The Best Leadership Books of 2025
THE titles listed below, published in 2025, improve our self-awareness regarding relationships and communication the sine qua non of leadership and provide us with a wider perspective on innovation and the changes taking place around us.
The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck
by David Spiegelhalter
(W. W. Norton & Company, 2025)
How dangerous is our diet? How much of sports falls into the realm of luck? When authorities categorize a given event as “highly likely”—how likely is that, really? Whether we’re trying to decide if the benefits of a new medication are worth the chance of side effects or if artificial intelligence truly threatens humanity, our lives are riddled with uncertainties both everyday and existential—yet it can be difficult to know how to properly weigh all those unknowns. In lucid, lively prose, Spiegelhalter guides us through the principles of probability, illustrating how they can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to sports to climate change forecasts. He demonstrates how taking a mathematical approach to phenomena we might otherwise attribute to fate or luck can help us sort hidden patterns from mere coincidences, better evaluate cause and effect, and predict what’s likely to happen in the future.
The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More
by Jefferson Fisher
(TarcherPerigee, 2025)
No matter who you’re talking to, The Next Conversation gives you immediately actionable strategies and phrases that will forever change how you communicate. Jefferson Fisher, trial lawyer and one of the leading voices on real-world communication, offers a tried-and-true framework that will show you how to transform your life and your relationships by improving your next conversation. The Next Conversation will give you practical phrases that will lead to powerful results, from breaking down defensiveness in a hard talk with a family member to finding your own assertive voice at the boardroom conference table. Your every word matters, and by controlling how you communicate every day, you will create waves of positive impact that will resonate throughout your relationships to last a lifetime.
More Human: How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead
by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter with Marissa Afton and Rob Stembridge
(Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)
Humans have always been good at inventing tools that change the way we live and work—though not always good at adapting to those changes. Will the power of AI create a new era of robotic, impersonal efficiency, or will it catalyze a renaissance, redefining leadership and the world of work? So far, that question has mostly prompted a wave of anxiety about the disappearance of jobs and the loss of humanness in our work lives. AI has the power to transform leadership for the better—the key is in how leaders use it. By delegating tasks to AI and using it to augment skills and behaviors, leaders have an opportunity to unlock a truly human experience of work while enhancing organizational performance. The AI-augmented leader moves beyond a focus on the technology itself to constantly probe how it can enhance and deepen the core qualities of human-centered leadership: awareness, wisdom, and compassion. In this way, AI can help leaders and organizations become more human.
Conquering Crisis: Ten Lessons to Learn Before You Need Them
by Admiral William H. McRaven
(Grand Central Publishing, 2025)
Throughout his 40-year career, Admiral McRaven has experienced every manner of calamity imaginable. From managing failed hostage rescues to responding to student unrest, McRaven has learned how to successfully navigate crises—those moments that push the limits of your experience and challenge your confidence, when leadership skills alone may not be enough. Conquering Crisis provides a new set of tools for facing these stressful moments with poise. It breaks crises down into five phases assess, report, contain, shape, and manage—and provides concrete steps to come out the other side stronger. With incredible personal stories, thought-provoking parables, and memorable lessons, Admiral McRaven sheds light on the ways we can rise to the occasion in times of crisis and act as leaders, no matter the situation.
The Psychology of Leadership: Timeless principles to perfect your leadership of individuals, teams… and yourself!
by Sébastien Page
(Harriman House, 2025)
The Psychology of Leadership offers a fresh take on leadership through the lens of groundbreaking research in positive, sports, and personality psychology. Leaders will develop what feels like mind-reading abilities for interpreting workplace personalities, hidden motivations, and group dynamics. They will learn how to inspire their organization to move mountains, improve their ability to listen, communicate and, when necessary, persuade. Along the way they will dramatically improve their own mindset and resilience.
The Systems Leader: Mastering the Cross-Pressures That Make or Break Today's Companies
by Robert E. Siegel
(Crown Currency, 2025)
A groundbreaking blueprint for mastering “cross-pressures” in a rapidly changing world, teaching leaders to execute and innovate, think locally and globally, and project ambition and statesmanship alike—from a Stanford Business School lecturer and consultant to some of the biggest and most innovative CEOs. Part of the problem is that these challenges, while acutely felt, are rarely articulated in a way that makes them graspable and actionable. Robert E. Siegel has witnessed the impact of these cross-pressures from different perspectives. As a lecturer in management at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, an operator, a venture capitalist, and a consultant, he sees countless teams of managers, at all sorts of companies, struggling to lead their companies into the future.
Blindspotting: How To See What's Holding You Back as a Leader
by Martin Dubin
(Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)
A groundbreaking blueprint for mastering “cross-pressures” in a rapidly changing world, teaching leaders to execute and innovate, think locally and globally, and project ambition and statesmanship alike—from a Stanford Business School lecturer and consultant to some of the biggest and most innovative CEOs. Part of the problem is that these challenges, while acutely felt, are rarely articulated in a way that makes them graspable and actionable. Robert E. Siegel has witnessed the impact of these cross-pressures from different perspectives. As a lecturer in management at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, an operator, a venture capitalist, and a consultant, he sees countless teams of managers, at all sorts of companies, struggling to lead their companies into the future.
Manage Yourself to Lead Others: Why Great Leadership Begins with Self-Understanding
by Margaret C. Andrews
(Wiley, 2025)
What is the “best” way to lead others? The answer may surprise you. The basis for powerful, effective leadership comes from within—from understanding the people, ideas, and events that have shaped your worldview and how these influences express themselves in your leadership style. In Manage Yourself to Lead Others, leadership expert Margaret Andrews helps you understand yourself and translate this understanding into effectively managing yourself, leading others, working with your boss, and making better decisions. Andrews has taught thousands of executives in her professional development course at Harvard, and she shares her insights, practical tips, and questions for reflection here. This book will allow you to identify the kind of leader you want to be, the behavioral patterns that help get you there or stand in your way, and what it takes to develop new leadership capabilities.
