Books with a Heart: Pieces Shaping Leadership Insights Today

Leadership has an impact on people’s lives as well as organizations. By encouraging trust, responsibility, and open communication, great leaders enhance team performance, retention, and well-being, according to organizational psychology studies. Decisions made by team leaders and CEOs have an impact on culture, morale, and results that extend well beyond their immediate surroundings. We posed the straightforward but impactful question to a group of professionals: “Has a book ever changed your understanding of what it means to bring about significant change? If yes, describe it and explain how it spoke to you.” Their answers demonstrate how literature may shed light on human-centered leadership, strategy, and values in practical settings.

Editor’s Note: The following reflections were shared by professionals on how various books have shaped their perspectives on leadership and personal growth. Some entries include insights from clinical or organizational experience; these are intended for educational and reflective purposes only and should not be taken as medical or professional advice.

Leadership in Turbulent Times: Lessons from History

I would recommend Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It might seem beyond product management or commercial service fields, but the leadership crises and turnaround tales of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and others contain deep insights into leading in adversity, surviving disruption, and coming out stronger. In a business such as ours, disruptions do occur, whether supply chain, equipment failure, unexpected surges in demand, or regulatory shifts, and how the leaders handle that stress is what determines long-term success.

The most important thing that struck me from that was the resilience rooted in purpose. When times of crisis came, those great leaders did not falter; they doubled down on what they thought was the mission and made choices that aligned, even when painful. For me, that means having clear north stars at Easy Ice: uptime, service, and customer impact, such that in turbulent times we come back to those to make decisions.

Similarly, the tales indicate that leadership is not an isolation: advisors, groups, counsel, and public trust are all-important. This reaffirms my faith in transparency and communication, internal with groups and external with customers, when we are confronted with unavoidable disruption. It reduces uncertainty, gains confidence, and even when results are less than ideal, individuals trust the process.

Travis Rieken, Sr. Director of Product Management, Easy Ice

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Leaders Eat Last: Creating Safety Through Accountability

One book which I think every rising leader should read is Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. When I first started Cafely, I thought leadership was mainly about vision and execution, but this book helped me reframe that. I remember one of the major takeaways was understanding that real leadership is simply creating safety and trust to allow your team to flourish. One day early on, we had an expensive pilot fail (our first one), and rather than laying blame on the team, I took accountability and took steps to amend the process. It was at that moment that I built allegiance and confidence in my team, and it dawned on me that leadership is not so much about “being in charge” as it is about taking care of the people who are in your charge.

Mimi Nguyen, Founder, Cafely

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The Go-Giver: Put Service Before Success

A book that essentially influenced the way I now think about leadership and business is The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann. It’s a quick read with enormous power, particularly for anybody in a service-related business like real estate. The underlying theory is this: your success is related to what you give to others, not what you get from them.

When I began Gluch Group, I didn’t intend to develop a typical real estate company. I wanted to develop a mission-focused team that truly places the client first. This book reaffirmed for me that generosity, service, and trust don’t feel good just because they feel good; they’re good business. People can sense when you’re working for them and not for a check, and that’s what creates lifelong clients.

The largest takeaway for me was the distinction between success and significance. Success can be personal, but significance is always collective. Our team has served thousands of families transitioning through some of the largest transition points in their lives, and I believe that’s because we’re working from contribution first. The ripple effect of that is amazing.

If you’re a budding leader or changemaker, this book teaches you to turn the script around: put giving first, and the results sort themselves out. In a field where trust is the currency, that philosophy shifted not only my business but also how I lead my team daily.

John Gluch, Owner, Gluch Group

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Strengths Based Leadership: Understand Your Unique Abilities

The book I always recommend to leaders and aspiring leaders is “Strengths Based Leadership.” I have read a handful of leadership books but this is the one I have taken the most away from. It is applicable to every single person because it helps you understand your specific leadership strengths and how to utilize them. I guess I would say that the key lesson I personally took away from this book was that the better I understand who I am uniquely as a leader, the better I can lead.

Edward Tian, CEO, GPTZero

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Trust Before Vision: The Leadership Buy-In Law

I often recommend The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell. What Maxwell does well is capture both mindset and behavior, how leadership is about consistency, influence, growth, and trust.

One law that stuck with me is the Law of Buy-In. People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. At Level 6, when we roll out a new incentive or employee recognition program, it isn’t enough that the program is good on paper. It has to be something people believe in. If employees don’t believe you will follow through, or customers don’t believe the rebate is real or simple, then even the best structure won’t drive change.

