7 Leadership Books For Women To Boost Your Career

Women and Leadership: Real Lives, Real Lessons by Julia Gillard and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (The MIT Press)

Why are there so few women leaders in government? Australia’s former Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Director General of the World Trade Organization Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala come together to explore the challenges women face, most especially their unequal access to power, with interviews with global leaders including Jacinda Arden, Hilary Rodham Clinton, Christine Lagarde and Theresa May. It’s a much-needed conversation from some exceptional female leaders about how they have dealt with sexism in their bid to lead. 

When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, How We Can Learn From Them, by Julia Boorstin (Yellow Kite)

Bringing together the stories of more than sixty trailblazing women, CNBC’s Senior Media and Tech correspondent Julia Boorstin focuses on innovation from women leaders in the tech industry.  This well-researched book shows the commonalities that many female CEOs and entrepreneurs share, all of them highly adaptive to change, deeply empathetic in their management style, and much more likely to integrate diverse points of view into their business strategies. Through her research, Boorstin found women in the tech industry who are filling voids that their male counterparts have overlooked for generations and by utilizing their strengths, these remarkable women have invented new business models, disrupted industries, and made massive profits along the way. (New release:  Currently available in Australia as a paperback, but out in hardback January 2024).

How To Be a Lioness: Find Your Roar with the Women of Ted Lasso, by Lucy Broadbent (Uncommon Publishing)

What would you rather be: a panda or a lion?  The question in Apple TV+’s comedy Ted Lasso turns out to be a cleverly disguised shout-out for women leaders. Ted Lasso helps all of us believe in ourselves, but the show especially inspires women, presenting a more equal world with a powerful female boss in charge of an all-male soccer club, and a young woman whose business ambitions are realized. Through Rebecca and Keeley’s iconic friendship both women become empowered.  In this entertaining guide to reshaping your mindset, getting ahead, and finding your inner lioness, psychologists, and female business leaders tackle some of the serious ‘truth bombs’ which all women face, reliving some of the show’s best moments, but also serving up real life solutions, inspiration, and wisdom. (New release: Available on Amazon)

The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know, by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. (HarperCollins)

Confidence, that belief that we can succeed, is an elusive, hard to define quality that some people have and others not at all. Both genders can struggle with lacking it. But women struggle with it more. They also suffer from imposter syndrome more frequently than men.  But it is possible for confidence to grow.  It is not a fixed or static state, and Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, two TV reporters and political commentators, show how in this 2014 best-seller which has recently been up-dated.  It’s an essential boost for women whose lack of confidence in themselves is holding them back.

The Likeability Trap: How to Break Free and Succeed as You Are by Alicia Menendez (Harper Business)

We all want to be liked.  But too often this holds women back. Relying on extensive research and her own carefully examined personal experience, MSNBC anchor Alicia Menendez looks at the pressures put on women to be amiable at work, home, and in the public sphere, and the price women pay for internalizing those demands. Rather than advising women to make themselves likeable, Menendez encourages us to to examine how we perceive ourselves and explores how the concept of likeability is riddled with cultural biases. Our demands for likeability, she argues, hinder everyone’s progress and power.

Lead From the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change by Stacey Abrams (Picador)

If anyone knows about overcoming odds and finding resilience in an unequal world, it is the American politician and former leader of the Georgia House of Representatives. In her book, Stacey Abrams talks about the challenges that leaders face and specifically provides leadership advice to women of color and other marginalized people. All her advice comes from hard-won knowledge during her time as a politician and career in the business and nonprofit worlds.

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley, by Emily Chang (Penguin)

Women working in tech know that America’s Silicon Valley is where women are outnumbered and discrimination remains.  Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang looks at the male-dominated culture there and opens up the boardroom doors of venture capital firms to explore why female-led businesses receive less than 3% of all venture capital funding.  With interviews with Meta founder Sheryl Sandberg, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and other women working in the tech industry, she explores why it is so hard for women to crack the Silicon Ceiling.