“I’ve always been famous, it’s just no one knew it yet.”

— Lady Gaga

Here’s that world famous list that thousands have been awaiting. Each year, Trajectify coaches and clients put together recommendations for books that they've been reading. We encourage you to use some of your vacation time and your days away from the office to invest in growth through reading. Wherever your adventures take you, even if it's just in your backyard hammock), use this out-of-office time to learn, reflect, and challenge yourself.

Also be sure check out last year’s recommendations, too. The list is timeless.

Recent Releases

Dichotomy of Leadership (2018)

By Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
Recommended by Eric Allen of Wodify

Jocko and Leif dive even deeper into the unchartered and complex waters of a concept first introduced in Extreme Ownership: finding balance between the opposing forces that pull every leader in different directions. Here, Willink and Babin get granular into the nuances that every successful leader must navigate.Mastering the Dichotomy of Leadership requires understanding when to lead and when to follow; when to aggressively maneuver and when to pause and let things develop; when to detach and let the team run and when to dive into the details and micromanage.

Also check out Extreme Ownership (2015) recommended by Jeff Gervasi of Tri State Textiles which was featured on our 2017 reading list. In this book by Willink and Babin, they detail the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat and shows how to apply them to any team, family or organization.

Dare To Lead (2018)

by Brene Brown
Recommended by Coach Mike Krupit

Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential. When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work.

Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most (2018)

by Steven Johnson
Recommended by Coach Mike Krupit

Big, life-altering decisions matter so much more than the decisions we make every day, and they're also the most difficult: where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, whether to start a company, how to end a war. There's no one-size-fits-all approach for addressing these kinds of conundrums.

In Farsighted, Johnson uncovers powerful tools for honing the important skill of complex decision-making. While you can't model a once-in-a-lifetime choice, you can model the deliberative tactics of expert decision-makers.

Leadership

The Coaching Habit (2016)

by Michael Stanier (2016)
Recommended by Coach Lauren Kaplan

Drawing on years of experience training more than 10,000 busy managers from around the globe in practical, everyday coaching skills, Bungay Stanier reveals how to unlock your peoples' potential. He unpacks seven essential coaching questions to demonstrate how--by saying less and asking more--you can develop coaching methods that produce great results.

Coach Chuck Hall recommends these two, one a classic:

The Hard Thing about Hard Things (2014)

by Ben Horowitz

While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.

The Effective Executive (2006)

by Peter Drucker

The measure of the executive, Peter F. Drucker reminds us, is the ability to "get the right things done." This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked as well as avoiding what is unproductive. Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold them into results.\

Increase Your Effectiveness

The Power of Moments (2017)

by Chip and Dan Health
Recommended by Beth Crouse of 2nd Spark Consulting

The New York Times bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us and elevate us and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work. This book delves into some fascinating mysteries of experience: Why we tend to remember the best or worst moment of an experience, as well as the last moment, and forget the rest. Why “we feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.” And why our most cherished memories are clustered into a brief period during our youth.

Smarter Faster Better (2017)

by Charles Duhigg
Recommended by Coach Lauren Kaplan

Drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics—as well as the experiences of CEOs, educational reformers, four-star generals, FBI agents, airplane pilots, and Broadway songwriters—this painstakingly researched book explains that the most productive people, companies, and organizations don’t merely act differently. They view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways.

Coach Joe Cotellese recommends these two, one a classic:

Never Eat Alone (2014)

by Keith Ferrazzi
Recommended by Coach Joe Cotellese

What distinguishes highly successful people from everyone else is the way they use the power of relationships—so that everyone wins. Ferrazzi lays out the specific steps—and inner mindset—he uses to reach out to connect with the thousands of colleagues, friends, and associates on his contacts list, people he has helped and who have helped him

How to Talk to Anyone (2003)

by Leil Lowndes

What is that magic quality makes some people instantly loved and respected? Everyone wants to be their friend (or, if single, their lover!) In business, they rise swiftly to the top of the corporate ladder. What is their "Midas touch?" What it boils down to is a more skillful way of dealing with people. Lowndes offers 92 easy and effective sure-fire success techniques - she takes the reader from first meeting all the way up to sophisticated techniques used by the big winners in life.

Just For Fun

Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2017)

by Dan Lyons
Recommended by Coach Mike Krupit

For twenty-five years Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession--until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: Poof. His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong?