13 leaders share the books that changed how they live, think and lead: 2023 Books Roundup

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Welcome to Meet the Leader, a podcast where top leaders share how they're tackling the world's toughest challenges. And today's annual top books special we share the books that inspired, informed and changed the lives of some of the world's top leaders.

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And please take a moment to rate and review us. I'm Linda Lacina from the World Economic Forum. And this is Meet the Leader.

Alyssa Auberger, Baker McKenzie I'm a huge fan of Adam Grant.

Dylan Taylor, Voyager Space It changed me my life and really got me into space full time, which has been a lifelong passion. The Last Lecture.

Martine Ferland, Mercer I read all the time and there's many, many books in my shop that I'd love to recommend.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader One of my favourite things to do on Meet the Leader is ask for the book recommendation. In my opinion, those book recommendations are like mini podcasts all their own because they usually spark a story. Usually they helped change someone's mind or change how they react to a situation or even change the relationship in their life.

Our team talked to a range of leaders in 2023 at events all over the world. Leaders this year shared business books and history books. And their selections never failed to surprise and impress me.

This is my third year doing this roundup episode and it is always a crowd pleaser. I know that there are selections here that will make your next book haul, help you shop for that hard to buy for person, or even help you be a little bit more sharp and prepared for 2024 and everything that lies ahead.

We'll get started with the books that have helped leaders with the block and tackle needed to reshape markets and business itself.

Blake Scholl is the founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic. That's a company whose supersonic jets will one day help us cross the Pacific in less time than it takes us to cross the Atlantic today, all with sustainable aviation fuel. He is also a self-described ad tech guy who, on paper might not have the background you'd expect to be an aviation CEO.

He talked to me about how it's possible to use whatever you have learned in seemingly unrelated roles and experiences to get the skills that you need to do what you dream.

Blake is an entrepreneur and knows something about innovation. His pick, The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, is a classic -- one that is often cited, but one that not everyone has actually read. And he explains how it can help entrepreneurs and those in established companies better understand how their innovations reshape markets. I'll let him explain more.

Blake Scholl, Boom Supersonic One of my all time favourite business books is The Innovator's Dilemma, and it is widely cited. People talk about disruptive innovation. This is the book that coined the term. But for anybody who thinks they know what that means but has not actually read the book. I would highly recommend it both for.entrepreneurs as well as leaders of established companies. It explains in a way the the physics of market evolution. And in what cases do entrenched companies tend to succeed even when there's change, and in which cases due to new entrants have a fundamental structural advantage in a period of change.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Aaron Tartakovsky is the co-founder and CEO of Epic Cleantec . That's a Start-Up is helping to advance the adoption of onsite water re-use technology and buildings. He shared a book with tactical advice for leaders looking to navigate and reshape big systems to make change happen. Here's Aaron.

Asron Tartakovsky, Epic Cleantec One of my favourite books is called Regulatory Hacking, and it is all about how to navigate the challenges and the ins and outs of a highly regulated industry. It chronicles a lot of the companies that have done that type of work, companies like Uber. So for any company working in a highly regulated space, I very strongly recommend picking up a copy of regulatory hacking, and I don't get a commission from this. So just an honest and honest recommendation.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Many of our leaders suggested books that helped them better pursue their passions. Leaders like Dylan Taylor. Dylan Taylor is the chairman and CEO of Voyager Space, a space infrastructure company that's working on building the replacement to the ageing International Space Station.

He talked to Meet the Leader in January of 2023 about a book that meant a lot to him -- The Last Lecture -- a book that reinforced to him that it's possible to pursue your passions. Here's Dylan.

Dylan Taylor, Voyager Space Book that changed my life and really got me into space full time, which has been a lifelong passion, is called The Last Lecture was written by Randy Pausch. It's a book. It's also a lecture that you can watch on YouTube. I'd probably recommend to the YouTube first and then the book second. And I won't give it away. But it's -- he's a professor at Carnegie Mellon. And their tradition when people are retiring is to give a last lecture. This is his last lecture.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And what would somebody take from that if they read The Last Lecture?

Dylan Taylor, Voyager Space Well, I can I can tell you what I took from it. It is that you have to be leaning into your passion. And there are two elements of that. One is a lot of people say, "I'm not really sure what that is." If you're not sure, go back in time. And the closer you get to your kind of first memory, the closer you are to what you're truly passionate about. So go back to your childhood in effrect. So that's one key takeaway.

