Books

Books We Recommend.

The books I come back to with clients - the ones whose ideas hold up when the work gets messy. Here is the short list, and why each one earns its place.

Extreme Ownership cover

Extreme Ownership

How U.S. Navy Seals Lead & Win · Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
Why we love it

This is one of the first books I recommend when people are struggling with feelings of helplessness. It resonates deeply with me as a coach and consultant because it reinforces the mindset that true leadership starts with personal accountability. I use its principles to help executives and teams shift from blame and excuses to proactive ownership of challenges, fostering a culture of responsibility and high performance. Whether coaching a leader through tough decisions or guiding a team toward strategic alignment, Extreme Ownership provides a powerful framework for driving results and cultivating resilient, solution-oriented leadership.

The book jacket on Amazon

From Jocko Willink, the New York Times best selling author of Discipline Equals Freedom and Leadership Strategy and Tactics, an updated edition of the blockbuster bestselling leadership book that took America and the world by storm, two U.S. Navy SEAL officers who led the most highly decorated special forces unit of the Iraq War demonstrate how to apply powerful leadership principles from the battlefield to business and life. Now with an excerpt from the authors' new book, THE DICHOTOMY OF LEADERSHIP. Combat, the most intense and dynamic environment imaginable, teaches the toughest leadership lessons, with absolutely everything at stake. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin learned this reality first-hand on the most violent and dangerous battlefield in Iraq. As leaders of SEAL Team Three's Task Unit Bruiser, their mission was one many thought impossible: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a violent, insurgent-held city deemed all but lost. In gripping, firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories, they learned that leadership - at every level - is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails. Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training to pass on their harsh lessons of self-discipline, mental toughness and self-defense learned in combat to help forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After leaving the SEAL Teams, they launched a company, Echelon Front, to teach those same leadership principles to leaders in businesses, companies, and organizations across the civilian sector. Since that time, they have trained countless leaders and worked with hundreds of companies in virtually every industry across the U.S. and internationally, teaching them how to develop their own high-performance teams and most effectively lead those teams to dominate their battlefields.

The Obstacle Is the Way cover
#1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller

The Obstacle Is the Way

Ryan Holiday
Why we love it

The Obstacle Is the Way is a staple in my coaching because it helps leaders shift their perspective on challenges, seeing them as opportunities rather than roadblocks. I use its principles to guide clients through adversity, helping them build resilience, maintain focus, and take strategic action. It's an essential mindset for executives who want to turn setbacks into momentum.

The book jacket on Amazon

The Obstacle is the Way has become a cult classic, beloved by men and women around the world who apply its wisdom to become more successful at whatever they do. Its many fans include a former governor and movie star (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a hip hop icon (LL Cool J), an Irish tennis pro (James McGee), an NBC sportscaster (Michele Tafoya), and the coaches and players of winning teams like the New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks, Chicago Cubs, and University of Texas men's basketball team. The book draws its inspiration from stoicism, the ancient Greek philosophy of enduring pain or adversity with perseverance and resilience. Stoics focus on the things they can control, let go of everything else, and turn every new obstacle into an opportunity to get better, stronger, tougher. As Marcus Aurelius put it nearly 2000 years ago: "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." Ryan Holiday shows us how some of the most successful people in history - from John D. Rockefeller to Amelia Earhart to Ulysses S. Grant to Steve Jobs - have applied stoicism to overcome difficult or even impossible situations. Their embrace of these principles ultimately mattered more than their natural intelligence, talents, or luck. If you're feeling frustrated, demoralized, or stuck in a rut, this book can help you turn your problems into your biggest advantages. And along the way it will inspire you with dozens of true stories of the greats from every age and era.

Crucial Conversations cover

Crucial Conversations

Joseph Grenny & Ron McMillan
Why we love it

I recommend Crucial Conversations because it gives you a practical, repeatable way to stay clear and persuasive when the stakes are high, emotions are strong, and opinions differ, which is exactly where most careers either level up or quietly stall. In my coaching, we use this framework to help you prep, practice, and deliver the conversation you have been avoiding, whether it is up the chain of command (influencing leaders without getting labeled "difficult"), down the chain (accountability without drama), or across the hall (alignment without passive-aggressive email tennis). The payoff is not "better communication" in the abstract, it is fewer simmering issues, faster decisions, and relationships that can handle truth without snapping.

The book jacket on Amazon

The book that revolutionized business communications has been updated for today's workplace. Crucial Conversations provides powerful skills to ensure every conversation - especially difficult ones - leads to the results you want. Written in an engaging and witty style, it teaches readers how to be persuasive rather than abrasive, how to get back to productive dialogue when others blow up or clam up, and it offers powerful skills for mastering high-stakes conversations, regardless of the topic or person. You'll explore the following: Respond when someone initiates a Crucial Conversation with you; Identify and address the lag time between identifying a problem and discussing it; Communicate more effectively across digital mediums. When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation poorly and suffer the consequences; or apply the lessons and strategies of Crucial Conversations and improve relationships and results. Whether they take place at work or at home, with your coworkers or your spouse, Crucial Conversations have a profound impact on your career, your happiness, and your future. With the skills you learn in this book, you'll never have to worry about the outcome of a Crucial Conversation again.

Atomic Habits cover

Atomic Habits

James Clear
Why we love it

I recommend Atomic Habits when a client knows what they want but keeps losing to their own routines. The promise is not motivation, it is systems - tiny, repeatable changes that compound. In coaching we use Clear's four laws (make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying) to redesign the cues and environment around a goal, so the right behavior gets easier and the wrong one gets harder. The shift that sticks: you stop leaning on willpower and start building an identity - becoming the kind of leader who does the thing, not the one always trying to.

Summary

James Clear's framework for getting one percent better every day. Small habits, repeated, compound into remarkable results, and the book lays out a practical, evidence-based system for building good habits and breaking bad ones through cues, cravings, responses, and rewards - and by shaping identity and environment rather than chasing motivation.

Ego Is the Enemy cover

Ego Is the Enemy

Ryan Holiday
Why we love it

A natural companion to The Obstacle Is the Way, and one I reach for with high performers whose biggest risk is themselves. Holiday makes the case that ego, not the competition, is what quietly derails ambition at every stage: when we are aspiring, when we are succeeding, and when we are failing. In coaching we use it to build the humility and self-restraint that let talented leaders keep learning, share credit, and stay grounded when the wins start coming. Confidence is fine. Ego is the thing to watch.

Summary

Ryan Holiday draws on Stoic philosophy and history to show how ego sabotages us at three stages - aspiration, success, and failure - and how humility, discipline, and self-awareness keep us on course. A field guide to getting out of your own way.

One more

For Fun, But Really...

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck cover

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Mark Manson
Why we love it

The title is the bait; the message is more disciplined than it sounds. Manson's point is not apathy - it is that your energy and your care are finite, so you had better be deliberate about where you spend them. That lands hard for over-committed leaders who treat every fire as equally urgent. Pick the few things that genuinely matter, accept the discomfort that comes with them, and let the rest go. It is values work wearing a blunt jacket.

Summary

Mark Manson's counterintuitive take on living well - not by caring about everything, but by choosing what to care about. Accept limitations, pick better values, embrace the struggle that comes with what matters, and stop chasing a constant high. Profane, funny, and more practical than the cover suggests.