Top 10 Essential Leadership Blogs Every Leader Must Read

Leadership is not just about the job title a person has. Leadership is about the behaviors they display and the actions they inspire. Leadership is a skill, not a function, and the greatest leaders are the ones that recognize that and are always seeking to develop and grow. That’s why we’ve pulled together this list of our favourite leadership blogs – so you can set yourself up with a few regular destinations for that fix of wisdom to help you become better leaders.

Why read blogs?

We know… there is sooooo much going on, is this really something worth spending precious time on? Our answer has to be yes.

As we’ve said, leadership is a skill that needs to be developed and nurtured, so continuing to absorb guidance and advice is a good idea for anyone heading up a team or a business.

When the day-to-day tasks and responsibilities are so extensive and all-consuming, it’s really important that you keep being reminded of the leadership behaviours that will ultimately make your team more successful. Things can slip and good leadership behaviors can be forgotten when pressure is on and things are busy. So, we’d always recommend carving out a regular slot of time to just take a step back and recalibrate your leadership thinking with some solid advice and ideas from these leadership experts.

Even if you think you’re a pretty great leader already, having a thirst for new ideas and new perspectives is an important trait to cultivate if you want to be innovative, inspiring and forward-thinking. Reading as much as you can is all part of that.

And these blogs we’re recommending, aren’t just for leaders. Aspiring leaders should consider subscribing to these and devouring their sage wisdom and advice as regularly as possible! Good leadership is a habit and habits are built up over time through repeating actions and behaviors until they become second nature. So, the sooner you started reading leadership advice, the better leader you will ultimately become and the easier you will find it.

Our top 10 leadership blogs

Here are our top 10 leadership blogs to read regularly and help you become a better leader. In no particular order…

Skip Prichard

Leadership Insights is the blog from the highly experienced CEO, author and keynote speaker Skip Prichard. Known for his track record transforming and turning around companies and their cultures, his blog focuses on leadership, personal development, growth strategies and corporate turnarounds. His articles are as frequent as they are useful!

Skip also has a podcast, Aim Higher, which you can find on his site. Great if you want to maximize your time and consume your leadership advice on the move…while you walk the dog maybe?

The Leader’s Digest by Suzi McAlpine

Suzi McAlpine’s blog The Leader’s Digest has been widely recognized as one of the top leadership blogs in the world – yes, ours isn’t the only list you’ll find Suzi’s blog on! And that’s for good reason. Suzi is an executive leadership coach, so she knows how to train people to become successful leaders. And it’s that practical approach that ensures you always come away from reading one of her blog posts, with some real, actionable advice to help you develop into the best leader you can be.

You’d be hard pushed to find a leadership issue, problem or skill that Suzi hasn’t covered in her extensive writing. Her posts include advice on everything from delivering bad news to managing up to productivity hacks for leaders. All really practical, useful stuff for your everyday leadership problems.

Michael Hyatt

Michael Hyatt is a New York Times bestselling author. He is the Founder of a leadership development company, Michael Hyatt & Co, and his blog can be found on their site.

His ethos centres around being a great leader, but with balance and also being present at home. Almost everything he teaches is about having focus and high productivity in your leadership role in order to have the time for your life at home. He calls this the ‘Double win’. Now that is the kind of leadership guru we like – someone who knows what’s truly most important.

Michael has recently stepped down as CEO of his leadership coaching company and has been succeeded by his daughter Megan Hyatt Miller. But fear not, Michael says his move to Chairman means he’ll have more time to focus on ‘content creation’ and maintain the regularity of these great blog articles.

Ken Blanchard

Ken Blanchard has had a significant influence on leadership thinking for many years, starting with his 1982 international bestseller The One Minute Manager. His business, The Ken Blanchard Companies, offers leadership and training development services, and runs the Blanchard Leaderchat blog. Contributions to the blog come from across Ken’s team, but all the advice and guidance is in line with his leadership principles and ethos – something they call ‘Kenship’.

Robin Sharma

Author of a number of bestselling books including The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari and The 5am Club and popular with many famous CEOs and public figures, Robin Sharma is a leadership guru with big name, house-hold brands as his clients.

Robin’s blog focuses on Leadership, of course, but also tips and guidance for increasing productivity, driving Innovation and a topic he calls ‘Personal Mastery’ where he gives personal development guidance.

Leadership Freak by Dan Rockwell

Dan Rockwell’s Leadership Freak blog, with his half a million subscribers, has been heralded as the most socially shared blog on Leadership (according to the Center for Management & Organization Effectiveness). And that’s for good reason. His premise is about keeping his advice short and to the point. Each blog article is just 300 words long! So, it’s great for a fast burst of inspiration or a quick knowledge boost during your busy day.

Tanveer Naseer

Tanveer Naseer has been recognised by Inc. magazine as one of their Top 100 Leadership and Management Experts and one of their Top 100 Leadership Speakers and his blog shows why. Great advice and regular articles covering topics from how to lead when remote working, to the impact of AI, to measuring success and a bunch on how to foster the right mindset in your teams.

He also has a podcast if you like his content but would rather listen than read! The podcast is called Leadership Biz Café and has Tanveer interview different leaders and experts each time. These interviews are also interspersed with his ‘Leadership Espresso Shots’ which are short episodes where he delivers is own advice to his listeners alongside summaries from his guests.

John Maxwell

John Maxwell has been a leadership guru for many, many years. He’s been a leader himself for over 50 years and was named Inc. magazine’s number one leadership expert. He’s the author of several best-selling books including How Successful People Think and The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. The main thrust of his content is about making a difference in the world – he promotes leadership values in the hope that people will be empowered to fulfil their potential and change their lives, and the lives of others, for the better.

Although he writes a little less frequently than in previous times, what he does publish it’s well worth prioritising when it comes to choosing your articles. There’s an extensive back catalogue to work through, all John Maxwell’s advice will stand the test of time and be just as relevant now as the day it was written.

Leadership Now

Leadership Now is a really interesting operation. It’s a website that actually extends beyond their blog, Leading Blog, and offers a wide range of content to promote leadership thinking and training. It was started back in 1980 (obviously not as a website then) by Michael McKinney as an information source for leadership knowledge.

So, as well as a really huge archive of blog content, dating back 15 years, there’s also a library of excerpts from bestselling leadership books, transcripts of seminal speeches by prominent leaders, book lists and even a quiz to see if you have what it takes to be a great leader.

Harvard Business Review

Now obviously the Harvard Business Review is not, strictly speaking a blog. Far from it! For one thing, The Harvard Business Review started life in 1922, so a little before the advent of blogs 😬. But, alongside the business journal/magazine, there is an incredible wealth of digital materials at hbr.org covering almost any subject a leader could possibly need guidance on.
They recently changed their subscription model and you can view two articles a month for free, four articles if you register for a free account, but will need to select a paid-for subscription package to consume content beyond that. So, if you don’t want to become a paid subscriber, then making a point of reading one HBR article a month would be a good strategy for you.

That concludes our Top 10 list of Leadership Blogs. It wasn’t an easy job refining our long-list down to a top 10, but it’s important, when life and work is so busy, to decide on some priorities and focus on what is going to make the most difference. We believe these top blogs will make a difference to your success as a leader.