There is no argument that 2020 has been challenging. The pandemic has upended our work life as much as it has our home life. To be effective at home and work requires showing up as the best version of yourself. There is a barrage of career advice content out there and sorting through it to find what works for you is difficult.
Additionally, change is constant, but one thing most people don’t focus on changing often enough is their career. Many people know they need to pivot their careers but are too distracted by the daily grind. 2021 will be a pivotal year in business and you will face new challenges. I’ve selected these ten books because they will prepare you to take on those challenges and make 2021 your best year yet.
The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life’s Direction and Purpose – Oprah Winfrey
Everyone has a purpose. And, according to Oprah Winfrey, “Your real job in life is to figure out as soon as possible what that is, who you are meant to be, and begin to honor your calling in the best way possible.”
2020 has continuously challenged our sense of purpose. The Path Made Clear will help you refocus on your purpose in 2021. The book’s ten chapters are organized to help you recognize the important milestones along the road to self-discovery, laying out what you really need in order to achieve personal contentment and what life’s detours are there to teach us.
The Power of Many: Values for Success in Business and in Life – Meg Whitman
If the pandemic in 2020 threw your values into a spiral, this book could help you reset and rediscover them. Meg Whitman, former president and CEO of eBay, lays out the ten core values that she credits not only with her strategic success but with many of the joys and satisfactions of her private life. Values such as trust, authenticity, courage, and validation are essential tools for success that go hand in hand with traditional business practices. The Power of Many is an essential read and highly relevant read in today’s environment.
Daring Greatly – Brene Brown
2020 has been full of unprecedented upheaval to our professional and personal lives. Leaders who pivoted quickly to vulnerability rose above the rest. Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable or to dare greatly. Based on twelve years of pioneering research, Brené Brown PhD, LMSW, dispels the cultural myth that vulnerability is weakness and argues that it is, in truth, our most accurate measure of courage.
Daring Greatly by Brene Brown outlines how vulnerability is both the core of difficult emotions like fear, grief, disappointment, and the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, empathy, innovation, and creativity.
Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You – Frances Frei
2020 ushered in the age of remote work at an unprecedented level. As a result, leaders who empowered their teams and built them up achieved minimal disruption to culture and productivity. Unleashed provides radical advice for the practice of leadership today.
Leadership isn’t about you. It’s about how effective you are at empowering other people—and making sure this impact endures even in your absence. As Frei and Morriss show through inspiring stories from ancient Rome to present-day Silicon Valley, great leadership’s origins are found, paradoxically, not in worrying about your own status and advancement, but in the unrelenting focus on other people’s potential.
Loonshots – Safi Bahcall
Loonshots is a book we desperately need now. 2020 has been full of insurmountable challenges to the status quo. Loonshots challenges how you think. It offers a clear roadmap to questioning norms, embracing the impossible, and shooting for the stars.
The threats we will face in 2021 cannot be met with might alone. As a result, you need to innovate faster and better than your competition. Loonshoots offers a solution for nurturing innovation without sacrificing core capabilities.
Every Monday Matters: Kick Your Week Off with Passion, Purpose, and Positivity – Matthew Emerzian
You are at your best when you are showing up as your true self. Matthew Emerzian guides you towards living authentically, which helps you transform your career and your entire life. Every Monday Matters will inspire you to find your purpose and tackle your goals week by week. Personal and social change happens when we step outside of ourselves, connect, and serve one another.
Every Monday Matters provides a framework for successful and impactful personal growth and sustainable organizational team development by empowering you to develop new habits and embrace your ability to manifest a more meaningful, purpose-driven life of service.
The Infinite Game – Simon Sinek
This book presents an entirely new way of looking at business. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable, while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers. Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.
I enjoyed the examples of companies that applied an infinite mindset vs. the ones that did not. What’s most powerful about this book, to me, is that Simon Sinek establishes a framework and lexicon to explain something that has been in the background for far too long.
Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams – Stefanie K. Johnson
Many leaders are talking about building more diverse and inclusive teams, yet so many of those efforts fail. 2021 presents an opportunity for diversity and inclusion efforts to advance in a meaningful and tangible way. Inclusify: The Power of Uniqueness and Belonging to Build Innovative Teams by Stefanie K. Johnson takes the conversation beyond diversity, moving us closer to real inclusion and equality.
Become a leader who takes diversity and inclusion beyond a checkbox. Read and immediately act on Dr. Johnson’s steps on being an “Inclusifyer.” Laced with academic rigor and her own personal experiences, Dr. Johnson shows you how to make every employee feel “included” in your organization.
How to Be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive – Jennifer Brown
When we feel like we belong, our potential is unleashed. Inclusive workplaces experience higher engagement, performance, and profits. But the reality is that many people still feel unable to bring their true selves to work. How to Be an Inclusive Leader lays out simple steps to help you understand your role, boost your self-awareness, take action, and become a better version of yourself in the process. Even more, the book will meet you where you are and provide a roadmap to create a team with mutual understanding so everyone can shine.
In 2021 the increasingly diverse workforce will look for accountability from their employers. Now more than ever for leaders to ensure that they’re not just talking about inclusion but creating a culture in which employees feel comfortable bringing every part of themselves to work. This book is the leader’s guide to doing just that.
The Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell
Bill Campbell was a former football coach, turned Silicon Valley CEO, who returned to coaching. Coaching business leaders, many of whom are now household names. His secret will probably surprise you. Ultimately, Bill Campbell taught his “coachees” how to bring love into the workplace. Don’t let that deter you from reading this book, though. It is a very practical outline on leadership, management, and coaching. Trillion Dollar Coach is well worth the time at any stage of your career. The consistent thread that ties these recollections together is Bill’s consistent message that addressing the team’s strength and health was usually the straightest path to solving complex problems.
In his lifetime, Campbell coached football at Columbia University, moved to the business world when Kodak hired him, and then carved out a remarkable third career in Silicon Valley. He founded several successful companies and began to serve on Boards and invest in companies and coach their leaders. The likes of Steve Jobs, Al Gore, Steve Ballmer, Jeff Bezos, and Sheryl Sandberg. The total valuation of the leaders he coached is well north of one trillion dollars, hence the book’s title.
