6 Books for New Managers to Enhance Their Leadership Skills in 2025
Becoming a successful manager is about more than overseeing tasks — it’s about inspiring and guiding your team to achieve their full potential. As the year comes to a close, it’s the perfect time to reflect on your growth, set goals, and invest in your development as a leader.
One of the best ways I’ve found to do this? Read some superb books.
These six picks are packed with practical advice, relatable stories, and fresh ideas to help you step up your leadership game and start the new year strong.
1. Good to Great by Jim Collins
Jim Collins draws from his decades-long career studying what makes organizations successful (and more importantly, what makes them resilient). He lays out seemingly small but seriously significant leadership qualities that can impact a company’s trajectory from, well… good to great.
Collins’ data-driven research adds credibility to his conclusions: that discipline, thoughtfulness, and willingness to take action are crucial for greatness to exist. Good to Great also emphasises the importance of humility and determination in developing executive leadership skills and leading great teams.
For new managers, this helps you understand the particular leadership qualities that drive sustained success, like discipline, humility, and determination. It also explores that, by focusing on small-yet-significant actions, you’ll not only build stronger teams, you’ll more importantly grow into a thoughtful and effective leader.
2. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
In this fascinating fable of what can make or break a team, Patrick Lecioni recounts a new CEO’s struggle to find her footing within a complex company dynamic. Lencioni highlights the all-too-human pitfalls that can spell ruin for any organization:
Absence of trust
Fear of conflict
Lack of commitment
Avoidance of accountability
Inattention to results
Lencioni’s compelling narrative is universally relatable, and offers actionable insights for new managers to help them build cohesive, high-performing, and sustainable teams.
3. Can You Hear Me?: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World by Nick Morgan
Despite the presence of many return-to-office mandates, remote, hybrid, and virtual teams aren’t going away anytime soon.
For managers navigating the challenges of remote or hybrid teams, Nick Morgan’s practical guide explores how to build trust over video calls and messaging platforms, create connections, and master team relations across time zones and internet providers.
Morgan’s work is essential for embracing the virtual workplace and maximizing team morale in the twenty-first century. It’s an excellent resource to help you master the nuances of virtual communication and create meaningful relationships with your team, no matter where they’re located.
4. Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott
In Radical Candor, Kim Scott — of Google and Apple fame — has raised the bar for management practices across the corporate world with her reflection on what makes a truly great leader.
She explains the critical nuances between caring personally and challenging directly, and provides a framework for honest feedback that creates space for empathy and trust between manager and employee.
Radical Candor is a must-read for new managers — the book teaches leaders to be more direct in their feedback, but to do so in a compassionate way that helps foster a culture of growth and collaboration.
Hot tip: The updated edition includes new strategies and insights relevant to modern work environments, and ties in nicely to Morgan’s Virtual World.
5. Nonviolent Communication: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships by Marshall B. Rosenberg PhD
If “violent” is defined as acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then much of how we communicate could be defined as such. Disagreement and conflict in the workplace are inevitable — so how can teams work through challenges in solutions-based ways?
Marshall Rosenberg’s treatise on non-violent communication offers tools for effective, empathetic communication and conflict resolution in relationships, both work and personal. Rosenberg’s strategies will help you foster positive, collaborative workplaces where contributors can express themselves and understand their colleagues in constructive ways.
6. Strengths-Based Leadership by Don Clifton
CliftonStrengths (otherwise known as StrengthsFinders) helps new (and established) managers lead highly successful teams. It relies on a strengths-based vocabulary and skills development framework, which provides new managers with comprehensive tools and assessments for leadership.
The book (and the Gallup ecosystem surrounding it) helps managers identify team strengths and align roles effectively, and leverages personalized leadership to boost team engagement, productivity and performance, and retention over time.
Don Clifton’s seminal work dives into his thirty years of research, which culminated in The Gallup CliftonStrengths assessment that millions of people have taken since its publication over a decade ago. In Strengths-Based Leadership, Clifton and the Gallup team take his research further, and identify the three key qualities of a great leader:
Know your strengths
Invest in others’ unique strengths
Identify and hire the additional strengths your team needs
Take inspiration for your own leadership style going into 2025
The journey to becoming an exceptional leader starts with a commitment to learning and growth. And from mastering communication and fostering trust, to leveraging individual strengths and embracing humility, these resources are invaluable companions for any new manager looking to carve out their leadership potential in 2025.
As you set your goals for the year ahead, remember that great leadership isn’t just about results — it’s about the people who help achieve them. Start with these books to inspire your journey, and don’t forget to apply what you learn to create a positive, impactful work environment for everyone!
If you’re ready to take action toward your professional development and leadership goals, explore our workshops and learn how to implement the CliftonStrengths framework to develop your own high-performing team.