This book came recommended to me from one of my current colleagues, who is relatively new to management. He found this book invaluable in juggling the often conflicting priorities of being effective and being compassionate. ​

It drives home the important point that sometimes being compassionate means being honest with someone, which we all need work on doing better (including me). Sugarcoating rarely benefits people in the long run.

This book offers up practical strategies for how to deliver important messages and still remain your and others' dignity.

This book was first introduced to me by one of my mentors when I first stepped into a senior management role. It's been an invaluable guide, and I've now used it multiple times when mentoring aspiring leaders and high performers.

From Amazon:
In The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John C. Maxwell combines insights learned from his 40-plus years of leadership successes and mistakes with observations from the worlds of business, politics, sports, religion, and the military.

Some highlights of the revised edition of this New York Times best-seller, which has sold more than a million copies, include:

• Every chapter has been revised.
• Two chapters - "The Law of Addition" and "The Law of the Picture" - are entirely new.
• Seventeen new stories are included.
• Six chapters are 50% revised.
• Five chapters are 75% revised.
• Application pieces follow every chapter. 

​So whether you reading this book for the first time or re-reading the revised and updated version, as always, you will walk away with a few golden nuggets of impactful leadership truths.

The classic book on being a more effective executive by focusing on the things that matter. One note: you'll need to overlook the obvious sexist references to managers as "he", given that this book was written over a half-century ago. But the advice is sound and timeless for managers from any background.

From Amazon:
The measure of the executive, Peter Drucker reminds us, is the ability to "get the right things done." This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked as well as avoiding what is unproductive. Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold them into results.
Drucker identifies five practices essential to business effectiveness that can, and must, be learned:

• Management of time
• Choosing what to contribute to the practical organization
• Knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect
• Setting up the right priorities
• And Knitting all of them together with effective decision making

Ranging widely through the annals of business and government, Peter Drucker demonstrates the distinctive skill of the executive and offers fresh insights into old and seemingly obvious business situations.