The Top 5 Leadership Books I Read in 2015

One of my goals for 2015 was to read one book per month. In working toward my goal, I fell in love with reading again. I read over 20 books this year. I haven't read that much since seminary. My top five books include a mix of business, marketing, and fatherhood. Basically, they all fit under leadership. Here we go...

1. Essentialism by Greg Mckeown

This book is the best book I read this year. Go read it. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less will help you consider why you do what you do. Imagine no longer feeling "busy". Imagine feeling like your daily schedule is not only productive but on purpose. This book will help you consider everything you do in a given day. It will force you to consider eliminating certain tasks.

Now, consider if you handled your career like this. What if everyone in your organization, church, business, team, did what they were good at and stopped wasting time on silly email chains, purposeless projects, unproductive meetings? Mckeown calls operating at our "highest level of contribution". This book helps you learn the disciplined pursuit of better—not less.  

Mckeown defines Essentialism as:     

Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential...The way of the Essentialist rejects the idea that we can fit it all in...The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default...

2. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller

I reread this book this year. The big idea of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story is that you have a story and your story is powerful. "Story" at its most basic level is "a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it".

Miller points out that anyone can live a better story. Imagine the power of understanding that you have a story and you can live a better story depending on the decisions you make. What if you taught this idea to the dads you serve and if those dads taught this to their children? What if we lived daily with this idea? I think our lives might look different or at least more intentional. I'm pretty sure that's Miller's point. 

Miller doesn't simply give his reader bullet points about how to tell a story. He takes readers through a journey through his own story. You learn while he learns.

Miller explains: 

We are all like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we're given—it's just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral...And once you know what it takes to live a better story, you don't have a choice. Not living a better story would be like deciding to die, deciding to look around until you die, and it's not natural to want to die...If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet...The point of the story is the character arc, the change...A character is what he does. 

Miller continues: "If we don’t want anything, we are living boring stories, and if we want a Roomba vacuum cleaner, we are living stupid stories. If it won’t work in a story, it won’t work in life." 

This book has many fascinating points for fatherhood leaders related to the importance of living better stories. Consider this when you think about what makes a good story.

All the great stories include these two things: 1) The thing a character wants must be very difficult to attain. 2) The ambition has to be sacrificial.