A CEO for All Seasons: Mastering the Cycles of Leadership
by Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, Vikram Malhotra and Kurt Strovink
(Scribner, 2025)
In the high-stakes world of corporate leadership, becoming a Fortune 500 CEO is an Everest-like ascent—with only the savviest managing to avoid falling off the mountain. In A CEO for All Seasons, you’ll find an essential climbing route that will take you through every stage. Unique in applying a number of sophisticated metrics to isolate the world’s top 200 CEOs, reduce them to a representative sample, and then reap their wisdom, the McKinsey team, in A CEO for All Seasons, spotlights the specific stage-based hurdles that CEOs face. From preparing for the role to starting strong to sustaining momentum to ensuring a lasting legacy, the book leaves no segment of the journey unmapped. Along the way, it offers proven strategies for maintaining forward progress and, crucially, alerts readers to common blind spots that can sabotage success, as revealed by a detailed survey of thousands of executives.
Don't Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead)
by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
(Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)
“Just be yourself” might be the worst advice you’ve ever received. For years, we’ve been told that authenticity is the key to success—that we should be true to ourselves, tune out others’ opinions, and lead with unwavering genuineness. This feel-good message has spawned countless self-help books, leadership seminars, and viral social media posts. There’s just one problem: science says it’s wrong. Drawing on decades of research, renowned psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic reveals an uncomfortable truth: our obsession with authenticity is backfiring. From Silicon Valley’s authenticity worship to failed diversity programs, he exposes how our fixation on our “true selves” undermines both individual and organizational success. (Blog Post)
Irresistible Change: A Blueprint for Earning Buy-In and Breakout Success
by Phil Gilbert
(Wiley, 2025)
Irresistible Change details one of the largest and most formidable transformations in corporate history: to shift the foundations of work for IBM’s nearly 400,000 employees and thousands of interdisciplinary teams across 180 countries and help them become more entrepreneurial, agile, and customer focused. Written by Phil Gilbert, IBM’s former General Manager of Design and architect of this ambitious change effort, this book is part narrative and part field guide. Irresistible Change describes how the choices made at IBM affected the Change Program Office’s development at each stage of its growth and provides readers with key insights they need to conduct transformational change within their own organizations.
Biographies:
Elliott Parker writes, “Biographies and history books are more likely to teach first principles and to generate more ideas about what to do differently than a typical business case study.” He adds, “And often, the further you look outside your immediate context, the more likely your mind is to be stretched to find creative solutions.” Here are some of the best from 2025.
The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future
by Kevin Evers
(W. W. Norton & Company, 2025)
On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a chatbot that captivated the world with its uncanny ability to hold humanlike conversations. Not even a year later, on November 17, 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was summarily fired on a video call by the company’s board. The episode was a demonstration of how quickly the industry is moving, and of Altman’s power to bend reality to his will. In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk, a former friend and now Altman’s bitter opponent.
There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift
by Wilbur Ross
(Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)
Singer-songwriter. Trailblazer. Mastermind. The Beatles of her generation. From her genre-busting rise in country music as a teenager to the economic juggernaut that is the Eras Tour, Taylor Swift has blazed a path that is uniquely hers. But how exactly has she managed to scale her success—multiple times—while dominating an industry that cycles through artists and stars like fashion trends? How has she managed to make and remake herself time and again while remaining true to her artistic vision? And how has she managed to master the constant disruption in the music business that has made it so hard for others to adapt and endure? In There's Nothing Like This, Kevin Evers, answers these questions in riveting detail. With the same thoughtful analysis usually devoted to iconic founders, game-changing innovators, and pioneering brands, Evers chronicles the business and creative decisions that have defined each phase of Swift's career. Mixing business and art, analysis and narrative, and pulling from research in innovation, creativity, psychology, and strategy, There's Nothing Like This presents Swift as the modern and multidimensional superstar that she is—a songwriting savant and a strategic genius.
Delivering the Wow: Culture as Catalyst for Lasting Success
by Richard Fain
(Fast Company Press, 2025)
In Delivering the WOW, Fain shows how a culture united people around a mission, delighted guests, and unlocked extraordinary performance. Drawing on vivid stories from 33 years at the helm, Fain explains how a remarkable culture was forged and strengthened through: • Alignment: ensuring every employee understands the same clear mission, beyond hierarchy or titles • Intentionality: never losing sight of the ultimate goal and ensuring that every action, big or small, supports that objective • Continuous improvement: never being satisfied; always believing that there are ways to improve • Crisis response: deeply rooted culture as a stabilizing force during black swan events, including the global pandemic. Invaluable principles like these are woven into unforgettable stories which help explain how the company's profitability, guest capacity, and employee base all grew more than thirtyfold.
Bag Man: The Story Behind the Improbable Rise of Coach
by Lew Frankfort
(Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)
Lew Frankfort knew nothing about fashion when he became assistant to the founder of Coach. By the time he left, Frankfort had spent 29 years as CEO, growing Coach from a scrappy maker of leather bags with a small cult following to a beloved lifestyle brand. Along the way, Coach created a new market segment—accessible luxury—that redefined an industry. In Bag Man, Frankfort explains how the son of a Bronx policeman, after working in city government, built a business that challenged conventions, grew it 1000%, and became recognized as one of the world's best CEOs.
Posted by Michael McKinney at 10:21 AM
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