Ever wonder what’s going on in your boss’s skull? What his motivation is, and what that motivation means for you? The answer – or part of it, anyway – lies in thinking like a boss. And if you want to think like a boss, you have to read like a boss.
Effective leaders are constantly consuming and assimilating the best ideas in print, and there are literally hundreds of fantastic management books out there. To help you begin to get inside your supervisor’s mind, here are three books that can help pull back the veil of management.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Unless the Peter Principle is in effect at your company, your boss didn’t get where he is by being ineffective. Odds are he’s probably read this book. You should, too. You’ll understand how to be proactive and think holistically about problems and opportunities in a way that accomplishes the greater good for your team and your company. You’ll also learn how to manage your time more wisely, and get more done in a typical day.
Great bosses have the ability to see the organization and its goals from their team members’ perspective. Great leaders give specific broad goals, then empower their team members to make personal decisions within their personal sphere of influence. This book will teach you how to own your little piece of the organizational pie by becoming empowered to function effectively even under the worst of bureaucracies.
The Five Dysfunctions of Team
Whether you think of him this way or not, your boss is part of your team – not a separate entity. A great boss understands what makes a team succeed or fail. It boils down to a combination of five basic dysfunctions. If you work on a team whose members trust each other, can have productive conflicts of ideas and is respectful to each other, you can bet your boss has read this work. By reading it yourself, you’ll be able to pick out dysfunctions that can hamper you and your team, and start taking steps to resolve them.
After reading these books, and getting on a track to read even more management books, you’ll begin to be able to think like a boss. You’ll become better at understanding how leadership works and how and why things occur in your organization. Knowledge will continue to snowball, and as you continue to think like a leader, following Descartes logic, pretty soon you’ll be one.
Chad Broadus is a tech professional and writer living in the Pacific