Leadership Wisdom from 10 Underrepresented Authors

If you’re craving fresh perspectives that challenge the norm and celebrate diverse voices, then this curated bookshelf is for you. These inspiring titles offer transformative insights from a vibrant array of underrepresented authors, ready to guide you on your unique leadership journey.

From embracing feminine and masculine power to harnessing the transformative skill of empathy, this diverse selection offers something for everyone. Dive into the wisdom of indigenous perspectives, explore the intersection of race and leadership, and discover the power of self-healing and rest as acts of resistance.

These selections encourage us to step outside the echo chamber and open our minds to a world of leadership redefined – where inclusivity, authenticity, and fresh perspectives pave the way to growth and impact.

1. The Empathy Factor: Your Competitive Advantage for Personal, Team, and Business Success by Marie R. Miyashiro | Building on the latest research in brain science, emotional intelligence, and organizational theory, an award-winning communication and organizational strategist answers questions about the true definition of empathy. This groundbreaking exploration into business productivity and office management offers both real-world insights and practical ways to build transformative empathy skills organization-wide.
2. The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You by Julie Zhuo | Great managers are made, not born. If you care enough to be reading this, then you care enough to be a great manager. The Making of a Manageris a modern field guide packed everyday examples and transformative insights for leaders.
3. Shakti Leadership: Embracing Feminine and Masculine Power in Business by Nilima Bhat and Raj Sisodia | Through exercises and inspirational examples, Bhat and Sisodia show how to access this infinite energy and lead with your whole self. Male or female, leaders who understand and practice Shakti Leadership act from a consciousness of life-giving caring, creativity, and sustainability to achieve self-mastery internally and be of selfless service to the world.
4. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown | Inspired by Octavia Butler’s explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live.
5. Not for Bread Alone by Konosuke Matsushita | A successful leader of Japanese industry shares his insights on modern management, and discusses training, quality, service, social responsibility, and growth
6. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer | As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise”
7. Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World – and How to Repair It All by Lisa Sharon Harper | Drawing on her lifelong journey to know her family’s history, leading Christian activist Lisa Sharon Harper recovers the beauty of her heritage, exposes the brokenness that race has wrought in America, and casts a vision for collective repair. Listen to our Reboot Podcast conversation with Lisa here.
8. Goldmining the Shadows by Pixie Lighthorse | Through short and accessible chapters, you will learn to prioritize your healing by honoring the medicine of the wound, “to take responsibility for the parts of yourself you are most driven to deny–to be accountable for what might lie outside of your awareness.”
9. How We Heal: Uncover Your Power and Set Yourself Free by Alexandra Elle |  In How We Heal, bestselling author Alexandra Elle offers a life-changing invitation to heal yourself and reclaim your peace. In these pages, readers will discover essential techniques for self-healing, including journaling rituals to cultivate innate strength, accessible tools for processing difficult emotions, and restorative meditations to ease the mind.
10. Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey | In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted. Our worth does not reside in how much we produce, especially not for a system that exploits and dehumanizes us.