Books 2025
The Books I Didn't Plan to Read Together
This year, reading was... distracting.
I read less than usual. When I shared this with my wife, she laughed. Fair enough, I was writing a book, reading constantly but in fragments: snippets from many sources, rereading, refining, thinking, circling back. Plus, I shifted roles in my line of work and entered a demanding leadership transition. To call this a “normal” reading year would be misleading.
Still, the quality of what I read was higher. More researched. More grounded. Written by people with depth and lived authority.
What quietly connects these books is words like change and homecoming, not sentimentally, but as inner grounding, reorientation, and perspective.
Here are some of my favorites.
1. Book of the Year
On Leadership: A Walk Through the Pentateuch — Jonathan Sacks
A Christmas gift from my friend Maarten. Short chapters written in dense, culturally rich language, filled with timely wisdom. A must-read, especially for spiritual leaders.
Below are distilled versions of the sentences I underlined:
Great leadership is rooted in care for all humanity, not only one’s own group. What gives their devotion to their own people dignity and moral strength is that they care for humanity as a whole.
To be an agent of hope, to love the people you lead, and to widen their horizons to embrace humanity as a whole—that is the kind of leadership that gives people the ability to recover from crisis and move on.
Individuals live day to day; leaders think in years and generations. As private persons we can think about tomorrow, but in our role as leaders we must think long-term, focusing our eyes on the far horizon.
Leadership is not about being believed in, but about believing in others. It does not matter whether they believe in you. What matters is that you believe in them.
To do anything great, we have to be aware of two temptations. One is the fear of greatness: Who am I? The other is being convinced of your greatness: Who are they? I can do it better.
People do not become leaders because they are great. They become great because they are willing to serve as leaders.
What matters most is the willingness to answer the call. What matters is the willingness, when challenge calls, to say Hineni—”Here I am.”
2. Healing What Is Within
(Trauma, presence, and homecoming)
Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself—and to God—When You’re Wounded, Weary, and Wandering — Chuck DeGroat
The inner journey is both the shortest distance and the longest pilgrimage. It is one of the hardest paths we are called to walk, and yet it is where the strength to live fully, heal deeply, and become truly alive is found.
Core ideas:
Trauma—deep wounding that creates disconnection—is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering. At its heart is not simply what happened, but aloneness within the event itself.
Humans are not designed to heal alone. Without connection, we wither. In our suffering, we need an empathetic witness—someone to say, “Where are you?”
Depression, anxiety, and addiction are wounded places that need the balm of reconnection and compassionate presence.
Our own depths frighten us. As long as we resist the inward journey, we remain at the surface of our lives. This call to attention is spiritual: a call to faithful presence to ourselves, to God, and to one another.
Much of what looks like self-absorption is actually self-disconnection. Paying attention is not indulgence; it is healing.
Even darkness can become grace. The deepest work often happens when the lights go out. God is freeing you from yourself.
God’s posture remains kindness—gently inviting us back Home.
3. Platforms and Pillars
Platforms to Pillars: Trading the Burden of Performance for the Freedom of God’s Presence — Mark Sayers
I learn a lot from Mark Sayers. He has a rare ability to name cultural shifts honestly while drawing on history, philosophy, technology, anthropology, and theology.
Core ideas:
Pillars are formed through endurance, not visibility. The ability of pillars to persevere under pressure over long passages of time is an essential part of their ability to partner with God in His kingdom’s mission in the world.
Pillar formation is costly. Sacrificial living is an essential element of the discipleship of a pillar. It requires surrender rather than self-protection.
Pillars are not necessarily leaders, but leaders should be pillars. When leaders lack this inner formation, leadership becomes distorted into “a project of personal platform building.”
Disillusionment with performance can become the doorway to formation. Often, people learn to live as pillars after they have failed at living for platform.
Many digital platforms operate as medicating institutions. They offer solace, a disconnection from everyday difficulty and same-day delivery of narcotic doses of pleasurable distraction. The platform society wounds us, then provides us pain relief in the place of genuine medical care.
The issue is not whether sacrifice exists, but who or what it is offered to. The original platform humans built was the altar, the place of sacrifice. Will we live as sacrifices upon the altars of our platformed society, or will we step into God’s invitation to live as pillars?
Faithful, sacrificial living confronts powers that seek to consume and discard human lives. How we live is a form of spiritual warfare.
Pillars remain when outcomes are uncertain and recognition is absent. The faithfulness of pillars under pressure enables new creation to be birthed in seemingly hopeless situations. Pillars provide support while new creation is fragile, unpopular, and new.
