Leaders shape the future; they set strategic goals and guide their organizations toward attaining them. But they are powerless without others’ cooperation. Here are five books that will hone your ability to lead through influence.

“Leaders almost by definition are people who change minds—be they leaders of a nation, a corporation or a nonprofit institution,” writes Howard Gardner, a professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a recipient of a MacArthur award for his theory of multiple intelligences. His book Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds (Harvard Business School Press, 2006) forms the foundation on which lessons from the other books will stand.

The book offers a sophisticated framework for understanding how minds change. In Gardner’s model, there are three aspects to mind changing: the entities—the concepts, stories, theories and skills—that change; the levers that effect such changes (these include reason, research and redescriptions); and the arenas of mind change (anything from a nation to one’s own mind). Launching a new corporate initiative that requires employees to think differently? With the arena known, you’re able to choose the entities to focus on and use the levers that raise the odds of successful mind change.

Because mind-changing depends on messages, read Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Random House, 2007), by Chip and Dan Heath, to learn how to make your messages compelling. The authors, who are brothers (Dan is a consultant at Duke Corporate Education, and Chip is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business), say the most effective messages are “sticky,” a term they credit to Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Little, Brown, 2000).

“By ’stick,’ we mean that your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact—they change your audience’s opinions and behaviors,” write the Heath brothers. As they deconstructed sticky ideas, they found the same six principles popping up again and again.

§          Sticky ideas are profound but simple.

§          They are unexpected and thus capture our attention.

§          They are concrete, with details that enable us to easily visualize them.

§          They are credible. They are supported by authoritative sources or allow the listener to test them.

§          They are emotional; they make us care about them.

§          Finally, they are supported by stories. Stories, say the authors, “are how we get people to act on our ideas.”

The Heath brothers’ emphasis on stories lead us to Annette Simmons’s new book, Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins: How to Use Your Own Stories to Communicate with Power and Impact (Amacom, 2007). If the idea of storytelling seems odd, it shouldn’t. “You are already telling stories about who you are, why you are here, what you envision, value, teach and know about each other’s secret thoughts—the problem is that you haven’t realized how much your stories matter,” writes Simmons, president of Group Process Consulting.

If you draw a blank when you try to think of good stories to tell, the book includes exercises designed to help you build your own stories. It will also help you refine your storytelling skills.

When you want to change minds, it is important to remember that communication occurs beyond speech. In his new book, Micromessaging: Why Great Leadership Is Beyond Words (McGraw-Hill, 2006), Stephen Young, cofounder of the consultancy Insight Education Systems, reveals how leaders can undermine their stated goals with micromessages—expressions, tone of voice—that don’t match the words being spoken. The book’s key message for mind changers is self-awareness. If you want to succeed in influencing others, don’t send mixed messages.

The final book I recommend for your influence-building journey is Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations and Bad Behavior (McGraw-Hill, 2004), by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler, the cofounders of consulting firm VitalSmarts.

Very few people enjoy confrontation; some avoid it like the plague. But in a survey the authors conducted, they discovered that “opinion leaders wielded influence because they were the best at stepping up to colleagues, coworkers or even their bosses, and holding them accountable.” Based on their study of successful leaders, the authors devised a six-step process for mastering the crucial confrontation.

A bonus: To find out how good you are at managing confrontational conversations, you can take the free, online self-assessment offered by the authors at www.vitalsmarts.com/styleunderstress.aspx. 

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Theodore Kinni has written or ghostwritten 13 business books, including, with Donna Kinni, No Substitute for Victory: Lessons in Strategy and Leadership from General Douglas MacArthur.

Five books that will amplify your ability to lead through influence

Leaders shape the future; they set strategic goals and guide their organizations toward attaining them. But they are powerless without others’ cooperation. Here are five books that will hone your ability to lead through influence.

The Cost of Myopic Management

Under pressure to hit immediate performance targets, many managers inflate earnings, often by cutting expenditures. In a recent survey of 401 top financial executives, 80 percent said they would decrease spending on “discretionary” activities like marketing and research and development to meet short-term goals.

Tattoo you

Last year Justin Miloro had to wear long sleeves to conceal the Buddha curling around his left forearm and the yellow-orange sun rays on his right. Pants covered the depiction of Earth on one leg and wings on the other.

From WOM to www

FOR years, small businesses have relied on the magic of WOM (word of mouth) to attract customers. Yet, with young Filipinos lately turning into entrepreneurs, too many small companies are creating too much buzz that customers now find it hard to tell apart the best from the bluff.

Winning: AVOIDING THE REVERSE-HOSTAGE SYNDROME

Q: Why do so many companies not address cross-cultural differences in a merger until it’s too late? Karen Fenner, Camden, New Jersey

A: Because you can’t number-crunch culture. And financial analysis is almost always where merger evaluations begin, along with some level of strategic analysis.

The monarchical tradition

Thomas Jefferson discontinued the practice of personally delivering the president’s report to Congress that was inaugurated by George Washington, the first president, on January 8, 1790, in New York, the capital of the new nation until 1801. But since the US Constitution required a president to report to Congress, Jefferson wrote his message and had it read by a clerk.

