Results
Winner
The Brain Instruction Manual for Leaders
Bruna De Palo
The Brain Instruction Manual for Leaders helps leaders understand the hidden brain patterns that drive stress, miscommunication, resistance, and conflict. By translating neuroscience into practical, easy-to-use tools, it empowers readers to navigate difficult conversations, break unhelpful habits, and lead with greater clarity and confidence. Through real-world examples and actionable frameworks, the book shows how to create calmer, more productive teams, strengthen trust, and improve decision-making under pressure. Readers gain a deeper understanding of both their own behavior and that of others, enabling them to build healthier workplace cultures where people feel safe, engaged, and able to perform at their best.
Winner
Practical Leadership: A Guide to Building Trust, Getting Results, and Changing Lives
Janet Ply
This book helps leaders by giving them what’s been missing in most leadership development - practical, real-world tactics they can apply immediately. It strips away the jargon and focuses on the everyday situations leaders face: difficult conversations, unclear roles, shifting priorities, and teams who want guidance and trust. Instead of theory, it provides step-by-step frameworks that make leadership feel clear, actionable, and achievable. Readers routinely say the book make leadership feel doable with tools they could put to work the same day. It helps leaders move from trial-and-error to intentional, effective leadership, resulting in stronger relationships, better execution, and teams who feel supported and inspired.
Winner
The Engagement Effect: Cultivating Experiences That Ignite Connection, Build Trust, and Inspire Action
Steve Spangler
Most leadership books describe engagement. This one teaches it. The Engagement Effect gives leaders, educators, and communicators a practical framework for designing moments that earn attention, build trust, and move people to action — drawn from 30 years in classrooms, boardrooms, and television studios. Readers aren't walking away with theory. A teacher applies the strategies in a professional development session the same week she finishes the book. A corporate leader finally understands why his team isn't engaged and what to do about it Monday morning. The science is real, the stories are honest, and the methods have been tested in front of millions of people across every imaginable context. This isn't a book about what engagement looks like. It's a book about how to create it.
Winner
People Are Accountable: How to Transform Fear into Courage Using Powerful Accountability
Elisabeth White
People Are Accountable helps leaders transform the way they think about accountability, replacing blame and fear with ownership, trust, and meaningful action. Elisabeth White challenges the common misconception that accountability is about punishment, showing instead that it is a learnable leadership practice that drives stronger teams, healthier workplace cultures, and better business outcomes. Through practical frameworks, real-world examples, and actionable strategies, readers learn how to distinguish responsibility from accountability, navigate difficult conversations, foster psychological safety, and create environments where people willingly take ownership of results. Whether leading organizational change, managing teams, or developing as a leader, readers gain the tools to improve execution, strengthen collaboration, and build cultures where accountability becomes a catalyst for innovation, continuous improvement, and long-term organizational success rather than a source of f
Finalist
The Hope Engineer's Playbook: How Leaders Build Vision, Pathways, and Energy for Better Futures
Nikolas Badminton
In *The Hope Engineer's Playbook*, leaders will learn how to create bigger visions of possible futures and use hope as a renewable energy for change that supercharges strategic planning and execution by the frontline team. It teaches leaders how to ignite imagination, build anticipation for what comes next and deepen empathy for what we need to change in the world. It also provides a framework allowing organizations to explore possibilities, empower employees to drive projects forward at the frontline and execute with resiliency and drive. The result is a high-hope organization where every person within feels empowered to create change.
Finalist
Mastering MESSY Leadership: How Exceptional Leaders Thrive When No One Has the Answers
Jerry Connor
Lee Sears
Drawing on 15 years of real-world experience, insights from more than 10,000 coaching conversations, and lessons from leaders ranging from BTS to global organizations, Mastering MESSY Leadership offers a practical roadmap for leading with clarity in an increasingly complex world.
This transformative guide reveals how exceptional leaders move beyond overwhelm, embracing a more adaptive, human-centered approach to leadership. Packed with actionable strategies and real-world examples, it shows how to navigate uncertainty with confidence and lead effectively when the path forward isn't always clear.
Finalist
Leader Lessons: From Invisible to Impactful
Diane C Gaa
Leader Lessons – From Invisible to Impactful is a heartfelt and empowering guide for those ready to step fully into their influence. Drawing from her journey of growth, setbacks, and resilience, Diane Gaa shows how everyday managers can become trusted, impactful leaders. Through deeply personal moments, like confronting the quiet belief of inadequacies, but choosing to lead anyway, Diane brings leadership to life in a way that is both relatable and transformative. With warmth and candor, she reframes leadership as a human experience rooted not in perfection, but in authenticity, courage, and connection. Leader Lessons equips readers to build trust, navigate challenges, and lead with intention—creating meaningful, lasting impact.
Formats are available in ebook, hardback, and paperback in English. The book is being translated into Spanish and French, and an audiobook version is currently in progress with launch expected by June, 2026.
Finalist
Informed Leadership: Applying First Principles to Unify Purpose, Heighten Performance, and Maximize Prosperity
David Ribott
Informed Leadership helps leaders replace reactive decisions with conscious choices grounded in first principles. Drawing on more than 9,000 hours of executive coaching across the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, David Ribott gives readers a clear, sequential model: four pillars (Respect, Integrity, Dignity, Empathy), the ABCs of leadership (Anti-fragile, Bold, Clear, Deliberate), and the three Ps of success (Purpose, Performance, Prosperity). The impact is practical. First-time CEOs use it to lead with clarity under pressure, senior teams use it to realign around a shared purpose, and boards use it to raise the quality of their decisions. By turning hard-won coaching insight into a framework any leader can apply, the book raises the standard of leadership, and with it the wellbeing of the people every leader is responsible for.