Second, key takeaway, without giving too much away about the book, is that you can have your cake and eat it, too. You don't necessarily have to quit your day job and go full time in your passion. You can have both of those worlds for a period of time. And Randy was a great example of that. In his lecture he talks about that.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Deborah Braide is a sustainable energy specialist and researcher who works for E-guide, that's an initiative transforming electricity infrastructure in developing regions in Nigeria. Her pick has helped serve as a compass for her. Maybe it's a book that will do the same for you.

Deborah Braide, E-Guide I recommend the book. How Will You Measure Your Life? By Clayton Christensen. And the reason I do this is because I feel like personally, it's always important to have a compass for your life and determine your own metrics of what success would look like.

So that as we go into the world and we see different interpretations of success, we already have a compass that is guiding us and our own metrics. So we are not distracted, but we're always reminded of our "why," our purpose and that compass and it sort of guides us through life in a sense.

So I think for me, at every point in time, I always think of first what really is my purpose, you know, beyond everything. And I also think, how do I define myself outside my work? Because work and everything can be taken away. And when it's taken away, what's left? And that always helps me to think, "hey, my compass should be who am I as an individual and how do I become the best version, the kindest individual. But outside of all of the work that I do, that kindness and that strength in my individuality is still there." And also, how do I ensure that I'm more focussed on deeper connections with people and with relationships that would outlast all the work?

And for me, that's kind of how I measure my life. So I try to take this -- as difficult as it is sometimes -- into every space I am and every work that I do. And I always come back to that. Who am I outside this work and how am I ensuring that I'm connecting with people who are more important outside of the work?

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Mitzi Short is an executive coach and CEO of New Season Coaching and Consulting Group. She's also a member of the Band of Sisters, a group of coaches and women with decades of leadership experience who are working to dismantle gender bias through education, awareness and coaching. We talked to her this fall about how women can better position themselves for better roles and her lessons learned from her own personal experience. Her book pick is one that spoke to her and has helped inform her work as both a mentor and coach. Here's Mitzi.

Mitzi Short, New Season Coaching and Consulting Group I like Byron,Katie's Loving What Is this really impactful book? Well, one. Of the things that it's helped me with, and particularly as I interact with others from a coaching perspective, is.
Sometimes we tell ourselves stories like. I'm not ready for this role or I'm not good enough for this, right? And she talks about a process for dealing with that.

And one of the questions you ask yourself, is it really true? Is that really true? And if you start thinking about things from that context, then you say, "no, it's really not true." So what is the thing that you're most afraid of? And how do you create an action plan or the opposite? Right. So you're fearing something. Well, what's the best thing that can happen? So it's a mindset, mindset shift. Get you in the right context

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Better managing teams is a job that no leader will ever truly finish. And so many this year shared books that help them better build relationships, better problem solve, better spend their time. We'll start with Alyssa Auberger.

Alyssa is the chief sustainability officer of Baker McKenzie, the global law firm. She had a non-traditional route to being a lawyer, starting with a career first as a pianist.

She shared a classic business book that she's reread, Finding New Insights. Here's Alissa Give and Take, all by organisational psychologist Adam Grant.

Alyssa Auberger, Baker McKenzie I'm a huge fan of Adam Grant. He wrote a book called Give and Take that I read a long time ago that I've recently started rereading, and I have to say it resonates with me as much this time around as it did the first time. So definitely recommend that one.

Alyssa Auberger, Baker McKenzie And a friend of mine -- sorry, plug for a friend -- wrote a book that I find really good called Become the Fire. And it's a variety of women's leaders stories, so more inspirational that kind of helps you pull out your unique characteristics and why that's powerful and why that's something to embrace as opposed to downplay, you know, being the only whatever is actually a good thing. So that's another book that I would recommend by Elisa Schmitz.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Fahd Jamaleddine is a social entrepreneur, education consultant, reform advocate and World Economic Forum Global Shaper. He has been designing and running initiatives for national schools reform in Lebanon for the past ten years. His pick was also from Adam Grant and one that prompts new thinking and approaches.

Fahd Jamaleddine, co-founder, Nafda Lebonan Okay, I'm actually reading for Adam Grant. Think Again, I think it's a it's a brilliant book that also comes within this kind of similar philosophy that we are talking in this podcast, which is the importance of rethinking our tools, our assumptions, because the world is changing so fast and so should our tools that we utilise should change.

