The Lovable Leader
Build Great Teams with Trust, Respect, and Kindness
This book is for those who are ready to go from uncertain to empowered and from overlooked to revered.If that is you, then I want you to know you were born to be a leader. I’m glad you’re here, sitting on the same side of the table.
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WHY YOU SHOULD BUY THIS BOOK
About Lovable Leadership
What is Lovable Leadership?
Lovable Leadership centers on the aspects of leadership that require emotional intelligence, empathy, humility, compassion, and trust. Amid all other externalities, these are the things we can control—how we relate to one another.
How This Is Different From Other Leadership Books
We read leadership books because we want to achieve great things. The problem is that most leadership books are written by Fortune 100 CEOs for Fortune 500 CEOs. The truth is we need a leadership book for everyone else. This is that book.
Who This Book Is For
This book is for anyone who would call themselves a leader, but most importantly, for those who are just beginning their leadership career, and who want to be part of a dramatic shift in our culture of work.
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Endorsements
Our society is in desperate need of new models of leadership, and The Lovable Leader is an incredible guide for emerging or current leaders to reach their fullest potential.It provides clear values, communication tips, conflict resolution scripts, and digestible psychology to create the care, trust, safety, and inclusion that’s the glue for creating work environments where we all thrive and achieve status-quo breaking goals.I recommend this book to any individual who wants to leave behind the destructive narratives of old school leadership to become a leader people love and are inspired by, not just in title, but in practice and purpose.
The Lovable Leader is the book I wish every new manager read before their first day.Jeff Gibbard provides the complete set of tools that leaders need to build effective and collaborative teams, and the book is rich with both practical frameworks and clear examples.Unlike many leadership books that focus exclusively on goals and results, I appreciate how this book takes the time to highlight safety, care, trust, and inclusion as critical aspects of effective leadership.
The Lovable Leader is the leadership book that we really need.Not only does it address the responsibilities of leadership such as goal setting and strategy, but provides clear instructions about how to manage people, not as tools of the organization but as individuals worthy of care and respect.It’s the handbook every new manager should have on their desk.
Dorie Clark
Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Long Game and executive education faculty, Duke University Fuqua School of Business
This practical book is the missing manual for new leaders who want to become the kind of leaders they’ve loved—or wished they’d had. Jeff Gibbard shows us that the answer lies in being a part of your team, not above them.
Tamsen Webster
Author of Find Your Red Thread
The Lovable Leader’ is a step-by-step playbook for helping new managers become the most effective leaders possible. Best of all, the plethora of lessons throughout the book are focused on how to be our best selves while leading others.
Mike Domitrz
Author, Speaker, and Founder of Center For Respect
For new managers, it’s like having a personal go-to coach to help you and your teams reach your highest potential. The Lovable Leader isn’t just a book you’ll read, but an actionable guide filled with frameworks, wisdom, practical advice, and heart.
Angela Chee
Keynote Speaker, Communication Coach, and Host of The Power Of The Only Podcast
Despite what you may think, The Lovable Leader is not for the faint of heart. Gibbard tackles the toughest aspects of leading people, and shows you how to handle them in a way that allows you to sleep at night. This is a great book for anyone in search of the missing leadership manual!
Marc Pitman
CEO of The Concord Leadership Group
& Author of The Surprising Gift of Doubt
In business, we’ve been debating how to get people motivated, how to keep teams connected, and how we can grow our business in a more human and sustainable way. The Lovable Leader brings it all together. Are trust, respect and kindness the future skills that will separate the good from great brands? Let’s hope so.
Mitch Joel
Author of CTRL ALT Delete & Six Pixels of Separation
Part hug, part masterclass and part kick in the pants, The Lovable Leader is the only book new managers and aspiring leaders will ever need to up their game.If you’re serious about becoming a future leader who rocks hard and with heart, RUN and get it today!
Leslie Ehm
Author of Swagger (WSJ & USA Today bestseller)
Jeff Gibbard is adding a key element to the leadership conversation, growing who we are as human beings. He pulls back the veil to clear up any confusion between leadership skill and leadership behavior, and shows us the mindset change needed to become great leaders. This book is ideal for leaders who recognize that being a great leader starts with accessing what makes us great humans.
Jeanette Bronée
Jeff hooked me within the first few pages by saying “Be worth following.” If you’ve ever wanted to build a great team, this should be required reading as Gibbard’s words not only set the tone, but also provide the path to make it so. Regardless of your leadership “status” being brand new to leadership or well seasoned, you will absolutely find action items that will benefit you and your team.
Doug Sandler
Great companies have never been built on ‘command and control’ leadership. In The Lovable Leader, Jeff Gibbard shows us the new way. Whether you are new to leadership, or you’ve been leading teams for years, you need to read this book.
