Non-Business Books for Business Leaders: Vol 6

Years ago, David Whyte recounts in Crossing the Unknown Sea, he was working at a nonprofit, and one particularly hard day left him spent. That evening, he was sharing a bottle of wine with his friend Brother David Steindl-Rast, an Austrian Benedictine monk, the wisest person, Whyte says, he had in his life at that time or any time since. They were reading Rilke together when Whyte wearily inquired: “Tell me about exhaustion.”

Brother David looked at him with a searching, compassionate directness. Then: “You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest.”

Whyte repeated it slowly. “What is it, then?”

“The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.”

I’ve returned to the wisdom of that exchange many times, including in The Beautiful Business, in conversations with leaders, and in my own life. What we often need is to stop splitting ourselves between the work that sustains us and the work we’re actually called to. The exhaustion, Brother David was telling Whyte, is the cost of half-heartedness.

That is, in part, what this reading list is about. Whole-human development, the kind that makes you a better leader simply because it makes you more fully yourself.

Each year, I gather a list of Non-Business Books for Business Leaders — you can find a few previous lists here, here, and here. These are books that work on you; books that stretch you into unmapped territory, and return you to your work with more wholeheartedness.

Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong by Jerry Colonna

Reunion is Colonna’s most personal and, I’d argue, most provocative work. The book and the stories within are a reckoning with the wounds we carry from childhood into our work, and the ways we perpetuate the very problems we set out to solve. The central question is deceptively simple: how are you complicit in creating the conditions you say you don’t want? He asks it with compassion and holds it with care. I had the pleasure of hosting a podcast conversation with Jerry and Tony Martignetti, and what came through then is what comes through here: this is a man who has done his own hard work and encourages each of us to do the same.

The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Since Rilke is already part of the conversation above, he belongs on this list. Written between 1899 and 1903 in three bursts of creative urgency, The Book of Hours takes the form of prayers spoken by a Russian monk-painter reaching toward God. What strikes contemporary readers is how intimate and reciprocal that reaching is — Rilke’s God needs us as much as we need God, and the world is sanctified through our willingness to love it fully. The Barrows/Macy translation is lyrical, faithful, and reverent. For leaders, the heart of this book centers on presence, attention, and what it means to offer your whole self to the hours you’re given.

The Water of Life by Michael Meade

Meade works with depth psychology and mythology to excavate the gold within. This includes the truths about initiation, purpose, the soul’s longing, and what it takes to find the road meant specifically for you. For leaders, this book is both a confrontation and an invitation. It asks whether the life you’re building is the one you’re actually called to live. If you’re a book listener, Meade narrates the audio version himself, and the voice carries as much wisdom as the words.

What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life by James Hollis, Ph.D.

Jungian analyst James Hollis uses his depth psychology background into everyday living. What Matters Most asks what your soul actually requires. A vital question that Hollis’s encircles is: we are all, always, “in service to something.” The question is whether we’ve chosen that something consciously and wholeheartedly or simply drifted our way into it.

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Kimmerer, a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, uses the serviceberry tree to consider an evolution in our economic logic. She invites us to consider a way of working that’s built on reciprocity. The serviceberry tree gives its fruit freely, and in giving, creates abundance. For leaders who have spent careers inside the logic of markets and metrics, this book is a rigorous, scientifically grounded reframing toward a wider lens of impact. What would our organizations look like if we designed them around reciprocity?

Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path of Awakening by Henry Shukman

Shukman, a Zen master and the director of Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, structures this book around four “inns” on the path toward what he calls original love — the fundamental warmth and openness that exists beneath all our conditioning. For leaders who wonder why leading sometimes feels hollow even when it looks successful, this book offers a language and a way (check out his wonderful meditation app, “The Way”) to search and help you find deeper sources of wisdom.

Inner Mastery, Outer Impact: How Your Five Core Energies Hold the Key to Success by Hitendra Wadhwa, Ph.D.

Columbia Business School professor Hitendra Wadhwa has spent years studying what separates great leaders from merely competent ones. His answer lands squarely on the inner life, as I similarly explore in this recent essay. Inner Mastery, Outer Impact maps five core energies — purpose, wisdom, growth, love, and self-realization — and grounds each in research. Wadhwa presents the evidence and leaves each of us to answer how we will choose to lead and make impact.

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson

As often as I can, I turn to biographies, and Isaacson is particularly skilled at examining and artfully illuminating the lives of historical figures. Franklin’s portfolio life as an entrepreneur, inventor, writer, diplomat, and civic creator is a masterclass in building mind-boggling impact across domains. What strikes me most is his relentless curiosity combined with his whimsical refusal to take himself too seriously. He built the public library, the fire department, and the postal service because he cared about the common good. For leaders wondering how to build something that outlasts them, his life is one of the most useful case studies I know.

Now, back to Brother David’s words. The antidote to exhaustion, at times, is wholeheartedness; an invitation to bring all of yourself into the work that actually calls you.

The best leaders I’ve worked with share one quality: they are genuinely, continuously becoming. They read widely. They sit with discomfort. They invite the wisdom of a wide world, including books that change them. That willingness to be changed is what makes a leader worth following.

If you want a more trusting team, a culture of belonging or a magnetic brand that attracts more of the right customers, I can help. If you'd like to explore if working together makes sense, drop me a line.

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