To go alongside my 10 Good Discipleship Books for 2024, here’s my leadership list for 2024. I’m blogging less and writing in other places now I’m a bishop, but I hope to continue writing these book-list annual blogs, as I know many find them helpful. So here it is: 10 Good Books for Leaders for 2024.

10. Tom Bolsinger’s Tempered Resilience

This is an excellent leadership book. Having read Bolsinger’s previous book written in the light of Covid called Canoeing the Mountains which encouraged a more flexibile and adaptable approach to leadership, I pre-ordered this one on resilience, and I was not disappointed. Practical, thoughtful and honest it talks about how leaders in all fields, including church-life, are formed on the anvil of pressure and adversity. 

9. Marilynne Robinson’s When I was a Child I Read Books

I’ve read a lot of Marilynne Robinson books over the last two or three years. This is a book of essays that first came out in 2012, and covers not just pieces on the importance of reading, but on freedom of thought, the Good Society and more. She writes as a professor of literature who is also a follower of Jesus, urging us to read well, think imaginatively and make a difference in the world.

8. Jim Kotter’s Accelerate

Those who’ve been on leadership courses will probably be aware of Kotter’s 2012 seminal work Leading Change. This lesser-known work is about pioneers, for pioneers. It encourages businesses and organisations to experiment with what he calls ‘a dual operating system’ that combines the still-crucial corporate hierarchy with a second, more agile, network-like structure. Many have found this book not only prescient but practical, especially those who feel their calling is to break new ground in traditional contexts.

7. Christian Selvaratnam’s Why Plant Churches?

Those who have a pioneering heart in church life will be interested in this short and straight-forward book by my friend and former colleague in York, Christian Selvaratnam. Christian has vast experience in the practicalities as well as the theories of church planting, and this easy-to-read guide is a good primer for those who want to understand what church pioneering can look like in a western context.

6. Kati Marton’s The Chancellor

If you like to read biographies of leaders, this book by New York Times best-selling author Kati Marton, about Angela Merkel is well-written and an easy read. Marton charts the story of the former German Chancellor’s life, from childhood in a Vicarage in East Germany to becoming leader from 2005-21 of Europe’s largest and most powerful nation. Walter Isaacson’s back-cover endorsement praises Marton for having ‘produced an intimate, insightful portrait of an extraordinarily private leader.’

5. Steve Richards’ The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to May

This is a fascinating book on recent British Prime Ministers by Radio 4 presenter Richards. It provides interesting insights not only into the premierships of nine recent UK Prime Ministers but also into their characters, exploring how they coped with the pressures of leadership in their parties and nation. Frank about this successes and failures, it’s full of thoughtful reflections.

4. C.S. Lewis’ Faith, Christianity and the Church

Published in 2000, this is a collection of over fifty essays that the great Scholar C.S. Lewis produced to help ordinary people grasp the extraordinary truth of the gospel of Jesus, and how this good news relates to different aspects of everyday life. Reflecting a variety of moods and approaches, this collection enabled me better understand Lewis and how he sought to help and encourage others.

3. Alister McGrath’s Through a Glass Darkly

This is autobiographical work by McGrath, telling the story of how he, a freethinking atheist with a love of science found his way, as he says ‘to an unfashionable but deeply rewarding, rational and resilient way of understanding the world that I discovered was called Christianity.’ McGrath was my Principal at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford in the 1990’s and is still a highly acclaimed academic, bridging the world of science and theology. It’s a great book to give to anyone who might still be fooled by the modernist notion that science and faith are contradictory. It’s also a fascinating read as McGrath shares his personal journey in a very readable way.

2. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ Lessons in Leadership

This is probably my stand-out leadership book of the year. Drawing lessons from the Torah – the first five books of the Bible – Sack’s reflections written some eight years ago are so insightful, drawing out all sorts of biblical insights I’d never seen before with astute and wise application. I highly recommend it to all leaders in all sectors.  

1. The Bible

The Bible normally appears as my top leadership read, and it is no different this year. It’s rich in wisdom for life in every culture and time, and there is no leadership text that comes near it, especially if you are a follower of Jesus. I read it prayerfully each day and through it am equipped for personal life and practical leadership, and I am grateful.

So that’s my leadership list for another year. I produce it because I passionately believe that leaders should be readers. Alistair McGrath would agree, saying that ‘The discipline of reading books comprehensively and totally allows me to grasp their inner logic, to enter the mind of the author in a way that is simply impossible.’ For McGarth, ‘an engagement with literature is a gateway to the enrichment of our vision, allowing us to see things that we had hitherto missed.’ May that be true for you as you read and lead in 2024 and beyond.