Laura Gassner Otting
Washington Post Bestselling Author of Limitless
Build loyalty, resolve conflicts, and be admired and respected by your whole team.That’s not management. That’s leadership. Take the leap to lead and be loved. Read this book.
Ron Tite
Author of Think Do Say: How to Seize Attention and Build Trust in a Busy, Busy World
In a world full of leadership books, it’s refreshing and even enlightening to read a book that focuses not solely on what a leader needs to do, but who a leader needs to be and more importantly, who the people following need that leader to be. In simple, yet powerful terms, Jeff Gibbard provides multiple frameworks that help new and aspiring leaders can easily apply to their own lives to not only become better leaders, but better people. If you are a new leader or aspire to be on, read the book, implement the strategies and Be Worth Following.
Tony Chatman
Author ofThe Force Multiplier: How to Lead Teams Where Everyone Wins
How can we create organizations people never want to leave? It’s a question that I wrote an entire book about. Jeff Gibbard joins me in tackling this question by looking at a specific cohort: new managers. The Lovable Leader is a practical handbook with frameworks and examples that every new manager should pick up if they want to be the kind of leader who can build great teams without leaning on their implied authority.
Clint Pulver
Emmy Award Winning Keynote Speaker and bestselling author of I Love It Here
Gravida
Meet the author
About Jeff Gibbard
For years his Linkedin headline read: World’s Most Handsome Social Media & Content Marketing Strategist. But, today he prefers to go by another title: Superhero.Jeff Gibbard is a strategist, a coach, a professional speaker, and the Founder of The Superhero Institute, a certification program for coaches.Jeff’s mission in life is to become an unstoppable catalyst for change that helps make the world kinder, safer and more equitable. Jeff is committed to living a purpose-driven life, helping people to unlock their full potential, and being a lovable leader.Jeff is also the host of several podcasts including Shareable, Rogue, and the Heroic Council, as well as being a blogger you’ll definitely want to follow.
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New Manager Starter Kit
If you’re new to management and looking to get a really good grasp on the skills you’ll need to be an exceptional leader, start with these 10 books.
NOTE:
All links are Amazon affiliate links which means I could earn a bright shiny nickel anytime you buy a book from this list. It’s not much, but I’ll take it to feed my own book addiction.
1. The Lovable Leader
By: Jeff Gibbard
Start with the Lovable Leader, not because it’s the best or the most important book on this list, but because in the sequence of books listed here, it is the one that was written specifically for you, as a new manager.It is designed to give you a strong foundation and plenty of tools. For that reason, I believe it is the best starting point.However, it is not the complete guide to leadership. For that you’ll need the other books on this list.
2. Good Authority
By: Jonathan Raymond
Imagine a world where personal and professional growth are combined, where improving your relationships and owning your strengths at work translate directly into the rest of your life.Creating a company culture like that is not a dream. Through personal stories and real-life conversations, Jonathan Raymond takes you into the room with managers and employees where real culture change happens and shows you a new kind of employee mentoring where each person gets the real-time feedback, support, and clear boundaries we all need to get beyond the patterns that hold us back.
3. How to Win Friends and Influence People
By: Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie’s rock-solid, time-tested advice has carried countless people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. One of the most groundbreaking and timeless bestsellers of all time, How to Win Friends & Influence People will teach you:- Six ways to make people like you
- Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking
- Nine ways to change people without arousing resentment
4. The Code of Trust
By: Robin Dreeke
The Code of Trust is based on the system Dreeke devised, tested, and implemented during years of fieldwork at the highest levels of national security. Applying his system first to himself, he rose up through federal law enforcement and then taught his system to law enforcement and military officials throughout the country, and later to private-sector clients.The Code of Trust has since elevated executives to leadership and changed the culture of entire companies, making them happier and more productive as morale soared.
5. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
By: Bell Hooks
Full of passion and politics, Teaching to Transgress combines a practical knowledge of the classroom with a deeply felt connection to the world of emotions and feelings. This is the rare book about teachers and students that dares to raise questions about eros and rage, grief and reconciliation, and the future of teaching itself.“To educate is the practice of freedom,” writes Bell Hooks, “is a way of teaching anyone can learn.” Teaching to Transgress is the record of one gifted teacher’s struggle to make classrooms work.
6. The Leaders Guide to Unconscious Bias
By: Pamela Fuller, Mark Murphy, and Anne Chow
Ideal for every manager who wants to understand and move past their own preconceived ideas, The Leader’s Guide to Unconscious Bias explains that bias is the result of mental shortcuts, our likes and dislikes, and is a natural part of the human condition. And what we assume about each other and how we interact with one another has vast effects on our organizational success – especially in the workplace.Teaching you how to overcome unconscious bias, this book provides more than 30 unique tools, such as a list of ways to reframe your unconscious thoughts.
