Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

Kim Scott

Why bosses avoid the conversations that would actually help their staff, and what to do instead.

Scott argues that leaders often swing being overly nice or excessively harsh, both of which fail their teams. She developed her framework at Google and Apple, observing that many managers hesitated to share the truth to avoid unkind, resulting in employees who stagnated due to a lack of honest feedback.

Start with Why

How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Simon Sinek

Why people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it, and what that means for anyone leading a school.

Sinek's argument is simple to state and hard to practise: people don’t follow you for what you do, they follow you for why you do it. Most leaders lead with WHAT (the programme, the policy, the result) and HOW (the plan, the system, the process), and treat WHY as something to mention if there’s time left at the end. Sinek says that’s backwards.