Leadership is a big part of every success, and the IT industry is not an exception. To become a leader in IT is not a simple task, but remember that a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Of course, your time is often limited and valuable, that’s why we have put together a list of books that cover the most important IT leadership essentials.
You may ask: why books, not webinars? Because reading is the most personal way to learn. And of course, we look up to the well-known leaders in IT. For example, rumors say Bill Gates reads fifty books per year and Mark Zuckerberg reads two new books every month.
No doubt that books from our top help you to work your way up the career ladder and to train your leadership skills and become more professional. These books will acquaint you with experience of tech leaders and thought leaders and will inform you about the trends in the IT industry. Our top includes new leadership bestsellers as well as well-known volumes. All of them help you to thrive as a good leader of a team or a company by preparing you for a leadership position or improving your leadership style.
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Author: Simon Sinek
The book informs about how to be more inspired at work and how to inspire others. Author explores the fact that some teams and companies have advantage in influence, innovations and profit upon others. Why does this happen? Simon Sinek considers that it is because success has the meaningful idea in its base and, of course, a charismatic leader as well.
Author analyzed examples of greatest IT leaders (not only) and concluded that their manner of thinking and acting has much in common. In his book Sinek calls it The Golden Circle - leadership strategy that provides successful management of teams, companies, countries etc.
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader
Author: Herminia Ibarra
This book focuses on contemporary decentralized tendencies in the IT sphere and how to be a good leader in such conditions. The goal of IT leadership is to maximize everyone’s efficiency and that requires an agile leadership style.
Author states that IT industry leaders need new different skills to stay on top. It is necessary to be a strategist, a good speaker, who can accurately explain a certain idea to colleagues and CEOs. And, of course, an effective leader must be able to achieve a buy-in for their ideas from the team and other stakeholders.
The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change
Author: Camille Fournier
Author is a successful tech leader himself (made a journey from lead to tech CTO), so the book deserves close attention. Book gives practical advice that'll be useful for whoever you are: a new manager or an experienced leader of the IT industry.
Camille Fournier in his rather practical guide describes each stage in the journey from engineer to technical leader. From this book you learn how to become the best leader in the company and eventually in the technical industry.
Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach
Author: Gerald M. Weinberg
This book is a personalized guidance to improve your skills in problem-solving. We need to notice the vivid language the book is written in while enlightening serious professional aspects. Book is full of stories from life used as illustrations for work’s problems and best ways to solve it. Also, the author pays attention to the psychology of managing IT projects and the related philosophy.
Gerald M. Weinberg sums the most essential elements of leadership at the end of every chapter, so you don’t miss a thing. From “Becoming a Technical Leader” You’ll learn how to overcome the fear of becoming a leader, to inspire people and solve problems in IT, where creative mind and style is everything if you want to get the success.l
A Seat at the Table
Author: Marc Schwartz
Mark Schwartz is well-known in the tech industry. This book was written during his work as an Enterprise Strategist for Amazon Web Services. Also has various prestigious tech awards.
In the book the author describes the condition of IT leadership nowadays: conflicts between familiar IT management and Agile practices and what it costs for software engineers. Predominantly “A Seat at the Table” is for CIOs and helps them to recognize IT leadership as a part of an Agile environment and take responsibility for business profits.