Ben Wieder, CEO, Level 6 Incentives

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Leverage Your Strengths for Effective Leadership

I highly recommend reading “Strengths Based Leadership.” I’ve read a handful of leadership books, but none have proven to be as helpful as this one. One of the key aspects of effective leadership that people often don’t talk about enough is how to wield your specific leadership strengths to be an effective leader, and how to connect with a variety of different people who have different preferences and strengths themselves. Leadership is not a one-size-fits-all thing. This book does a fantastic job of helping you learn what your strengths are and how to make the most out of them, as well as helping you learn about other people who are different from you.

Eli Zimmer, Director of Operations, Luxaire HVAC Services

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Seven Habits Build Influence Beyond Urgency

A book that I feel should be read by all changemakers or aspiring leaders is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Among the key principles to personal and interpersonal effectiveness taught in this book are that we should take responsibility of our deeds and that we should be more focused on the values than on the urgency when we prioritize tasks. Personally, this book taught me to pay attention to my own sphere of influence and never stop self-development so that I could achieve a positive effect on other people. It also stressed the importance of synergy and serving the win-win solutions in every part of life.

Amanda New, Founder, Cash For Houses Girl

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Fiction Books Teach Quiet, Principled Leadership

There are definitely lots of great nonfiction leadership books out there. But, I don’t think leaders should limit themselves to just those kinds of books. Some of the biggest leadership lessons I have learned from books have come from fiction books. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ for example, is a fantastic book that I think all leaders should read. There are great lessons in there about quiet leadership, standing up for what’s right, and more.

Rassan Grant, Founder, Norstone

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Trauma Knowledge Creates Psychologically Safe Workplaces

Anyone who aspires to make a difference should read “The Body Keeps the Score,” by Bessel van der Kolk, since knowing how trauma affects behavior is essential for good leadership. I have found that the more people in organizations (from therapist to Executive Director) who understand stress and trauma, the stronger, more innovative and productive an organization they can build. The neurobiological basis of performance and decision-making is a topic overlooked by the majority of leadership literature. Van der Kolk’s studies tie in team dynamics and change management with former experiences as well as self-regulation. So many “bad” employee behaviors are actually trauma responses. Resistance to change or poor performance, for example, can actually be a symptom of nervous system disregulation and NOT disrespect. This information changed how I am doing things at Victory Bay, causing me to look at the stress responses past behaviors and working on psychological safety. This change has resulted in higher team retention and better results of the program. It also means I need to manage my own trauma reactions to stop projecting onto my team. Leaders aware of their triggers make for better work places, a must when serving populations who are at-risk.

Melissa Gallagher, Executive Director, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Victory Bay

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Shoe Dog: Fail Fast and Take Leaps

I am a big fan of autobiographies and biographies about well-known leaders. Even if they are completely different from you or have created businesses in totally different industries from yours, there is always a lot you can learn. My favorite one is “Shoe Dog” which is about the founder of Nike, Phil Knight. Something I took away from that book was his mantra about failing fast. Basically, his thought process was that since failure is inevitable, it’s better to fail sooner rather than later, which in turn is great motivation to take leaps of faith.

Jeremy Yamaguchi, CEO, Cabana

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Team of Rivals: Check Ego, Hire Challengers

Leading a fast-growing law firm means balancing justice work with business strategy, so I’m drawn to books that challenge me to think critically about power and leadership.

Every changemaker should read Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The book shows how Abraham Lincoln surrounded himself with former rivals to build a cabinet that challenged him—and made the country stronger as a result. For me, it’s a lesson in checking your ego at the door and bringing in smart people who may not always agree with you but will get to the best answer. That approach has shaped how I hire attorneys and run the firm.

Adam Cohen, Managing Partner, Ticket Crushers Law

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Think and Grow Rich: Inspire Through Service

If I had to pick one, I’d recommend Think and Grow Rich because it reinforced my personal motto’Make it happen.’ I’ll put it this way: the book turned the idea of leadership from pushing outcomes into inspiring action through service. That mindset helped me lead both my real estate team and my nonprofit work with a clearer focus on empowering others to succeed, not just myself.

Peter Kim, Owner, Odigo Real Estate Club

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Traction: Measure What Actually Works

The book that truly shaped my path was Traction by Gabriel Weinberg. Generally speaking, you’re in good shape with marketing strategies as long as you stick to what can actually be tracked and measured. I’ve lost count of the times having a clear framework for channel testing kept me from wasting time chasing shiny trends that weren’t moving the needle for clients.

