If you have a subscription to Wall Street Journal Online, you may want to check out their article on CEO reading lists. A couple of quotes from this that I found enlightening are:
Some new titles, in fact, tend to debunk the myth of the superhero top executive. In True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership (J-B Warren Bennis Series)
, Bill George, a Harvard Business School professor and the former CEO of Medtronic, and his co-author Peter Sims, got 125 executives to talk about their failures and personal tragedies, and how these setbacks shaped them as leaders.
and
… executive coach Ram Charan asserts in his latest book Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don’t
, that great leadership depends less on charisma or having a commanding presence than it does on knowing customer needs, changing ahead of rivals, and being willing to learn new things.
I’ve added links to a couple of the article’s cited books, in case you want to check them out. I’ve ordered both books, and may write mini-reviews at some point.