7. The Good Fight
By: Liane Davey
In The Good Fight, Liane Davey shows you how to create the productive conflict your organization needs to get along and get stuff done. Drawing on her twenty-year career as an advisor to the C-Suite, Davey shares real-world examples and practical tools you and your team can use to handle even the most contentious conflicts as allies―instead of adversaries.Filled with strategies you will use again and again, The Good Fight is an essential field guide for leaders at all levels.
8. The Coaching Habit
By: Michael Bungay Stanier
In Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit, coaching becomes a regular, informal part of your day so managers and their teams can work less hard and have more impact.Drawing on years of experience training more than 10,000 busy managers from around the globe in practical, everyday coaching skills, Bungay Stanier reveals how to unlock your peoples’ potential. He unpacks seven essential coaching questions to demonstrate how—by saying less and asking more—you can develop coaching methods that produce great results.
9. Do Better
By: Rachel Ricketts
Do Better is a revolutionary offering that addresses racial justice from a comprehensive, intersectional, and spirit-based perspective. This actionable guidebook illustrates how to engage in the heart-centered and mindfulness-based practices that will help us all fight white supremacy from the inside out, in our personal lives and communities alike. It is a loving and assertive call to do the deep—and often uncomfortable—inner work that precipitates much-needed external and global change.
10. Do Nothing
By: Celeste Headlee
In Do Nothing, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee illuminates a new path ahead, seeking to institute a global shift in our thinking so we can stop sabotaging our well-being, put work aside, and start living instead of doing. As it turns out, we’re searching for external solutions to an internal problem. We won’t find what we’re searching for in punishing diets, productivity apps, or the latest self-improvement schemes. Yet all is not lost—we just need to learn how to take time for ourselves, without agenda or profit, and redefine what is truly worthwhile.
Never-Ending Learning
Below is an ever-expanding list of book recommendations to help you grow into a better leader. Books go beyond traditional leadership and include books on ethics, critical thinking, anti-racism, psychological safety, self-care, behavior, and more…
Laziness Does Not Exist
By: Devon Price
Laziness Does Not Exist explores the psychological underpinnings of the “laziness lie,” including its origins from the Puritans and how it has continued to proliferate as digital work tools have blurred the boundaries between work and life. Using in-depth research, Price explains that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history yet most of us often still feel we are not doing enough.
Ruined by Design
By: Mike Monteiro
Design is a craft with an amazing amount of power. The power to choose. The power to influence. Design is a craft with responsibility. The responsibility to help create a better world for all.This book will make you see that design is a political act. What we choose to design is a political act. Who we choose to work for is a political act. Who we choose to work with is a political act. And, most importantly, the people we’ve excluded from these decisions is the biggest (and stupidest) political act we’ve made as a society.
Complicit
By: Max H. Bazerman
Complicit tells compelling stories of those who enabled the Theranos and WeWork scandals, the opioid crisis, the sexual abuse that led to the #MeToo movement, and the January 6th U.S. Capitol attack. The book describes seven different behavioral profiles that can lead to complicity in wrongdoing, ranging from true partners to those who unknowingly benefit from systemic privilege, including white privilege, and it tells the story of Bazerman’s own brushes with complicity. Complicit also offers concrete and detailed solutions, describing how individuals, leaders, and organizations can more effectively prevent complicity.
I Love It Here
By: Clint Pulver
Clint Pulver shares insights gleaned from thousands of undercover interviews with employees across the country, revealing the best methods for identifying talent, building a sense of ownership, and developing a successful workplace culture that employees will love. You’ll also learn the number one driver of employee turnover, what you can do to stop an exodus, and how to build a team that really works. Soon, you’ll be recognizing possibilities where others see problems, and capturing the power of small moments to create a meaningful legacy. Your company can be a place where people don’t just survive, but thrive.
Pitch Anything
By: Oren Klaff
Whether you’re selling ideas to investors, pitching a client for new business, or even negotiating for a higher salary, Pitch Anything will transform the way you position your ideas.According to Klaff, creating and presenting a great pitch isn’t an art—it’s a simple science. Applying the latest findings in the field of neuroeconomics, while sharing eye-opening stories of his method in action, Klaff describes how the brain makes decisions and responds to pitches. With this information, you’ll remain in complete control of every stage of the pitch process.
The Advice Trap
By: Michael Bungay Stanier
If The Coaching Habit says, “here are the seven essential questions to be more coach-like,” The Advice Trap is about getting to grips with how to actually change your behaviour so you stay curious a little bit longer.It sounds like it should be easy, but it’s not. You have to tame your Advice Monster, that part of you that jumps in to offer up ideas, opinions, suggestions and advice. There are tools to make your conversations, coaching and otherwise, irresistible. There are even resources beyond the book itself, including a one-year, free leadership program from a 52-person faculty of cool, diverse, and provocative thinkers.
