From Bad to Badass Leader: 12 Leadership Lessons


Book Description

What this book is not, it is not a leadership academic resource, filled with principles, methodologies, laws or processes - it's a conversation. It's like we sat down and shared stories over an ice-cold beer or chilled tequila on a hot sunny day. It is an unconventional leadership book, an autobiography of lessons learned. By reading this book, you'll be taken on a ride with me through my personal leadership story, I️ call my journey or ride. While you're reading the tales of my woes and cat-howl moments, I️ encourage you to think about your own ride, your stories and how my experiences might offer you some insight into what's happening on your journey. Our specific trades or crafts might be different, don't be too quick to skip over the details of the ride. The lessons are in the stories. Stories make lessons stickier, like lock-tight to a nut & bolt. Challenge yourself to find the similarities that might be happening in your life. Fix what's not working or no longer fits and cat-howl, growl and pound your chest for the stuff you've got dialed-in. Then get out there and pay it forward. Help develop other badass leaders by sharing your lessons learned. Yes, the good, bad and ugly! If you haven't already, I'd love it if you'd Join the Club at www.badassleader.com, so we can keep this thing going and support one another. We're just getting started. #ExpandYourTribe




Be the Calm or Be the Storm


Book Description

Leadership lessons from Captain Sandy Yawn, a renowned superyacht captain with over 30 years of international maritime experience, and star of the reality show Below Deck Mediterranean. Everyone experiences a moment in life when they need to lead. Sometimes it's a team, sometimes it's a company, a classroom, a patient ward, a family, or simply your own individual self. Based on the leadership lessons she's gathered from her resourceful and resilient life, Captain Sandy, a superyacht captain and star of Bravo's Below Deck Mediterranean, shares the leadership skills and critical thinking inherent to being a captain that can empower anyone to navigate their way to a successful life. Among some of the stories/lessons she'll share: How she selects and sizes up her crew even before embarking on a charter, deciding who to invest in and how to bring out their best. Things happen at sea. No matter how much you plan and train, so much can go wrong so she'll discuss the level of persistence and faith that's required in solving an especially knotty problem. Authority and discipline are required to lead, but they must be leavened with compassion, understanding, and a desire to see your crew succeed. She describes the seamless flow that happens in great teamwork and how she loves seeing the way her deckhands pitch in with the stews when needed. For Captain Sandy, this represents leading with empathy, figuring out who your teammates are and what motivates them, then communicating in a way that motivates and makes them feel understood. As a captain, Sandy is constantly upgrading her knowledge and skill set, which is as much a part of her job as steering a vessel. Sustaining excellence requires constant effort, whether you find yourself at the end of a journey, halfway through or at the start of a new one. And the learning never stops. Woven throughout her stories are Captain Sandy's optimism and abiding faith that, given the right tools and opportunities, individuals are capable of so much more than they realize, especially when they can find someone to believe in them.




Creativity, Inc. (The Expanded Edition)


Book Description

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.




The Five Graces of Life and Leadership


Book Description

Five simple qualities that captures the essence of outstanding leadership today In today’s world, leadership is all about establishing community and connectivity so everyone can be part of something bigger than themselves. To have the grace to create this kind of leadership, we need greater self-awareness and genuine connection to others. In The Five Graces of Life and Leadership, CEO of the celebrated consulting firm Korn Ferry delivers a meaningful and thought-provoking exploration of leadership, emphasizing the five kinds of grace that leaders absolutely must have to lead their teams in today’s evolving workscape. In the book, you’ll learn how to the best leaders make their teams feel comforted, safe, and secure that they’re headed in the right direction. It includes insightful discussions on each of the five indispensable graces, including: Gratitude—the attitude that elevates our spirits, boosts morale, and lifts our hearts Resilience—the quality that allows us to achieve beyond our wildest dreams Aspiration—the knowledge that we can make tomorrow better than today Courage—the ability to understand and move beyond our fears Empathy—the understanding needed to connect with others from their perspectives The perfect book for managers, executives, and other business leaders doing their best to lead their teams through some of the most rapidly changing business and social environments we’ve seen in our lifetimes, The Five Graces of Life and Leadership is a can’t miss book on the human side of leadership at work, at home and anywhere else.




Can't Hurt Me


Book Description

New York Times Bestseller Over 2.5 million copies sold For David Goggins, childhood was a nightmare -- poverty, prejudice, and physical abuse colored his days and haunted his nights. But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a U.S. Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events, inspiring Outside magazine to name him "The Fittest (Real) Man in America." In Can't Hurt Me, he shares his astonishing life story and reveals that most of us tap into only 40% of our capabilities. Goggins calls this The 40% Rule, and his story illuminates a path that anyone can follow to push past pain, demolish fear, and reach their full potential.