The future of San Miguel

‘We’ve done preliminary studies, going so far as to hire an independent adviser to shortlist for us attractive industries in which we might choose to participate, industries like mining, power, infrastructure, water, other utilities and property.’

Seeing the World

We can state, quite categorically, that we are living in very demanding times. Our planet is under stress. Our country confronts serious challenges. Our communities are in search of real solutions to age-old problems.

The hidden good news about CEO dismissals

Worldwide, boards of large corporations are dismissing four times more CEOs today than in 1995, a trend that raises an important question: Are boards undermining the chief executive’s ability to lead for the long term?

Overcoming resistance to change

There are a few in every bunch: the naysayers, the predictors of disaster, the ones who dig in their heels and fight you at every turn. What would a change initiative be without them?

From Small to Big Screen

Jim Libiran is not your regular commercial filmmaker and screenwriter who has a standard formula for a box-office hit and makes use of predictable plots and cliché lines.

‘Just do it’

IMAGINE a situation where killings and disappearances are taking place. The victims form a distinct and disliked, though by no means unpopular political grouping. In fact, they have the most populist agenda of any other.

Leadership that focuses on the customer–really

Many executives and managers exhort their followers to make the customer the center of everything they do. Yet for all the passion and conviction of their words, genuine customer focus remains theory rather than practice in their organizations.

Forward-Thinking Cultures

It’s hard to manage any organization so that its long-term interests aren’t sacrificed to short-term expedience. But there is an added wrinkle for organizations whose operations are globally dispersed: cultural orientation toward the future varies widely the world over.

Book Keeper

The life of National Book Store founder Socorro C. Ramos should serve as an inspiration to the younger generation on how to hurdle the numerous challenges thrown our way. Her success, not just in business but in all aspects of life, stresses the importance of focus, dedication, hard work, education and other important values.

It takes a village to raise a child

Aldo, 5, did not mean to trap his mother when he asked her if God made everything, to which she answered, naturally, “Yes, He did.”

“Why did He make the poor?”

What is your company’s ‘signature’ experience?

Your company’s signature experience exemplifies what you do especially well; it’s the odd or unique process that makes your company stand out in people’s minds. Developing a signature experience and communicating it to job candidates can help you streamline your hiring process. It also helps you build an unusually engaged, excited and committed work force.

Strategy: private equity’s long view

What can the gods of private equity (PE) teach us about managing for the long term? If you think that their lightning reflex, do-what-it-takes approach has nothing to tell us about the long haul, you’d be wrong.

Wrapped up

Having fun and making money are two things that Rommel Juan can mix quite easily.

What is the color of gold?

I lost my appetite for shark’s fin soup when I learned how the shark was skinned alive and thrown back into the sea. But not entirely, for it tastes good. Some of the good and precious things in this world—including such wonders as the Pyramids of Egypt and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon—have a cruel history. It seems that civilization is built on blood for the most part. But time and the hunger for precious, wondrous things blurs the history of the process.

Toward An Independent, Fair And Fast Justice System

Adrian Cristobal: The Supreme Court has been in the news lately, principally because in these perilous times, we think of the Supreme Court as “the enemy of political persecution.” We tend to think of the three branches of government—Executive, the Judiciary and the Legislative—as contradictory to each other.

Real Leaders Negotiate

Good leaders are invariably effective negotiators. After all, authority has its limits. Some of the people you lead are smarter, more talented and, in some situations, more powerful than you are. In addition, often you’re called to lead people over whom you have no authority, such as members of commissions, boards and other departments in your organization.

Set Up To Fail: Economist Paul Ormerod on strategy and extinction

In his recent book Why Most Things Fail, theoretical economist Paul Ormerod argues that failure is the defining characteristic of biological, social and economic systems. But Ormerod, a former economic forecaster and now principal of Volterra, the London-based consulting firm he cofounded, doesn’t think that’s a bad thing.

Tubbataha dreaming

My initiation to Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park started with a back-roll, one day in May, into Jessie Beazley Reef. The first sharks of the trip were close enough to make out the white on their tips. Grey reef sharks were on active patrol, too, and we spotted no less than three pregnant sharks, bulging at their sides.

The ethics of revolution

THE death of Elias achieves revolutionary significance the moment society is recognized as a creator of victims in order to execute them. Elias had been condemned even before he was born, and it only remained for society to carry out the death sentence.

Down in the Valley

SAN JOSE—Silicon Valley, says San Jose/Silicon Valley Journal editor Norman Bell, is more of a state of mind than a piece of geography.

3 habits that hold leaders back–and how to overcome them

In my 10 years as a board member of the Peter Drucker Foundation, one of the wisest things I heard him say was, “We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do.

Help newly hired executives adapt quickly

The main reason why newly hired outside executives have such an abysmal failure rate (40 percent, according to one study) is poor acculturation: They don’t adapt well to the new company’s ways of doing things. In fact, some three-quarters of 53 senior human-resources managers I surveyed cited poor cultural fit as the driver for onboarding failures.

Chip off the old block

Developing a good work ethic at a young age proved to be beneficial for Intel Technology Philippines managing director Michael Wentling.