Five Books Every EMS Leader Should Read in 2024

It is no secret that leadership in EMS is desperately lacking. There are many leaders who truly want to do well but simply do not know where to begin. To help, I have compiled a list of five books every EMS leader should read to help better lead their organizations.

1. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High (Buy it here)

 One reason employees cite low morale is leadership that is unresponsive to their needs. One reason leaders are unresponsive is not due to a lack of desire, rather, a fear of difficult conversations. Learn how to keep your cool and get the results you want when emotions flare. When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation badly and suffer the consequences; or read Crucial Conversations and discover how to communicate best when it matters most. Crucial Conversations gives you the tools you need to step up to life’s most difficult and important conversations, say what’s on your mind, and achieve the positive resolutions you want. You’ll learn how to:

• Prepare for high-impact situations with a six-minute mastery technique
• Make it safe to talk about almost anything
• Be persuasive, not abrasive
• Keep listening when others blow up or clam up
• Turn crucial conversations into the action and results you want

Whether they take place at work or at home, with your neighbors or your spouse, crucial conversations can have a profound impact on your career, your happiness, and your future. With the skills you learn in this book, you’ll never have to worry about the outcome of a crucial conversation again.

2. Leadership: Theory and Practice (Buy it here)

 This is the most expensive book on the list. This is also, hands down, the best leadership book there is, in my opinion. Leadership: Theory and Practice discusses several approaches to leadership, leadership theory, and several different leadership styles. This text will give the reader and understanding of which theory to use, and when, to achieve the best results for his or her organization. In updated 8th Edition of Leadership: Theory and Practice, a new chapter on Followership examines the central role followers play in the leadership process and unpacks the characteristics of both effective and ineffective followers. The new edition also includes a new ethical leadership style questionnaire and new coverage on the dark side of leadership and destructive leadership.

Adopted at more than 1600 institutions in 89 countries and translated into 13 different languages, this market leading text successfully combines an academically robust account of the major theories and models of leadership with an accessible style and special emphasis on how leadership theory can inform leadership practice. Peter G. Northouse uses a consistent structure for each chapter, allowing students to easily compare and contrast the various theories. Case studies and questionnaires provide students with practical examples and opportunities to deepen their personal understanding of their own leadership.

3.  Leading Change (Buy it here)

This easy-to-read book provides very practical, intuitive ways to help implement change within your organization. Simple assertions, such as the fact that nothing damages morale more than a leader who says one thing yet behaves in a different manner, make Leading Change a must read in 2024.

John Kotter’s now-legendary eight-step process for managing change with positive results has become the foundation for leaders and organizations across the globe. By outlining the process every organization must go through to achieve its goals, and by identifying where and how even top performers derail during the change process, Kotter provides a practical resource for leaders and managers charged with making change initiatives work. Leading Change is widely recognized as his seminal work and is an important precursor to his newer ideas on acceleration published in Harvard Business Review.

Needed more today than at any time in the past, this bestselling business book serves as both visionary guide and practical toolkit on how to approach the difficult yet crucial work of leading change in any type of organization. Reading this highly personal book is like spending a day with the world’s foremost expert on business leadership. You’re sure to walk away inspired and armed with the tools you need to inspire others.

4. The Leadership Challenge (But it here)

 This book positions leadership both as a skill to be learned, and as a relationship that must be nurtured to reach its full potential. This new sixth edition has been revised to address current challenges, and includes more international examples and a laser focus on business issues; you’ll learn how extraordinary leaders accomplish extraordinary things, and how to develop your leadership skills and style to deliver quality results every time. Engaging stories delve into the fundamental roles that great leaders fulfill, and simple frameworks provide a primer for those who seek continuous improvement; by internalizing key insights and putting concepts into action, you’ll become a more effective, more impactful leader.

A good leader gets things done; a great leader aspires, inspires, and achieves more. This book highlights the differences between good and great, and shows you how to bridge the chasm between getting things done and making things happen.

• Gain deep insight into leadership’s critical role in organizational health
• Navigate the shift toward team-oriented work relationships
• Motivate and inspire to break through the pervasive new cynicism
• Leverage the electronic global village to deliver better results

Business is evolving at an increasingly rapid rate, and leaders must keep pace with the changes or risk stagnation. People work differently, are motivated differently, and have different expectations today―business as usual is quickly losing its effectiveness. The Leadership Challenge helps you stay current, relevant, and effective in the modern workplace.

5. The Courageous Police Leader: A Survival Guide for Combatting Cowards, Chaos & Lies (Buy it here)

One of the best way a leader can develop is by looking outside of one’s own industry to gain insight. While policing and EMS are not the same industry, the two fields are inextricably linked through public safety. In this groundbreaking book, Major Travis Yates tears down the walls separating law enforcement and the community and exposes the dirt that keeps law enforcement from excelling to greatness and that continues to give the criminal element the winning hand.

Through his detailed research, impeccable story-telling and personal experiences, Yates will expose the cowards, reveal the lies and show you how to navigate the chaos that often occurs when cowardly leaders refuse to stand up for the good and decent heroes that wear the badge. This book will not only show you what cowardly leadership can do to law enforcement and their community but also the greatness of what courageous police leadership can achieve.

Leaders in EMS have much to learn from Major Yates about

• The courage to fear no battle
• Being loyal to the career- not politics
• Focusing on data- not delusions
• Fighting against myths and misinformation
• Having a plan
• Training with courage

and

• Pushing back

EMS leaders would be hard pressed The Courageous Police Leader and not walk away with valuable information which could be applied to their own careers and organizations.

The value of reading

Four of the five books listed above are required text books for master’s level education. However, none of the books listed above will be too difficult for anyone of any educational level to understand. Reading the books listed above will only serve to make you a better, more prepared, better educated leader. Once you read the books above you will not only know what to do to better your EMS agency, you will also have insight on when, how, and why to apply the principles you have learned. Read up, and let’s make 2024 a year of positive change for EMS.

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Source: www.lawofficer.com