The opportunity:
The failures of the platform society are causing many to question and a growing number to explore faith. Given the failings of the platform society, the church has a great opportunity to explore what it means to rebuild social capital and provide community.
4. Clear Thinking
Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results — Shane Parrish
This book gave language to things I sensed but hadn’t articulated. The author, in his own words, worked for a three-letter intelligence agency doing cool stuff.
Core ideas:
High-quality, direct information matters. Secondhand explanations and abstractions often lose accuracy, nuance, and usefulness.
Information degrades as it passes through people. Like the game of telephone, each layer adds distortion through filters, assumptions, and interpretation.
Great thinkers seek first-hand understanding. They learn directly from experts, experience, and reality—not just summaries or opinions.
You can’t think clearly from only one perspective. When you see a problem from only your own point of view, you develop blind spots—and blind spots cause trouble.
Being willing to change your mind is a strength, not a weakness. Admitting you’re wrong shows adaptability, courage, and maturity.
Facing reality requires courage. It takes bravery to revise beliefs, accept feedback, and acknowledge when something isn’t working.
Your example affects others more than you realize. You influence people not only by what you say, but by how you live—even when you’re not present.
One-sentence summary: Clear thinking requires humility, multiple perspectives, direct understanding, and the courage to face reality and revise our beliefs.
5. Leadership on the Line
Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Change — Ronald A. Heifetz & Marty Linsky
I’m halfway through this book—not a classic for comfort, but absolutely necessary.
What stayed with me:
Adaptive change threatens people’s identities, not just their habits. To change the way people see and do things is to challenge how they define themselves.
Opposition is less about disagreement and more about fear of loss. When people resist adaptive work, their goal is to shut down those who exercise leadership in order to preserve what they have.
Systems protect themselves by punishing or neutralizing those who push real change. When exercising leadership, you risk getting marginalized, diverted, attacked, or seduced.
Seeking approval weakens leadership and distorts judgment. You make yourself vulnerable when you too strongly give in to the understandable desire to enjoy their continuing approval.
Willingness to endure loss shows seriousness and forces others to confront reality. Accepting casualties signals your commitment.
What people feel but cannot say matters more than what they explicitly argue. Listen to the song beneath the words.
Leadership is fundamentally relational, not heroic or solitary. Relating to people is central to leading and staying alive.
Holding everyone together can destroy the mission. Sometimes your commitments will be tested by your willingness to let people go.
One-sentence summary: Real leadership is not about authority or answers, but about enduring loss, managing resistance, and staying connected to people while pushing them, and yourself, through painful but necessary change.
I did not plan this at the beginning of 2025, but it is not for no reason that these became my most valuable reads this year.
In a nutshell, here’s how they actually play out together:
These books form a coherent path. Sacks sets the vision, what leadership should be. Healing Within addresses the inner work required. Platforms and Pillars names the cultural forces we’re fighting. Clear Thinking gives practical tools. Leadership on the Line prepares you for the cost.
From ideal to interior to diagnosis to tools to reality.
Extra
Non-Western Leadership & History
Following my friend Paul’s advice, I intentionally read more non-Western leadership this year.
I read biographies of Fan Noli and Faik Konica, written by Ilir Konomi, two remarkable Albanian intellectuals and statesmen from the previous century.
My takeaway: we have not changed much as a nation. Their depth, intellect, and clarity left me in awe and slightly unsettled.
A forming conviction:
Unlike Western management leadership books written by “experts,” the Eastern world generally produces leadership books that are biographies of dead leaders. So it is not a framework but a life lived—with the good, the bad, and the consequences in the society and nation they led.
Spiritual formation
The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom — Henri Nouwen
I encountered Henri Nouwen several times this year. His writing, especially on the inner voice, feels raw, honest, deeply human.
I’m savoring each short diary-like chapter slowly.
My Own Book: Still
It may sound self-serving, but Still, which I wrote, refined, and reread many times this year, has been among the most impactful.
In researching and observing a countercultural posture of not being still, the invitation to presence felt especially urgent—and has been warmly received in these first weeks.
Still: Leading with Presence in an Age of Chaos
If you order now, it should arrive before Christmas.
I didn’t set out to read about leadership, soul-weariness, platforms, or change this year. I set out simply to stay present. These books found me where I was—and named what I was already living.
If leadership is anything, it is the slow work of becoming someone who can remain present when certainty fades, applause quiets, and the work gets costly.
These books helped me do that this year. I’m grateful for them.
I’m curious, what books shaped you, unsettled you, or helped you stay present this year?
For the ToLeadWell community, I try to offer thoughtful, lived-out reflections that respect your time and serve your leadership. I share this freely, in the hope it’s helpful. If you know someone who might benefit, passing it along would mean a great deal.