Leadership reading list for the MSc elective I'm designing

Next term, I’ll be teaching a module on leadership at Cass Business School – here are my top ten books on the reading list.

The course has been great fun to put together. The sessions are designed to be highly interactive – linking theory with practice, incorporating application and consideration of current business strategy techniques, leadership theory and organisational behaviour and change theory.

The theme of the course will be survival through innovation – how the best leaders are managing change and adapting to shifting circumstances. The circumstances I’ll focus on will be the disruptive (and exciting) impact of digital and social technologies.

My leadership reading list includes:

1. Senge, Peter, “The Fifth Discipline” (Currency, 2006, second edition)
2. Goleman, Daniel, “Emotional Intelligence” (Bloomsbury, 1996)
3. Bernoff, Josh and Li, Charlene, “Groundswell” (Harvard Business Press 2008)
4. Scoble, Rob and Israel, Shel, “Naked Conversations” (Wiley, 2006)
5. Shirky, Clay, “Here Comes Everybody” (Allen Lane, 2008)
6. De Geus, Arie, “The Living Company” (Nicholas Brealey, 1997)
7. Levine, Rick, Locke, Christopher, Searls, Doc and Weinberger, David, “The Cluetrain Manifesto” (Basic, 2001)
8. Fried, Jason and Hansson, David, “Rework” (Ebury, 2010)
9. Leadbeater, Charles, “We-Think” (Profile, 2008)
10. Gibbons, Jemima, “Monkeys with Typewriters” (Triarchy, 2009)

Find out more: The Search for Leadership 2.0