Spoiler: None of them is about trucking, but this list will make you stronger and more adaptable as a leader wherever you’re at in the industry.
Blue Eagle is reviewing 5 books that we think every leader in the trucking industry should read to get ahead and to succeed in one of America’s most significant and complex economic sectors.
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Appropriately Drive, this work examines what motivates human beings to strive to do their best work. Like every industry, in trucking and logistics one of the most complex aspects of management is always inspiring the human beings that make our work possible. The Traditional management books and philosophies promote a punishment and reward philosophy, but author Daniel Pink looks for a deeper, more consequential motivator: Purpose.
Pink argues that human beings’ greatest need is to feel that they are serving a higher calling. Leaders in the trucking industry will recognize that this industry keeps food on the table and hospitals supplied. Use Pink’s book Drive to learn how to capture and convey that sense of purpose to your employees and watch the impact that has on morale!
Power Questions: Build Relationships, Win New Business, and Influence Others
For our next recommendation, we’re suggesting that industry leaders read Power Questions by Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas. Communication. It’s almost (ironically) become a hackneyed word, but it’s still the power that sways other human beings and what chiefly connects us to one another.
Blue Eagle loves that this book is about asking questions; humility is such an underrated but attractive quality. Posing intentional questions to those around us takes humility and selfless interest, but it’s also foundational to great leadership skills. Interested in finding out more about this captivating book?
Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals
At Blue Eagle we are ambitious to serve our customers well and take care of our people. We recognize that goal setting, and being intentional about what we want to foster as a company is part of seeing our ultimate potential realized.
Your Best Year Ever outlines the importance of making an outline. As a leader, the simple act of writing down your goals makes you significantly more likely to achieve them. But keep in mind that you should also be encouraging those in your sphere of influence to do the same. Statistically, goal setting (especially for men) has the greatest impact on performance improvement on those that would otherwise have the least likelihood of success. Study Rotterdam University, Netherlands. In other words, those that are least likely to succeed traditionally are the very ones most likely to excel after they physically make a list of ambitions.
Mastery
American work ethic is unparalleled around the world. We use less holidays, work longer hours, and produce more than any other nation on the face of the earth. But recently there has been a lot of discussion around the fading culture that drives the American workforce.
Blue Eagle likes Mastery for its emphasis on apprenticeships. Although the book attempts to appeal to its audience by selling itself as a Macchiavellian guide to being a rebel– In reality, the message is that the top performing human beings in history were those that had strong mentorship. As leaders, it’s important to use our influence to instill integrity characteristics in those we mentor like strong work ethic– it’s ultimately unselfish because that investment can mean their ultimate success in life and broader impact on humanity.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Isabel Wilkerson, 2020
Untouchables: My Family’s Triumphant Journey Out of the Caste System in Modern India
For our final book, we’re going a little off script recommending Untouchables by Narendra Jadhav. So often, it is easy to forget how wonderful life in present day America is– how much we have to be grateful for and how limitless our potential. Using a broader perspective than just our immediate sphere of influence and friendships is a more realistic and gratitude inspiring way to understand our lives.
Blue Eagle is enthusiastically supportive of remembering that there is so much capacity to improve and so much more in our daily lives to recognize as an exceptional blessing. The better part of leadership is living in a state of reality, and we recognize that from a historical and even a present day contextual perspective we have an obligation to live a life of thankfulness and the benefit of using our position of power to aid the voiceless.
In short, Blue Eagle encourages leaders to live life with purpose, make goals, be grateful and help the weak, cultivate work ethic in yourself and others, and be interested in those around you.