Results
Winner
Once Upon A Leader: Create Culture & Navigate Change with Vision, Integrity, Adaptability, & Influence
Sally M Evans
Leaders don't fail because they lack frameworks. They fail because nothing they learned stayed with them when it mattered most. Once Upon a Leader solves that problem in the most unexpected way possible - by returning to the stories leaders first encountered as children. Through the Leadership Compass - Vision, Integrity, Adaptability, and Influence - readers gain a practical, memorable framework for their most pressing leadership challenges, supported by nine integrated tools designed for real teams and real decisions.
But the deeper transformation is personal. This book invites leaders to reconnect with the values, instincts, and stories already inside them - and to lead from that place with clarity and courage. The result is leaders who communicate more powerfully, build cultures people want to belong to, navigate change without losing trust, and make decisions grounded in meaning rather than pressure.
Once Upon a Leader doesn't just improve leadership skills. It restores leade
Winner
Why We Follow Leaders—and Why We Don’t
Barbara Kellerman
This groundbreaking book investigates the human tendency to follow, as well as the occasional defiance of this norm. This is the first work to focus not on why people with power and authority behave as they do, but on why people without respond as they do. Leadership is a relationship. There is no leader without at least one follower. Still, notwithstanding their essential importance – especially to leaders – followers are largely ignored. This book is a corrective: followers are placed in the foreground, and leaders in the background.
First, Barbara Kellerman focuses on the rewards and punishments that prompt us to go along with the leader and conform to the group. Next, she highlights what motivates some individuals some of the time to do the opposite. Finally, she demonstrates that the human condition is submission: obedience is typical, while resistance is atypical. Drawing upon the latest research in business, government, psychology, philosophy, religion, education, and the scie
Winner
Leadership is Tough: Skills. Decisions. Disciplines. What Great Leaders Do Differently
Mary C. Kelly
Peter B. Stark
Leadership is Tough: What Great Leaders Do Differently helps leaders navigate today’s increasingly complex workplace with greater clarity, confidence, and resilience. The book provides practical strategies for leading through uncertainty, managing change, building trust, improving communication, strengthening accountability, and developing stronger teams. The book delivers actionable tools, real-world examples, and practical frameworks leaders can immediately apply in their organizations and communities. Readers learn how to make difficult decisions under pressure, lead people through change fatigue and burnout, improve workplace culture, and mentor future leaders. Drawing from decades of experience in military leadership, economics, executive coaching, and organizational consulting, the authors provide realistic guidance for senior leaders facing workforce challenges, rapid technological change, and economic uncertainty.
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.
Finalist
It's Not in the Manual: Real-World Leadership for Security and Risk Professionals
Michael Adam Gips
Leadership is often presented as a tidy set of models and best practices. Real leadership, though, begins when the models stop working. It’s Not in the Manual helps professionals lead when there is no script: when information is incomplete, pressure is high, and getting it wrong can be tragic. Drawing on decades of experience in security, law, journalism and risk management, Michael Gips brings these moments to life through dozens of vivid real-world stories, from crises and organizational turning points to everyday leadership dilemmas, showing how leaders actually navigate difficult decisions. Rather than offering formulas, talismans, or cant, he encourages readers to think critically about leadership clichés and management fads. Gips's writing ranges from humorous to poignant, incorporating references from the quotidian to the erudite (Monster.com and Montaigne, Ted Lasso and teleology). It's been called "A handbook for navigating chaos, complexity, and humanity at the same time."
Finalist
The Tao of Leadership: Harmonizing Technological Innovation with Human Creativity
Jack Myers
Readers of The Tao of Leadership gain a navigational compass for becoming effective leaders built on 3,000-year-old Taoist principles. With accelerating technology overwhelming traditional structures, the book offers a practical Blueprint for Leadership in the AI Era, focused on embracing AI without becoming subservient to it and pursuing innovation without losing empathy, ethics, or purpose. The Tao of Leadership is grounded in the Taoist principles of harmony, flexibility, balance, simplicity, and integrity, translating them into the FusionFlow Process, a tutorial for breaking down organizational silos, accelerating ideas into action, and building cultures of continuous learning. Readers who are navigating the role and influence of AI in their own lives, their organizations, and in civilization will learn that leadership in the AI age is not about mastering machines. It is about understanding how to embrace change and remain grounded in human judgment, empathy, purpose, and integrity
Finalist
Uncharted Leadership: Navigating Disruption Without a Map
Katie Sheketoff
The leadership frameworks that served us for decades were written for a world that no longer exists. That world of certainty is gone, and the frameworks built for it are failing people at work, at home, and in their communities. "Uncharted Leadership" starts from a different premise: disruption isn't a phase we're passing through. It's the permanent condition we're leading in. Drawing on 20 years of leadership development work, including award-winning programs that reached 30,000 leaders at Marriott International, Katie Sheketoff distilled what actually works into three waypoints. Awareness: cultivating knowledge of yourself and your surroundings. Alliance: building relationships across boundaries that foster trust, abundance, and mutual growth. Action: taking ownership of incremental changes that add up to radical progress.
The book helps leaders at every level find meaning, build connection, and move forward without a map.
Finalist
C.O.U.R.A.G.E.: 7 Choices for Living a Life Without Regret
Christopher O. H. Williams
Many people know the right action to take but hesitate, later facing regret and wondering what might have been. In C.O.U.R.A.G.E.: 7 Choices for Living a Life Without Regret, business transformation consultant Christopher O. H. Williams argues that courage is the essential power that enables authentic living and a fulfilled life. Often overlooked in daily life, courage is not an innate trait for a select few; it’s a trainable muscle that everyone must strengthen.
Drawing on a thirty-year global leadership career, Williams defines courage and introduces a seven-point framework: Commit to a purpose, Own your potential, Unmask fear, Reject distracting voices, Act decisively, Grow from failure, and Embody resilience and joy. Organized into Accelerators, Decelerators, and a Sustainer, these choices form a practical path for personal growth. Through stories of “courage pilgrims” and diverse perspectives, Williams offers actionable guidance for leaders seeking purposeful, fearless lives.