Books on Leadership

Which are the best books on Leadership of all times?

Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

I was reading a book on leadership "Jack Welch and the 4E's of leadership" -Jeffrey Krames and I was wondering which could be considered the best books on leadership of all times. Searching on the web I found some lists on the following website:

• Goodreads
• Amazon
• CEO.com

What is your opinion? Which are the best books on leadership you have read?

Team effectiveness: healthy conflict

Conflict management is positive for teams

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting



During our training on Team effectiveness we explain that being able to accept and manage conflict is very important for the teams: without debate and disagreement (meaning without conflict) there is not innovation and people hold back their opinions.

In this HBR article I found a similar message and some interesting tips to manage conflict and overcome the fear of being perceived as  "not nice people". 

Read more on HBR

The importance of experience instead of performance

Stop Focusing on Your Performance

By Giorgia Madonno - Marco Polo Consulting




Enjoying the experience without focusing too much on the outcome and our performance make us more effective in life-long learning. Being afraid of others' judgement may stop us from experimenting and this reduces our opportunity to learn new things.

In this article from Harvard Business Review the author says:  "If you want to get better at anything, you need to experiment with an open mind, to try and fail, to willingly accept and learn from any outcome." ... " The best performer are life-long learners, and the definition of a life-long learner is someone who is costantly trying new things. That requires performing poorly much of the time and, often unpredictably, brilliantly some of the time".

Read more on HBR

Leadership competencies: performance management

End of the year: 
Time for performance review and objective setting

By Giorgia Madonno Marco Polo Consulting

      We are almost there. The end of the year is coming.  Time for budget, performance review and objectives setting for the new year coming. 

Time to refresh some tips for evaluators, because we all know, performance management is important.

Do

·    Make it clear at the beginning of the year how you’ll evaluate your employees with individual performance planning sessions

·    Give your employees a copy of their appraisal before the meeting so they may have their initial emotional response in private

·    Deliver a positive message to your good performers by mainly concentrating on their strengths and achievements during the conversation

Don’t

·       Offer general feedback; be specific on behaviors you want your employee to stop, start, and continue

·    Talk about compensation during the review; 

·    Sugarcoat the review for your poor performers; use the face-to-face as an opportunity to demand improvement

Read more on Harvard Business Review