50 Powerful Books on Personal & Professional Development

Very often I am asked either what book am I currently reading or doI have a book to recommend to another individual or client. The truth is, there are so many books currently available for a myriad of purposes that to pair down any list would be doing a disservice to the incredible work that has been written over the past one hundred plus years.

The list below is simply a smidgen of what I have found to support my life both personally and professionally in achieving my goals and supporting others in achieving theirs. I have purposely included books on: Personal and Professional Development, Organizational Development, Coaching, Time Management, Productivity and Philosophy to name a few.

Contrary to what some might say, I do believe a book can have it’s purpose in supporting an individual without having to read it from front to back. That said, certain books do require you to start at the beginning and end on the last page. The books I have listed below contain a mixture of each.

1. Drive – Daniel H. Pink

2. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

3. The Truth About Leadership – James M. Kouzes & Barry Z. Posner

4. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t – Jim Collins

5. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Steven R. Covey

6. Delivering Happiness – Tony Hsieh

7. Tribes – Seth Godin

8. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving & Thriving at Work, Home, and School – John Medina

9. Zen To Done – Leo Babauta

10. The 5th Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization – Peter M. Senge

11. Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman

12. The Happiness Hypothesis – Jonathan Heidt

13. Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

14. How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie

15. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 – Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves

16. Creativity, Inc. – Ed Catmull.

17. Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes - William Bridges

18. Decisive – Chip and Dan Heath

19. Purple Cow – Seth godin

20. The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less –Richard Koch

21. Coaching Questions: A Coach’s Guide to Powerful Asking Skills –Tony Stoltzfus

22. The 48 Laws of Power – Robert Greene

23. Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time – Brian Tracy

24. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant – W. Chan Kim

25. The First 90 Days – Michael Watkins

26. The Giving Tree – Shel Silverstein

27. The One Minute Manager – Ken Blanchard

28. Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization –John Wooden

29. Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter –Cass R. Sunstein

30. Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill

31. The Paleo Manifesto – John Durant

32. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful – Marshall Goldsmith

33. Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation –Daniel J. Siegel

34. The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle

35. The Last Lecture – Randy Pausch

36. Flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

37. The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg

38. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions – Dan Ariely

39. Awaken The Giant Within – Tony Robbins

40. Workrules – Lazslo Bock

41. The Emperor’s Handbook – Marcus Aurelius

42. Think Like da Vinci: 7 Easy Steps to Boosting Your Everyday Genius – Michael Gelb

43. The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get It – Kelly McGonigal

44. The Five Love Languages – Gary Chapman

45. The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done – Peter Drucker

46. Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Richard Kiyosaki

47. The 4-Hour Work Week – Tim Ferriss

48. The Success Principles – Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer

49. Today Matters: 12 Daily Practices to Guarantee Tomorrow’s Success – John C. Maxwell

50. A Return To Love – Marianne Williamson

The floor is yours. What's your favorite book for personal and/or professional development?