How To Begin
By: Michael Bungay Stanier
With The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier wrote the bestselling coaching book of the century. With The Advice Trap, he showed you how to tame your Advice Monster. Now, he’s here to help you reclaim your ambition, figure out what you should do that matters… and begin.This is your practical guide to finding the focus and courage to set a Worthy Goal: one that lights you up, compels you to grow, and serves a bigger game by being thrilling, important, and daunting.
Disability Visibility
By: Alice Wong
From Harriet McBryde Johnson’s account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.
Leaders Eat Last
By: Simon Sinek
Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home feeling fulfilled. This is not a crazy, idealized notion. Today, in many successful organizations, great leaders create environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things.In his work with organizations around the world, Simon Sinek noticed that some teams trust each other so deeply that they would literally put their lives on the line for each other. Other teams, no matter what incentives are offered, are doomed to infighting, fragmentation and failure.
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
By: Timothy Clark
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety is the first practical, hands-on guide that shows how leaders can build psychological safety in their organizations, creating an environment where employees feel included, fully engaged, and encouraged to contribute their best efforts and ideas.
Business Made Simple
By: Donald Miller
Business Made Simple is the must-have guide for anyone who feels lost or overwhelmed by the modern business climate, even if they attended business school. Learn what the most successful business leaders have known for years through the simple but effective secrets shared in these pages.
Start with Why
By: Simon Sinek
Start with Why shows that the leaders who’ve had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way—and it’s the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
How To Be Anti-Racist
By: Ibram X Kendi
Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.
Essentialism
By: Greg McKeown
Essentialism is more than a time-management strategy or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter.By forcing us to apply more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy—instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us.
Black Sheep
By: Brant Menswar
A black sheep is 100 percent, authentically original. It cannot be influenced, changed or molded into something it isn’t by outside forces. In this powerful new book, author Brant Menswar shows you how to unleash your own black sheep—the five core values that make you who you are—to empower your life.
Tiny Habits
By: BJ Fogg
This proven, step-by-step guide will help you design habits and make them stick through positive emotion and celebrating small successes. Whether you want to lose weight, de-stress, sleep better, or be more productive each day, Tiny Habits makes it easy to achieve—by starting small.
The Go-Giver
By: Bob Burg
The Go-Giver tells the story of an ambitious young man named Joe who yearns for success. Joe is a true go-getter, though sometimes he feels as if the harder and faster he works, the further away his goals seem to be. Desperate to land a key sale at the end of a bad quarter, he seeks advice from the enigmatic Pindar, a legendary consultant referred to by his many devotees simply as the Chairman.
Leadershift
By: John C. Maxwell
Dive into a masterclass that reveals the shifts you should make over the course of you career to keep innovating, improving, and influencing others to the highest levels of success in today’s unprecedented business climate.John C. Maxwell helps leaders gain the ability and willingness to make leadership changes that will positively enhance their organizational and personal growth. He does this by sharing the eleven shifts he made over the course of his long, successful leadership career.
Extreme Ownership
By: Jocko Willink
Detailing the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, Extreme Ownership shows how to apply them to any team, family or organization. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, explaining what they are, why they are important, and how to implement them in any leadership environment.A compelling narrative with powerful instruction and direct application, Extreme Ownership revolutionizes business management and challenges leaders everywhere to fulfill their ultimate purpose: lead and win.
Influence
By: Robert Cialdini
Understanding and applying the six principles ethically is cost-free and deceptively easy. Backed by Dr. Cialdini’s 35 years of evidence-based, peer-reviewed scientific research—as well as by a three-year field study on what moves people to change behavior—Influence is a comprehensive guide to using these principles effectively to amplify your ability to change the behavior of others.
Rocket Fuel
By: Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters
From the author of the bestselling Traction, Rocket Fuel details the integral roles of the Visionary and Integrator and explains how an effective relationship between the two can help your business thrive. Offering advice to help Visionary-minded and Integrator-minded individuals find one another, Rocket Fuel also features assessments so you’re able to determine whether you’re a Visionary or an Integrator.
The Infinite Game
By: Simon Sinek
In this revelatory book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
By: Paulo Freire
First published in Portuguese in 1968, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated and published in English in 1970. The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire’s work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm.
The Practice: Shipping Creative Work
By: Seth Godin
The Practice will help you get unstuck and find the courage to make and share creative work. Godin insists that writer’s block is a myth, that consistency is far more important than authenticity, and that experiencing the imposter syndrome is a sign that you’re a well-adjusted human. Most of all, he shows you what it takes to turn your passion from a private distraction to a productive contribution, the one you’ve been seeking to share all along.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being
By: Rick Rubin
The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments—and lifetimes—of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.
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