandemic office life. It talks about ways to optimize an office to minimize disruption for knowledge workers which is critical for creating a flow state. It also talks about pre-Google office ideas to optimize group conversations. A good read if you have teams that prefer the office. 


Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership, by Joseph Jaworski 2.75 - Mostly full of platitudes about how wishful thinking can help you to achieve success. 


Team Secrets Of The Navy Seals, by Robert Needham 3.75 - Had a lot of useful ideas on the importance of team identity and relying on each other. It also gave a look into how command & control organizations operate.


If Disney Ran Your Hospital: 9 1/2 Things You Would Do Differently by Fred Lee 4.0 - While this book is about applying ideas from Disney to improve patient satisfaction these ideas are useful to all customer-centric businesses.


Psychology Related Books

The New Psychology of Leadership by Alexander Haslam, et al (2010) 5.0 - This is my all time favorite psychology book. The information here is all based on well documented and studied patterns of behavior. My biggest take-away from this was how critical it is to get people to consider more people part of their in-group.


Sources of Power by Gary Klein (1999) 4.0 - This book reveals the results of psychological studies about decision making which is a critical part of being a leader.


The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hanh (2007) 5.0 - This is an excellent book on ethical leadership and balance based on Buddhist philosophy. I think it’s an excellent counterpoint to books like The Art of War that focus on scarcity mentality.


The Art of War by Sun Tzu 2.0 - Long before Machiavelli there was Sun Tzu. A book proclaiming how those with a scarcity mentality can win by any means.


Psychology of Computer Programming by Gerald Weinberg 3.0 - If you work in software, this is a valuable book to read. The ideas from it are timeless. It talks about the psychological challenges developers face and ways to potentially overcome them. A lot of people think of software development as a science and yet developers often prefer following trends rather than doing research to make decisions. The reason I rated this low is that, if you don't identify as male you might find this book triggering due to misogyny from the author's biases.



The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates, by Frans de Waal 4.0 - This book is important when considering human motivation and ethics. While some do feel motivated by spiritual reasons to be ethical those without spiritual beliefs are also shown to be motivated to be ethical.


Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 2.25 - Almost all of the people he cites are men. It took until his fifth subject to mention a female subject. He calls Jefferson and Mao statesmen. He says some racist and Islamophobic stuff. I think the book has some value but you have to wade through his philosophy that has no basis in his research and keep in mind he has a ton of bias. At one point he says, "A rape may not be distinguishable from a loving encounter."


Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 4.0 - Every time I run I think of this book, specifically how it uses the metaphor of the danger to humans because our bodies aren't able to handle running on natural surfaces if we mostly run on pavement. It talks about how to think beyond the happy path for the outliers that could destroy your product or service if you don't plan for it.


The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us, by Christopher Chabris 4.0 - An insightful work about how our attention can be so focused that we miss critical information.


A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine NR - I didn’t finish this book, I didn’t find the content compelling.


Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes, by Irving L. Janis 4.0 - There are meetings that happen just like this everyday in all parts of the world.  In fact, this appears to have happened during the Watergate cover-up attempts.  Irving Jones quoted white house aide John Ehrlichman as saying, “One necessarily regrets not having said the word that would have deflected the course of history.”  While the conspirators thought it was a bad idea, they were scared to say something.  The conspirators did not want to upset Nixon and also because nobody else contradicted him. 



Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging  Related Books

Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, by Julia Serano 5.0 - It's great to get some historical perspective on trans exclusion. I didn't know how bad it was, just how bad it is, until I read this.



Lean in: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg 4.0 - I had suggested it to a woman in my group many years ago and thought I should really read it since I was recommending it to people. It goes far deeper and more personal than the TED talk. This book isn't just for people in tech, most of it applies to any corporate job. 


Lean Out: The Struggle for Gender Equality in Tech and Start-Up Culture, by Elissa Shevinsky 5.0 - Lean In felt empowering in some ways. Thinking of my time as a single mother of two, it also seemed to miss the needs of many. We can't all Lean In, and we shouldn't have to. Even before reading this I had become disillusioned with many of the giant tech companies that say they are working on diversity.


Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, by Caroline Criado Pérez 1 - While I like what Caroline Criado-Perez said in her 99% Invisible interview, I discovered, as I started to read her book, Invisible Women, she completely omits intersex and non-binary people. Well, it turns out the author is a TERF and is also racist. I absolutely cannot support a book about bias by someone who has so much bias. 



Incident Management and Prevention  Related Books

Root Cause Analysis: The Core of Problem Solving and Corrective Action, by Duke Okes 4.0 - This book covers ways that organizations can use tools like the 5 whys in a blame-free environment to find the root of issues in order to make corrective actions and preventive actions that will help avoid related issues in the future.


Disaster Response and Recovery: Strategies and Tactics for Resilience by David A. McEntire 3.25 - This is a very detailed guide for disaster response teams that is probably used for some related college courses. While ideas from this book can be applied to company's that have incidents it's a little dense for people not specifically interested in disaster response and recovery.


The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande 4.0 - Every business has to find the right balance between too much process and too little. This book shows how the author was part of a team of surgeons that through several iterations made a surgical checklist that has been proven to improve medical outcomes.


Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande 3.75 - Hospitals were historically conditioned to hide the circumstances around failures to limit legal liability. Those protective systems prevented hospitals from creating an environment of psychological safety where all staff could equally give voice to issues and lift up ideas for improvement. This book talks about the author’s work to improve outcomes by reducing communication friction.


Why Hospitals Should Fly: The Ultimate Flight Plan to Patient Safety and Quality Care, by John J. Nance 4.0 - Decades before hospitals started to rethink their methods of improving the airline industry was facing a similar set of issues. To overcome, the airline industry introduced international standards that reduced confusion and runbooks for pilots to use during a disaster. The author talks about how similar improvements can be made (especially at hospitals).


Just Culture: Balancing Safety and Accountability, by Sidney Dekker 3.0 - This book urges companies to transform from a culture of blaming to a culture of humility. This is useful for any company that wants to reduce mistakes.



Computer Science  Related Books

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley, by Emily Chang 5.0 - An excellent book covering the history of sexism in tech. It gives great detail about how the issue has gone unresolved for so long. It discusses some of the positive steps people are trying to make. I think this should be required reading for CS students.


The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win, by George Spafford, Gene Kim, Kevin Behr - 3.75 It's kind of slow paced for a work of fiction, even if it's meant to teach the value of DevOps. Worth reading if you want to think about lean or DevOps principles to improve your business.


Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations, by Jez Humble, Gene Kim, Nicole Forsgren 4.0 - I found myself a bit more critical of this than earlier works by the same authors. It did lead to several provocative conversations, many in a mentoring capacity, about areas that can be improved on. The book proposes a set of criteria to rate a software team's success.


Applied Software Project Management, by Andrew Stellman, Jennifer Greene 3.0 - This is a pre-agile approach to developing software which is still useful for greenfield, re-write, and massive epics that span months or years.


Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process, by Kenneth Rubin 4.0 - My first resource on scrum! While some things are a bit outdated it was still a good introduction on how and why to implement scrum. From this I helped implement scrum across an 800 person engineering division.