Leaders Are Readers: Q1 2025 Reading List

Welcome to the 2025 edition of "Leaders Are Readers." The challenges facing leaders today are more dynamic than ever, and I'm excited to continue curating insights to help fuel your leadership journey. My recent reads offer a blend of philosophical perspectives and practical advice to equip you with the tools you need to navigate the complexities ahead. Let's dive into the books that are shaping my thinking and, hopefully, yours as well.

Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business

By Danny Meyer

If you've asked me for a book recommendation in the last couple of years, I've probably thrown Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara your way.^Footnote1 It's one of my all-time favorite leadership books. Guidara's mentor, Danny Meyer, wrote a book, too, and it's just as good.

Setting the Table is a management and leadership masterclass. Meyer details his journey from opening his first restaurant as a young entrepreneur to building a thriving restaurant group in New York City. He drops so many leadership insights along the way that I earmarked twenty-five pages as particularly relevant and made countless notes in the margins.

I've been thinking a lot about the distinction between leadership and management lately. Setting the Table might be the best book I've read that covers both and, more importantly, teaches how to get better at them. In fact, Meyer's "51 percenters" concept—employees thrive when 51 percent of their skills derive from hospitality excellence—helped me refine my management values at the end of 2024. I started 2025 with a fresh sense of clarity, and it feels great!^Footnote2

Meyer tackles everything from hiring and developing managers to knowing when to let someone go, turning mistakes into triumphs, and using hospitality as a game-changing business practice. If you lead a team, read this book and then pass it along. Buy copies for your managers, lead a book study on it, and challenge your team to articulate its values. Ask team members how they plan to recenter the saltshaker for their teams.^Footnote3

I could fill pages with my takeaways from Setting the Table, but I'll leave you with one of my favorites to chew on: "Three hallmarks of effective leadership are to provide clear vision for your business so that your employees know where you're taking them; to hold people accountable for consistent standards of excellence; and to communicate a well-defined set of cultural priorities and non-negotiable values."^Footnote4

Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Client Retention

By John Ruhlin

When I was twelve, I got what every kid wanted for Christmas that year—an iPod Classic. It was about an inch thick, bigger than the iPhone I use now, and it only played music. Simpler times. But I didn't love it because it was expensive or trendy—I loved it because it gave me the freedom to listen to music without my Walkman skipping every five steps. That's the essence of a great gift: It's not about the cost—it's about how a gift communicates value for a person or idea.

Before reading Giftology, I had never considered how strategic gifting could strengthen relationships in professional settings. While the book is aimed at businesses looking to win clients, the principles also apply broadly to leadership.

Imagine hiring a new team member, and instead of just pointing them to their desk and wishing them a nice first day, you gift them a beautiful frame in which to place a family photo, or you send dinner to their house with a note: "We know starting a new job can be overwhelming—one less thing to worry about tonight." Small. Thoughtful. Impactful.

Giftology is a quick read on a specific idea, but if you adopt its mindset, you'll never default to serving stale sheet cake in a drab conference room again. The book contains plenty of low and no-cost ideas, so you can use intentional gifting regardless of institutional or departmental budget.

I also want to acknowledge that John Ruhlin, the author of Giftology, passed away unexpectedly at the end of 2024. It always hits hard when someone who shared valuable lessons with so many is gone too soon. May his legacy live on in the way we show care for others.

The Creative Act: A Way of Being

By Rick Rubin

Some might disagree, but I believe leadership is a creative act. The best leaders I know are highly creative people. They see solutions others miss, refuse to settle for binary thinking, and constantly push for new ways to do things better.

The Creative Act is a collection of short philosophies on the act of creating works of art from legendary music producer Rick Rubin. Rubin, who has worked with everyone from the Beastie Boys to LL Cool J, is an artist at heart, and his perspective on creativity as a way of life stuck with me like gum on the sole of my shoe. Following are a few of my favorite leadership lessons from his book:

• One of the best strategies for moving forward on an idea is to lower the stakes. We tend to think that what we are doing is the most important thing that will define us for eternity. It's best to move forward with "a more accurate point of view that it's a small work, a beginning."^Footnote5
• There is a universal set of thoughts and habits that are not conducive to good work or leadership, such as believing you're not good enough, having goals so ambitious you can't begin, letting a perceived need for funding get in the way, having too many ideas, and not knowing where to start.^Footnote6 There are about ten other self-sabotaging habits that I know every leader can see in themselves and start to work through.
• "Each mindset (abundance and scarcity) evokes a universal rule: whatever we concentrate on, we get."^Footnote7
• Making the simple complicated is common. Making the complex simple is creativity. If more leaders specialized in simplifying complicated things instead of the other way around, our world would be better.^Footnote8

If higher education leaders could embrace their creativity, our campuses would be better places to work and learn.

Striking a Balance: Navigating the Ethical Dilemmas of AI in Higher Education

By Katalin Wargo and Brier Anderson

Late last year, a colleague said to me, "I like 'Leaders Are Readers,' but your recommendations seem a bit void of AI content." I replied, "Thanks!" That was the end of our conversation.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a top-of-mind concern for many people. I don't ignore it like a knee injury before a big race day—but I am careful to keep it in its proper place. AI isn't the work of leadership; it's another tool leaders can use to make decisions and clarify thinking in the fundamentally human endeavor of leading.

That said, "Striking a Balance" caught my attention because it focuses on the ethics of AI, not just the hype. Ethical dilemmas define leadership—not when things are easy but when the stakes are high, and AI is certainly high stakes.

Wargo and Anderson frame the ethical dilemmas of AI into three categories that can be expanded to leadership generally: addressing social inquiry, understanding environmental impacts, and emphasizing a human-centered approach.

They conclude by writing, "Responsible AI integration in higher education requires striking a balance between riding the wave of AI advancements and upholding ethical principles."^Footnote9 Substitute "leadership" for "AI integration," and you have a mantra worth keeping.

Closing Thoughts

These readings are a mix: some philosophical and some practical. I hope they give you a strong start to 2025. Leadership isn't for the faint of heart, but it is deeply rewarding. Whether you're defining values for your team, strengthening relationships through meaningful gifts, embracing creativity, or navigating ethical dilemmas, intentional leadership will always be in high demand.

I believe you are those leaders.

Be curious. Be well.

Notes

1. Read my takeaways from Unreasonable Hospitality in Ryan MacTaggart, "Leaders Are Readers: Q1 Reading List," EDUCAUSE Review, March 7, 2023. Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.↩
2. Danny Meyer, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business (HarperCollins, 2006), 14. Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.↩
3. You'll have to read the book yourself to learn more about moving the saltshaker. Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.↩
4. Meyer, Setting the Table, 187. Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.↩
5. Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being (Penguin Press, 2023), 77. Jump back to footnote 5 in the text.↩
6. Ibid., 139. Jump back to footnote 6 in the text.↩
7. Ibid., 202. Jump back to footnote 7 in the text.↩
8. Ibid., 388. Jump back to footnote 8 in the text.↩
9. Katalin Wargo and Brier Anderson, "Striking a Balance: Navigating the Ethical Dilemmas of AI in Higher Education," EDUCAUSE Review, December 5, 2024. Jump back to footnote 9 in the text.↩

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Ryan MacTaggart is Associate Director, Professional Learning, at EDUCAUSE.