And I think any leader leading any organisation -- or even doesn't have to be a leader. I think we all need to rethink our tools and assumptions because many times we are blinded by our visions. So when we open it up and try to ask different questions that help us to rethink what we have been doing for the past X number of years, I think this is where also innovation kicks in.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Cassandra Mao is the chief strategy officer at Halo.Car, a startup based in Nevada that has built technology that allows it to remotely drive cars, ensuring you don't need to drive to a rental counter or walk to a Zipcar and helps tackle overconsumption of automobiles. And her pick is a fit for any leader looking to build good habits in a growing team or organisation.

Cassandra Mao, Halo Car I read a.great book recently actually on management, which is called The Making of a Manager. And just, you know, I'm at the beginning of my own leadership journey and it was a really interesting, kind of very densely packed selection of insights and thoughts about how to approach leadership. And, you know, here at Davos, it's very interesting thinking about, our leadership as this kind of set of decisions that we make, the business decisions that we make. But actually leadership is so much more, right? It's about how you lead. It's about how you work with the people in your organisation and how they feel in their life and how they feel in that role.

And so I've been really enjoying reading that book and kind of getting my head around that dual role as a decision maker, but also as a leader.

Your traits as a person are magnified as a leader, right? And so becoming a leader and crafting and choosing a leadership style is really a journey of thinking about who you are and thinking about who you want to be. Right. And I think even just reading and thinking about how to put yourself in another person's shoes when you're having a tough feedback conversation, for example, I think it's very humbling to to go on that journey. And I think people who read that book will it will be useful in other aspects of their life, not just as a manager.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Lastly, several of our leaders shared book recommendations that can help leaders put the work that they do into greater context and give themselves a little bit of a gut check whether the work they're doing is really helping to move the needle forward in a bigger way.

Benjie de la Pena is the CEO of the Shared Youth Mobility Centre and the chair of the Global Network for Popular Transportation. The Shared Mobility Centre gives technical assistance to communities and cities that are trying to roll out more ways to get their communities get around without using a car. He had a few great picks for us, including a history book, but also a book on social gratitude to help keep us focused on the right things. Here's Benjie.

Benjie de la Pena, Shared Mobility Center Autonorama. Peter Norton's Autonorama basically says, you know, the promise of new technology is always this whole, "Oh, this will solve it later on when we get it." And it kind of ignores what is currently here. He's an auto historian so he then also looks at what are all the promises and what changes that we do in the system to accommodate more cars. So I would recommend that: Autonorama.

The other one not related to cities is a book that I just finished by Dana Butler Bass called Gratitude. And she talks not just about personal gratitude, but kind of societal gratitude. What do we need to do to have a more gracious -- and I don't mean that in good manners and right conduct gracious -- but a society that knows it owes more to the past and the future and acts accordingly.

And I think that has implications in sustainability. And we learned this right from indigenous communities. I'm thinking of whatever we're doing in seven generations, both the three and half generations past and three generations ahead. What does this mean?

This kind of long term thinking and maybe to think beyond the shiny baubles that technology promises us. And to think really in terms of what are the outcomes we're really working towards. Right? Are these the right steps forward? Or if they're not the right steps forward, are we at least not precluding other solutions by taking paths that then we can't back up from.

So it's always kind of this both a graciousness of the past and a grace towards the future. But on the technology side, welcoming technology, but understanding that they are part of systems. And they are not solutions in themselves. We have to be very clear about the problem we want to solve rather than having the technology define the problem for us.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Angela Williams is the first black female CEO of United Way Worldwide, one of the world's largest privately funded charities and a non-profit that helps communities in more than 30 countries provide things like healthy food and safe drinking water or even better job or educational opportunities. She shared with me what anyone can learn from taking a second look at the Bible, especially the Book of John. Here's Angela.

Angela Williams, United Way Worldwide My favourite book should not be a surprise just because we just talked about the fact that I am both a lawyer and a minister is the Bible. It's great. It has tons of interesting stories, and one thing I have come to learn is that it doesn't matter what century you're in, human beings are human beings.

Angela Williams, United Way Worldwide If someone, whether they they've read it before or whether they're sort of coming to parts of it for the first time, what would you recommend them to be thinking about as they go through it?

Angela Williams, United Way Worldwide Well, the Christian Bible has the Old Testament and the New Testament. And so I would say that the first book to read is the Book of John.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And why is that?

