New Year’s Resolution season is nearly upon us, and with that, the influx of gym-goers, health food eaters, and smart spenders. For some professionals, however, this year their focus is on achieving a raise, a promotion, or making a major professional change. It isn’t easy to change your work habits or become a more effective employee if you don’t know where to start- which is where these books come in.
These are America’s bestselling Leadership books according to Google, and the winning option could not be more clear. Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team. In nearly half of the states in the US, Find Your Why was the most popular book based on search volume.
Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team by Simon Sinek. The concept of the book focuses on the distinctive “why” that professionals need to focus on for success in the workplace. There are several points made throughout the book focusing on how people should be motivated in their careers focusing on how they can differentiate their business from a competitor and how to address a team dynamic that involves competing objectives.
What makes Find Your Why a popular option is how the author addresses the professional aspect of finding purpose in your career and the effect it has on your personal life as well. The book discusses how to handle a situation where your work doesn’t match your objectives, either personally or professionally, and it also gives you strategies for how to handle more than one goal at the same time.
The second most popular book based on search volume is Blink: The Art of Thinking Without Thinking. This book discusses the value of the gut feeling in the workplace and how it brings value to your leadership. There is a science behind why some people seem to make great decisions consistently at the drop of a hat, and why others tend to have trouble making those split-second decisions. By parsing out the science behind our gut feelings, Blink gives readers the tools to improve their decision-making skills and by extension, make them a bigger asset in the workplace.
The theme that every one of these books has in common goes beyond the leadership genre. Every one of them focuses on habits and conscious decisions that make up our daily lives, both professional and personal. There is a reason why people who make their bed every morning tend to be more productive. There is a reason why people who have a strict workout schedule seem to do better in life all around. The effect isn’t based on the action itself, but rather the train of thought that encourages those individuals to form those habits and make those decisions. By analyzing the common thread behind those thought processes, these books create dozens of different strategies that you can use to make changes in your own personal or professional life. And it’s these strategies that will finally get you that manager’s position.