10 Leadership Articles Every Leader Should Read

Harry S. Truman once said, “not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” That quote is decades old, but it’s still a powerful and true statement today.

If leaders want to live up to Harry’s expectations and read up on all things leadership, they’ve got their work cut out for them—there’s a vast collection of information to sift through. From learning about different leadership styles to cultivating a winning culture, there’s no shortage of leadership articles to choose from. 

To help you become the best leader possible, we put together a library of our go-to resources that provide a fresh take on leadership. Happy reading!

Articles that ask “What is Leadership?”

If you ask 1,000 people “what is leadership,” you’ll likely get 1,000 different answers. These articles take a look at the modern definition of leadership and highlight what it means to be a great leader in today’s fast-paced environment.

Are You a True Leader or Just a Boss?
There are so many differences between a boss and a leader. This article debunks some myths about true leadership and features strategies that every great leader incorporates into their behavior. We love that this article compares managers and leaders—it helps us reflect on our own actions to determine if we’re managers, leaders, or both.

In Search of the Definition of Leadership
What makes a leader? The question is more complex than it looks. This article first offers up leadership definitions from famous thought leaders, Peter Drucker and John Maxwell. Then, the author takes some recent discussions into consideration to offer readers with an updated definition of leadership. 

Scholarly Articles on Leadership Styles

The Leadership Style That Companies Often Overlook, but Shouldn’t
Each year, Gallup studies leadership by polling employees, teams, and leaders across the world on the state of leadership. This article tackles the one leadership style that companies and leaders often neglect to prioritize. It also explains how we can all up our leadership game to create loyal team members and drive productivity. 

Leadership Styles and Job Satisfaction
This leadership pdf explains the important and direct correlation between different leadership styles and job satisfaction. While the study only took a close look at retail employees and leaders, it found that transformational leadership has the most positive effect on job satisfaction. The numbers are fascinating and a great reminder that certain leadership styles are more beneficial than others!

10 Organizational Leadership Styles—Study Starters
We love this article because it breaks down 10 different organizational leadership styles and the qualities associated with each one. It also shares great examples of when to display different types of leadership styles depending on the team structure, scenario, and other factors.

Good Leadership Articles

Obviously we think that every resource we’ve listed so far is a great leadership article (we wouldn’t include it if we didn’t!), but here a few more of our favorite leadership articles. Forbes, Fast Company, Harvard Business, and Huffington Post offer great online communities for leaders to publish articles that cover a variety of different topics. Today we’ll focus on leadership specifically.

10 Surprising Things Successful Leaders Do Differently 
Over the last three years, writer David Kruse interviewed more than 200 successful CEOs, entrepreneurs, and leadership gurus. During each discussion, he asked them to reveal their number one secret to leadership. This article shares the ten themes that emerged from those conversations to get readers to think differently about leadership.  

The Fundamentals of Leadership Still Haven’t Changed
There are hundreds of books written about leadership every year. There are also new assessment tools to help with emotional intelligence, personality testing, and leadership certifications. So, there must be some newer ways to become a great leader. 2019 leadership, surprisingly, is actually not too different from leadership twenty years ago. This article takes a look at the leadership development industry and the HBR Leader’s Handbook to highlight six fundamentals of leadership.  

6 Warning Signs of Bad Leadership You Should Never Ignore
The effects of bad leadership can greatly outweigh the impact of great leadership. Lackluster leadership causes employee turnover, disengagement, and loss of productivity. Sure, people who display bad leadership traits are generally good people and not inherently trying to cause harm. But, they are often blind to their negative traits. This article from Inc. highlights six signs of bad leadership and how leaders can be more mindful of their actions.

Must-Read Leadership Articles by Lessonly

When it comes to measuring employee engagement, there are different levels of engagement. It’s likely that any team has a combination of every type of engagement. 

Leadership Training Topics
Effective leadership starts with great training. In this article, we take a look a why leadership training is important for success and share ten leadership training topics for every team. And because it can be difficult to build a program from the ground up, we also provide some training ideas for your leadership training program. 

Leadership Qualities
Great leaders possess certain qualities that draw people in. The characteristics of great managers and leaders don’t come without practice. We highlight 20 powerful leadership traits we can all hone in on, as well as 6 characteristics of bad leaders to help us identify what we need to watch for in ourselves.

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