Justin Herring, Founder and CEO, YEAH! Local

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Good to Great: Humility Powers Organizational Success

“Good to Great” by Jim Collins is another primer that helps budding leaders bust out of myths about leading. Collins research defies busines press mythology and illuminates models for leaders so that they pursue core disciplines rather than necessarily going after popular ones. One major lesson is Level 5 Leadership, which combines personal humility with professional will as a way of focusing ambition on the organization. This is contrasted with earlier notions which placed an emphasis on the expertise or charisma of entrepreneurial leadership when it takes performance and control to grow. Collins emphasizes the need to turst the right people in key posotions, especially in saturated markets with local authenticity. His research demonstrates that high-performing organisations give more importance to people-based decisions and growth, as opposed to strategic planning, integrating strategy with doing it really well. Sustainable success depends on disciplined systems, not on charisma or luck, so leaders must prepare for responsible growth.

Carlos Nasillo, CEO, Riderly

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Antifragile: Build Systems That Welcome Storms

Read Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. Most leadership books will teach you how to survive a calm period; however, this book is the one that teaches you how to thrive during the storms. The pivotal concept — that certain systems can even grow stronger when subjected to stress and randomness — altered my approach to team and product building profoundly, so instead of smoothing the forecast, I now build with small experiments, rapid feedback, and optionality that every failure turns into a learning deposit. In practical terms, that was a decision to choose reversible bets, decentralize the decisions to empower the local fixes, and support the occurrence of ‘cheap failures’ that accelerate learning rather than the rare success if you want to implement the change. In case I were to select only one phrase constantly reminding me of my duties: don’t create plans that are dependent on perfect weather — rather, construct rigs that become more brilliant when the storm arrives.

Cache Merrill, Founder, Zibtek

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Be the Unicorn: Soft Skills Matter Most

A book that’s relatively new that I think aspiring leaders should read is “Be the Unicorn” by William Vanderbloemen. Because it’s new, it’s very relevant to leadership-related topics of today, like AI. It’s a very insightful book and helps you learn specific things that make the best leaders stand out. My biggest takeaway was definitely the importance of certain soft skills.

Seamus Nally, CEO, TurboTenant

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The Culture Map: Adapt Leadership Across Borders

I think that everyone who wants to be a changemaker should read “The Culture Map,” by Erin Meyer. The book is a reminder that good leadership means understanding different communication styles and decision-making processes across cultures. One of the most important lessons that I learned is that U.S.-style feedback often runs up against Japanese preferences for indirect communication. Drawing on Meyer’s cultural framework, I was able to strengthen these connections in Tokyo by offering feedback in the form of stories rather than criticism. This book turned my perspective of global business on its head – being in charge is not about making everyone do things the same way everywhere, but rather having cultural intelligence Leadership Language stands shows that with cultural fit pervasive. It’s why our guides in Barcelona did very well with written instructions, whereas our team in Mumbai responded better to verbal feedback which was more relationship based. The trick is to norrow leadership -styles – to recognize the cultures that exist both at home and abroad, yet never lose sight of your business’ core values. True change comes when we open our minds to a variety of perspectives and come together for common goals. Cross-cultural leadership requires humility toward our biases and curiosity toward other ways.

Yunna Takeuchi, Co-founder & CXO, City Unscripted

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Disciplined People Create Enduring Business Success

A book I believe every aspiring leader should read is Good to Great by Jim Collins. The biggest lesson I took from it is that enduring success comes from disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action, not quick wins we are often naturally tempted to chase. It shaped how I focus on building long-term strength in both teams and business strategy.

Assaf Sternberg, Founder & CEO, Tiroflx

What do you think? Which insights resonated with you the most? Share your thoughts or experiences in the comments—we’d love to hear how generosity, kindness, compassion, and making a difference have shaped your path!

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Welcome to Books with a Heart, where you’ll find thoughtful feature articles and reviews of books that highlight the power of making a difference through corporate social responsibility, socio-entrepreneurship, nonprofits, charitable work, sustainable practices, or in other heartfelt personal or professional ways. This is your go-to space for discovering inspiring reads that emphasize kindness, social impact, and community-building. Each review offers insights into how these books contribute to creating positive change, providing practical takeaways and motivational stories. Whether you’re looking to deepen your understanding or find inspiration, explore our reviews and discover books that touch lives, ignite change, and embody the heart of difference making.

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Books with a Heart: Works Inspiring Meaningful Change Today

Books with a Heart: Must-Reads for Creating Positive Change in the World

Books with a Heart: Works That Changed Business Leaders’ Perspectives on Impact, Purpose, and Leadership

Books with a Heart: Business Leaders Share the Literary Works That Changed How They Lead

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Books with a Heart: Pieces Shaping Leadership Insights Today

Leadership in Turbulent Times: Lessons from History