7 Books by Black Business Leaders on How to Grow, Scale and Lead

Who you are shapes how you lead. Leaders are made in the trenches, making day-to-day decisions that impact shareholders, customers and teams. Simply put: leaders are layered, and many times the strategic insights people admire come directly from the intersection of our layers. 

With this in mind, I curated a list of my favorite books by Black business owners who share how their personal and professional experiences impact how they lead. With candor and wit, they encourage us to think differently about the future, just as they have during their own journey building billion-dollar businesses. 

Acting Up: Winning in Business and Life Using Down-Home Wisdom by Janice Bryant Howroyd

With a net worth of over $390 million, Howroyd made her way from the segregated South to becoming the first Black woman to own a billion-dollar business. She is the founder and CEO of ActOne Group, a global enterprise that provides employment, workforce management and procurement solutions. In Acting Up, Howroyd walks you through the strategies she employed to build her company, from building winning teams to leveraging tech in saturated industries. 

How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World by Dambisa Moyo

Prize-winning economist and veteran board director, Dambisa Moyo wrote How Boards Work as a wake-up call for present and future board members. Analyzing the misconduct demonstrated at popular companies, Moyo argues that corporations need boards that are more transparent, knowledgeable and diverse. Most poignant is her belief that boards must be deeply involved in setting the strategic course of the companies they lead. This book is perfect for current and future board members looking for a roadmap on how to better guide companies through challenges. 

Chasing Youth Culture and Getting It Right: How Your Business Can Profit by Tapping Today's Most Powerful Trendsetters and Tastemakers by Tina Wells

Tina Wells started her multi-million-dollar marketing agency, Buzz Marketing Group, at the tender age of 16. Very early on in her life, Wells understood how to reach and speak to millennial consumers, and her expertise is sought after by top brands. If you are a marketer looking for insight into the $43 billion youth market, Wells is ready to introduce you to the Wired Techie, the Conformist But Somewhat Paradoxical Preppy, the Always-Mellow Alternative and the Cutting-Edge Independent consumers in your audience. 

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

Sure to provoke thought, best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell revolutionizes how we understand leadership and decision-making in Blink. Delving into neuroscience and psychology, Gladwell questions why some leaders seem to make brilliant decisions while others make poor ones. He analyzes instinct, gut reactions and “thin-slicing”, the ability to filter through an overwhelming number of variables to get to the few factors that matter. Ready to be challenged? Blink will push the boundaries on both what and how you think.

Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? by Reginald Lewis and Blair S. Walker

Reginald Lewis, the first African-American in the United States to build a billion-dollar company, was a maverick ahead of his time. Lewis ran his own corporate firm for 15 years before founding his private equity firm, TLC Group L.P., in 1983. At its peak, his firm had sales of $2.2 billion and was featured as number 512 in Fortune magazine’s 1,000 largest companies. Lewis passed away from brain cancer before completing his memoir, so this book unearths the wisdom and intellect of a man who settled for nothing less than excellence from the colleagues, friends and family members who knew him best. 

Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms by Shellye Archambeau

From climbing the ranks at IBM to her role as the CEO of MetricStream, this bold book details the risks Shellye Archambeau took to steer her family, her career and her company toward success. Full of heartfelt wisdom from one of Silicon Valley's first African-American women CEOs, this book offers you a blueprint on how to achieve both personal and professional goals.

The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery by Sarah Lewis 

The Rise traces the stories of the world’s most iconic choreographers, writers, painters, inventors and entrepreneurs—from Frederick Douglass, Samuel F.B. Morse, and J.K. Rowling to Nobel Prize-winning physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. Written over the course of four years, this book argues that great achievement (and the courage, determination and grit required to achieve it in the first place) only comes after pivoting through failure. If you’re looking to understand success as a process, this book is for you.

These business owners are successful because of who they are and the way they use the adversities they have encountered to influence their work. They leaned into their edge and found their space. The takeaway? As you execute, continue to allow who you are to shape how you lead. It can make all the difference.

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