Angela Williams, United Way Worldwide Because it's the basic essence of what it means to live in society. It's about how we should treat each other. And it talks about two basic principles. The first principle is love God, which means being a spiritual person. And then second is loving your neighbour as yourself. And that is something we fail to see active in society because we live in a society now of soundbites and labels where people talk over each other. They're mean to each other. They're angry. And if we can get to a place where we love each other as we love ourselves, I think societies will be so much better off.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Tiya Gordon is the CEO and founder of It's Electric. That's a Start-Up that she founded to help ease the transition to clean energy, leveraging electric power from buildings rather than utilities to power cars. We talked about a range of big challenges that are facing the planet, and her book selection can help us think a little bit more seriously during very serious times.

Tiya Gordon, It's Electric So one of the books that I've read numerous times is a book called The Devil Never Sleeps. And it's how we're living in a time of endless disaster. And I began reading this book right before Russia invaded Ukraine. I'm sitting with you now in October of 2023, after there's been now attacks in Israel and in Gaza. And it's true that we are living in a period of time where it's going to be endless disaster. That's going to be a combination of man rot and climate rot. And so how. Do we work forward to prevent this? And I can't fix the man side, but I can fix the climate side.

There's two positions you can take either of the before or the after. And in both cases, the author really kind of lays out how she put forward plans for both the before and the after. During her work -- I believe she was part of the Obama administration -- to mitigate or to prevent. And these are the two mindsets we need to be in right now. If anyone's working even close to the climate space. You're either working to mitigate after it happens and you need to have your plan A, your plan B, your plan C or you're working to prevent. And then how do you get there fastest.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Martine Ferland is the CEO of Mercer, one of the world's largest human resource consultancies. When we talked, she shared the books that have shaped her, including a History and Winston Churchill that helps leaders see hope even in times of crisis. Here's Martine.

Martine Ferland, Mercer During the pandemic, I really enjoyed reading -- t was not a leadership book really --but it's called The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson and is the first year in office of Winston Churchill. And first of all, I was thinking, oh, okay, it's much less worse. This will be -- We're going to be fine. But just the lessons and leadership in that book was it was really inspiring.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader What kind of lessons?

Martine Ferland, Mercer Resilience, grit, faith. Bounded optimism in terms of saying we'll get out of this, wel'll get somewhere. We have faith. We have what it takes to get through this. We'll do it together. We don't know if it's tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in six months. But the bounded optimism that we will prevail, I think was the key lesson.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And lastly, this year, we had the most thoughtful conversation with Didier Elzinga. He's the CEO of Melbourne-based software firm Culture Amp. And he talked to me on how leaders can manage the toughest moments at work. He also talked to me about some of his favourite books, including these that help leaders rethink how they use their most precious resource, their time. I'll let Didier Explain.

Didier Elzinga, Culture Amp I'm a huge reader, so there's like hundreds of books, but probably the book that I would recommend the most to other leaders is the Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. Terrible cover, terrible title. Jim Loehr is a sports psychologist. The core of the book is what we need to do is manage energy, not time. And he talks about the rituals and the behaviours that you create around different types of energy. And so it's fundamentally interesting and important to what I was talking about before around the and other things. And as a leader, it gets right to the heart. You've got physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy. And we tend to be overtrained and under supported in different ones depending on loss. So that's the book I would recommend.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And if someone read that, how would it shape them? How would it impact them?

Didier Elzinga, Culture Amp Once again, it goes back to when we think about productivity. We're constantly thinking about how do I spend my time? But the point that they make in the book is that the energy that you bring to that time is probably more determinative of the outcome than the time itself. So understanding for yourself how to manage your days and your life and putting in appropriate rituals to allow you to have the energy when you need it, not just the time.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And those were the books that shaped the lives of the leaders of 2023. Thanks to all the leaders who talked to me this year and thanks so much to you, for listening.

A transcript of this episode - and my colleague's episodes of Radio Davos are available at wef.ch/podcasts. This episode of meet the leader was presented and produced by me with Juan Toran as studio engineer for interviews recorded at the Annual Meeting, Edward Bally for interviews recorded at the Sustainable Development Impact Summit in New York, Taz Keleher as edior, Gareth Nolan driving studio production and Robin Pomeroy for guidance all year round.

That's it for now. I'm Linda Lacina with the World Economic Forum - have a wonder rest of 2023 and a great start to the year ahead.