Book description
John Adair has transformed our understanding of how leadership works with his pioneering book Not Bosses But Leaders. Here he explores the nature of motivation, individual needs and how they relate to the key tasks facing leaders and managers - good, positive motivation can create, maintain and improve the performance…
Why read it?
1 author picked Leadership and Motivation as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
John Adair was an ex-military guy who wrote brilliantly on leadership and time management, and this book is no exception: understanding what motivates people is crucial for leaders, and in Leadership and Motivation, John Adair re-frames the topic in terms of his Action-Centred Leadership model.
His insights are anchored in the Fifty-Fifty Rule, which asserts that half of an individual’s motivation comes from within, and half from their environment, particularly the leadership they experience.
The book’s core is Adair’s Eight Key Principles for motivating others, including: be self-motivated; recruit self-motivated individuals; treat people as individuals; set achievable challenges; recognise…
From James' list on The best books for understanding and activating motivation.
If you love Leadership and Motivation...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Want books like Leadership and Motivation?
Our community of 13,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Leadership and Motivation.
Share your top 3 reads of 2026!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
181
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like Leadership and Motivation, you might also like...
Sexy Selfie Nation
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
In This Together
In This Together explores how we can harness our social networks to make a real impact fighting the climate crisis. Against notions of the lone environmental crusader, Marianne E. Krasny shows us the power of "network climate action"—the idea that our own ordinary acts can influence and inspire those close…
