A Harvard MBA student shares 5 business books that will help anyone succeed

Brian Snyder/Reuters

You know the drill: Every business or management book that has ever been published promises to tell you the silver bullet for being successful.

Sounds interesting, but, of course, most of them don't say much more than what's printed in the summary on the back.

As someone who has read a ton of business books over the past few years, I figured I would save you some time and money by sharing the ones that I've found to really be useful.

If you only have time to read a few, give one of these five a try!

1. "Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard"

Crown Business

This is probably the most useful general management book I've ever read.

Chip and Dan Heath talk through different methods for successfully implementing change at work and home by sharing a couple frameworks and illustrating their points using stories.

The best part about this book is that it's simple — I read it more than four years ago, and I still remember their key takeaways and apply them in my daily life.

2. "Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most"

Penguin Books

Need a go-to book for focusing on interpersonal skills or relationship-building techniques? "Difficult Conversations" is it. I like this book because it's able to boil down an extremely complicated topic into a set of actionable recommendations.

Going through this book with other people can also be a good way to strengthen work relationships or bounce ideas off others. For example, my manager and I read it jointly and then, moving forward, were able to use language from the book when discussing sticky situations.

The need to exercise empathy is what has stuck with me most from this book — without fully grounding yourself in the other party's situation, it's very difficult to reach a consensus.

3. "The One Minute Manager"

William Morrow

I know, this one sounds like a gimmick, but it's actually incredibly useful in day-to-day work life.

Essentially, Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson provide the reader with a bunch of extremely simple, quick actions a manager can take to better oversee and motivate employees.

It's especially helpful for someone who's new to managing others because it presents a wide variety of scenarios that I found useful to think through before encountering them in real life.

This is also a great book to talk through with senior members of your team, as they've likely read it and will have some advice to offer about implementing key concepts. Advice is structured around one-minute goals, praisings, and reprimands.

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