Today is National Read Across America Day!
If you don’t know about the holiday, the National Education Association (NEA) established March 2 as National Read Across America Day to get students, teachers, parents, and communities excited about reading. March is National Read Across America Month so today officially kicks off a month-long celebration of the joy found in reading.
Our team at OpMentors loves to read. To celebrate the holiday, we’re sharing some of our favorite reads about building your business on topics from developing emotional intelligence to learning leadership principles and skills from Navy SEALs! After you finish reading, leave a comment and tell us your favorites too.
The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy by Jon Gordon**
Last week we wrote about how Jocelyn Fennewald and Machell Enke started OpMentors 8 years ago. They read The Energy Bus together, and it has had a lasting impact on the way they lead OpMentors today!
Through artful storytelling, Gordon shares 10 secrets to positive, forward thinking that lead to true accomplishment in your life and work. You’ll learn how to overcome common obstacles and bring out the best in yourself and your team.
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
Jocko Willink and Leif Babin led “the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War.” Now, they’re helping businesses from startups to Fortune 500 companies excel by teaching what they learned about leadership in combat.
Their book details the mindset and principles that helped their unit accomplish such difficult missions, and they demonstrate how you can apply them in your own business environment to lead your team well.
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant
Resumes focus on individual achievements, talent, hard work, and passion. But we all know that true success is dependent on our interactions with others too, especially as business leaders.
With “cutting-edge evidence and captivating stories,” Adam Grant argues in Give and Take that most people are takers, matchers, or givers at work. Givers are those who serve others without expecting anything in return and achieve great success across a range of industries. Read his book to learn how to be a giver who drives success not only for you, but also for your team.
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
Before Start with Why became a book, it was a TED Talk that reached 28 million people! Sinek argues that people have to understand why before they invest in anything, whether a product, service, movement, or idea.
Want to get buy-in, whether from employees, partners, or clients? Start with Why introduces a framework for your business that can explain why people with little in common like Martin Luther King, Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers were able to capture people’s attention and inspire them to action.
As a business leader, emotional Intelligence is crucial for leading a team and making decisions, but it’s often relegated to other characteristics like intellectual intelligence or a skill set.
Rego argues for the need to move it up on your priority list when building your business. Emotional intelligence “refers to identifying, evaluating, and managing one’s emotions.” Check out Rego’s book to grow in the emotional intelligence you need to lead your own team and look for it in others.
The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday
Obstacle or advantage? Ryan Holiday argues in The Obstacle Is the Way that your problems can become your biggest advantages with the right perspective.
Holiday relies heavily on stoicism – “the ancient Greek philosophy of enduring pain or adversity with perseverance and resilience” – to demonstrate how people like Amelia Earhart, Ulysses S. Grant, and Steve Jobs turned “obstacles into opportunities.” This book’s for you if you’re looking for a fresh perspective on the obstacles you’ll encounter as you grow your business.
Many business leaders lead with requests and demands, but have you ever thought about leading with questions? Michael Marquardt says leaders start to see incredible results from their teams when they encourage questions and actively listen to their responses.
This book is both theoretical and practical. Marquardt offers “specific techniques of active listening and follow-up, and helps you understand how questions can improve the way you work with individuals, teams, and organizations.”
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman
Does your business feel like constant chaos? We talk a lot about how digital solutions can help at OpMentors, but Traction addresses issues like personal conflict, profit deficits, and stagnant or insufficient growth.
In his book, Gino Wickman highlights 6 key components of any business and how you can strengthen them. You’ll learn practical ways to create a business culture of focus, growth, and enjoyment for you and your team!
Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems before They Happen by Dan Heath
Desmond Tutu famously said, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” You can say the same about problems in your business.
Many business leaders are constantly reacting to problems and putting out fires. What if you took a different approach and looked upstream to identify and fix the systems causing the issues? You’ll learn how to switch to an “upstream mindset” and be proactive in your business when you read Dan Heath’s book, Upstream.
Happy reading – and Happy National Read Across America Day! These favorites of ours have impacted how we measure and achieve success at OpMentors, especially since they emphasize the importance of relationships in building a business. These books have helped us better meet the needs of others, both internally in how we work with one another and externally in how we relate to our clients and other partners. We hope some titles caught your eye so you can add to your wish list too.
In your business, implementing and optimizing strong solutions is another way to prepare your team for success. That’s what we do best! Schedule a call today if you’d like to learn more about how OpMentors can help you get the most out of Salesforce, FinancialForce, and other supporting solutions.
**Throughout this blog post, we provide links for the books we recommend so you can easily find them. These are NOT affiliate links, and we don’t benefit monetarily or otherwise from the links we provide.