A Partial List Of Leadership Communication Readings

I RECENTLY TAUGHT a week-long elective on Leadership Communication for the current Executive MBA Class at Notre Dame. As part of my curricula I offered the students recommended, non-academic readings (beyond the assigned work) that embellished many of our core topics. I thought this list might be of wider interest, so I'm posting it below (along with excerpts where I could find them).

• The Management Myth: A nice article on the pop-culture (and intellectually questionable) nature of much management theory.
  
  "Why does every new management theorist seem to want to outdo Chairman Mao in calling for perpetual havoc on the old order? Very simply, because all economic organizations involve at least some degree of power, and power always pisses people off. That is the human condition. At the end of the day, it isn’t a new world order that the management theorists are after; it’s the sensation of the revolutionary moment. They long for that exhilarating instant when they’re fighting the good fight and imagining a future utopia. What happens after the revolution—civil war and Stalinism being good bets—could not be of less concern."
  
  
• Change or Die: An interesting Fast Company article that describes the challenges to bringing about personal behavioral change, many of which have neuro-cognitive roots.
  
  ""If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle," Miller said. "And that's been studied over and over and over again. And so we're missing some link in there. Even though they know they have a very bad disease and they know they should change their lifestyle, for whatever reason, they can't.""
  
  
• The Brain That Changes Itself: A book on neuroplasticity which expands greatly on the ideas in Change or Die. It turns out you CAN teach an old dog new tricks -- the trick just has to be relevant, the dog needs multiple attempts, and there must be treat after each successful try.
  
  "Neuro is for “neuron,” the nerve cells in our brains and nervous systems. Plastic is for “changeable, malleable, modifiable.” At first many of the scientists didn’t dare use the word “neuroplasticity” in their publications, and their peers belittled them for promoting a fanciful notion. Yet they persisted, slowly overturning the doctrine of the unchanging brain. They showed that children are not always stuck with the mental abilities they are born with; that the damaged brain can often reorganize itself so that when one part fails, another can often substitute; that if brain cells die, they can at times be replaced; that many “circuits” and even basic reflexes that we think are hardwired are not. One of these scientists even showed that thinking, learning, and acting can turn our genes on or off, thus shaping our brain anatomy and our behavior—surely one of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century."
  
  
• Words that Work, framing and the use of language from the conservative point of view, and Don't Think of an Elephant, framing and the use of language from the liberal point of view.
  
  
• Love is the Killer App: One of the best books on relationship management I've read. The chapter on how to read books is worth its weight in gold alone.
  
  
• The Tipping Point: A modern science-journalism classic about how ideas spread, this book is an excellent summation of a large amount of communication theory--about persuasion, relationship development, communication networks, the role of context in interpretation--I consider essential for leaders to know.
  
  "Consider, for example, the following puzzle. I give you a large piece of paper, 1/100th of a inch thick. (That's a typical thickness). I want you to fold it over once, and then take that folded paper and fold it over again, and then again, and again, until you have refolded the original paper 50 times. How tall do you think the final stack is going to be? ... [T]he real answer is that the height of the stack would approximate the distance to the sun. And if you folded it over one more time, the stack would be as high as the distance to the sun and back. This is an example of what in mathematics is called a geometric progression ... As human beings we have a hard time with this kind of progression, because the end result--the effect--seems far out of proportion to the cause. To appreciate the power of epidemics, we have to abandon this expectation about proportionality. We need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that sometimes big changes follow from small events, and that sometimes these changes can happen very quickly."
  
  
• Worst to First: Most CEO "how I did it" books are ego gratification in print. This one is not, and is rich in examples of the symbolic nature of leadership communication, and the effective communication of strategic direction, in particular.
  
  
• Influence: An academic classic that's entirely accessible in the main stream. Read this book and you'll never look at a car salesman or cult the same. On my "Top Books All Leaders Should Read" list.
  
  
• Three resources on design: Universal Principles of Design, which is a fantastic book on design generally (and a great coffee table book to boot), Slide:ology, which covers everything you should know about how to, and how not to, design an effective presentation, and finally, everything by Ed Tufte, who's a modern guru of information design (and who also writes books suitable for any well-appointed coffee table). (And while your at it, read this Bruce Nussbaum speech on how CEOs must be designers, not just hire them.)
  
  
• On Speaking Well: Peggy Noonan's slim tome on writing, preparing for, and delivering speeches. A great little book, although expect Ms. Noonan's conservative affections to shine through (pleasing some of you and slightly annoying others).
  
  
• Beowulf (the Seamus Heaney translation): I think there's much to learn about leadership from reading the classics. After all, the nuances of the human condition and the challenge of leading others were part of the human conversation long before Peter Druker put pen to paper. Beowulf is one of my favorite non-leadership-book leadership books, and has one of my favorite lines about leadership in print: "He went about things like the leader he was." (Which also means that if you want to change the leader you are, you must change how you go about things.) If you want a real treat, download and listen to the audio book read by Heaney in his native brogue.
  
  
• Once an Eagle: I'm still reading this book from the Marine Commandant's reading list, but it's already among my favorite novels. Truly wonderful prose, Myrer's talent for simile is remarkable, and great imagery and lines shine from nearly every page. What would Sam Damon do?
  
  
• Management of the Absurd: Another great management book most leaders have never seen, Richard Farson's view into organizational paradoxes (e.g., "Technology creates the opposite of its intended purpose") is worth reading and reviewing every few years.

Comments

[Mike Hawkins]

Wow...you are very well-read. I will have to check some of these out. They sound like they are full of good stuff.

BTW: next time you're in South Bend, give me a shout. We could have lunch. I work in South Bend and would enjoy meeting you.

[Leadership Training]

Leadership has as its corner stone, the ability to communicate. When we use the word communicate, we are referring not only to the words one uses to transfer factual information to others, but also to other "messages" that are sent and received. It is clear that if the leader communicates effectively, he or she will be sending messages that decrease resistance, and encourage moving through the change more effectively and positively.