Reading Worth Your Time

One idea at a time.

ai and leadership

The technology moves fast.
The human questions underneath it do not.

The conversation about AI in organisations moves quickly. The questions underneath it — about values, decision-making and how to lead people through change they did not choose — are older and slower. Leadership capability, the quality of communication and the willingness to be honest about uncertainty remain what they have always been: the things that determine whether organisations navigate change well or not.

Power and Prediction

Agrawal, Gans & Goldfarb

On how AI shifts decision-making power inside organisations — and what that means for those leading them.

Co-Intelligence

Ethan Mollick

A grounded account of what working alongside AI actually feels like — and what it asks of us.

What Makes a Good Leader in the Age of AI?

Harvard Business Review

On what the role of the human leader becomes when machines take on more of the cognitive load.

Are you ready to be coached?

Not everyone is ready to be coached. And that is worth saying honestly.

Coaching works when there is genuine willingness to look at yourself — not just your situation, but how you are showing up in it. When you are open to being challenged. When you are prepared to carry your own responsibility for what changes.

If that sounds like where you are, it is probably worth a conversation.

article

Are You Ready to Be Coached?

Brenda Steinberg — Harvard Business Review

books

Man’s Search for Meaning

Viktor Frankl

On finding purpose under pressure. The origin of the idea that the space between stimulus and response is where freedom lives.

Transitions

William Bridges

What happens inside a person during change. Essential for any leader navigating a significant shift.

Leadership and Self-Deception

The Arbinger Institute

On the ways leaders unknowingly get in their own way. Told through a story, which makes it land harder.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman

How decisions are actually made — and why the assumptions we trust most are often worth questioning.

Articles

Managing Oneself

Peter Drucker — Harvard Business Review

Short, precise and more useful than most books on the subject. On knowing where you work best.

What Makes a Leader?

Daniel Goleman — Harvard Business Review

The piece that brought emotional intelligence into the mainstream of leadership thinking.

The Power of Small Wins

Teresa Amabile & Steven Kramer — Harvard Business Review

On what actually drives performance at work — and what leaders consistently underestimate.

Podcasts

The Knowledge Project

Shane Parrish

On decision-making and how the most effective people think. Precise and unhurried.

WorkLife with Adam Grant

Adam Grant — TED

How work actually works — and how to make it better. Rigorous without being dry.

Hidden Brain

Shankar Vedantam — NPR

The science of human behaviour — why we do what we do. Essential for anyone who leads people.

10 per cent happier

Dan Harris

Mindfulness for sceptics. Useful for leaders carrying a lot — and not particularly interested in being told to meditate.