Dare to Lead


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead. Don’t miss the five-part HBO Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart! NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential. When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work. But daring leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires skill-building around traits that are deeply and uniquely human. The irony is that we’re choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the exact same time as we’re scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines and AI can’t do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage, to start. Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question: How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture? In this new book, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BS style that millions of readers have come to expect and love. Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100 percent teachable, observable, and measurable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.” Whether you’ve read Daring Greatly and Rising Strong or you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, this book is for anyone who wants to step up and into brave leadership.




Permission to Screw Up


Book Description

The inspiring, unlikely, laugh-out-loud story of how one woman learned to lead–and how she ultimately succeeded, not despite her many mistakes, but because of them. This is the story of how Kristen Hadeed built Student Maid, a cleaning company where people are happy, loyal, productive, and empowered, even while they’re mopping floors and scrubbing toilets. It’s the story of how she went from being an almost comically inept leader to a sought-after CEO who teaches others how to lead. Hadeed unintentionally launched Student Maid while attending college ten years ago. Since then, Student Maid has employed hundreds of students and is widely recognized for its industry-leading retention rate and its culture of trust and accountability. But Kristen and her company were no overnight sensa­tion. In fact, they were almost nothing at all. Along the way, Kristen got it wrong almost as often as she got it right. Giving out hugs instead of feed­back, fixing errors instead of enforcing accountability, and hosting parties instead of cultivating meaning­ful relationships were just a few of her many mistakes. But Kristen’s willingness to admit and learn from those mistakes helped her give her people the chance to learn from their own screwups too. Permission to Screw Up dismisses the idea that leaders and orga­nizations should try to be perfect. It encourages people of all ages to go for it and learn to lead by acting, rather than waiting or thinking. Through a brutally honest and often hilarious account of her own strug­gles, Kristen encourages us to embrace our failures and proves that we’ll be better leaders when we do.




The Myth of the Strong Leader


Book Description

From one of the world's preeminent political historians, a magisterial study of political leadership around the world from the advent of parliamentary democracy to the age of Obama. All too frequently, leadership is reduced to a simple dichotomy: the strong versus the weak. Yet, there are myriad ways to exercise effective political leadership -- as well as different ways to fail. We blame our leaders for economic downfalls and praise them for vital social reforms, but rarely do we question what makes some leaders successful while others falter. In this magisterial and wide-ranging survey of political leadership over the past hundred years, renowned Oxford politics professor Archie Brown challenges the widespread belief that strong leaders -- meaning those who dominate their colleagues and the policy-making process -- are the most successful and admirable. In reality, only a minority of political leaders will truly make a lasting difference. Though we tend to dismiss more collegial styles of leadership as weak, it is often the most cooperative leaders who have the greatest impact. Drawing on extensive research and decades of political analysis and experience, Brown illuminates the achievements, failures and foibles of a broad array of twentieth century politicians. Whether speaking of redefining leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Margaret Thatcher, who expanded the limits of what was politically possible during their time in power, or the even rarer transformational leaders who played a decisive role in bringing about systemic change -- Charles de Gaulle, Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela, among them -- Brown challenges our commonly held beliefs about political efficacy and strength. Overturning many of our assumptions about the twentieth century's most important figures, Brown's conclusions are both original and enlightening. The Myth of the Strong Leader compels us to reassess the leaders who have shaped our world - and to reconsider how we should choose and evaluate those who will lead us into the future.




Boss Bitch


Book Description

New York Times bestselling author Nicole Lapin is back with a sassy and actionable guide empowering women to be the boss of their own lives and careers. You don’t need dozens or hundreds of employees to be a boss, says financial expert and serial entrepreneur Nicole Lapin. Hell, you don’t even need one. You just need to be confident, savvy, and ready to get out there and make your success happen. You need to find your inner Boss Bitch — your most confident, savvy, ambitious self—and own it. A Boss Bitch is the she-ro of her own story. She is someone who takes charge of herself and her future and embraces being a “boss” in all senses of the word: whether as the boss of her own life, a boss at work, or the literal boss of her own company (or all three). Whichever she chooses, being a Boss Bitch isn’t something to apologize for—it’s something to be proud of! We all have what it takes to be a boss bitch, says Lapin. The problem is: we don’t learn how to do it in school. Even if we study business, we’re not getting enough real-deal business education. Until now. Here, Lapin draws on raw and often hilariously real stories from her own career and experiences starting businesses—the good, the bad, and the ugly—to show what it means to be a "boss" in twelve easy steps. In her refreshingly honest and relatable style, she first shows how to embrace the boss-of-you mentality by seizing the power that comes from believing in yourself and expanding your personal skillset. Then she offers candid no-nonsense advice on how to kill it as the boss at work whether you have a high-up role or not. And finally, for those who want to take the plunge as an entrepreneur, she lays out the nuts and bolts of how to be the boss of your own business—from raising money and getting it off the ground to hiring a kickass staff and dealing office drama to turning a profit. Being a rock star in your career is something that should be worn as a badge of honor. Here Lapin shows how to crush it in our careers like like a Boss Bitch!




The Silent Language of Leaders


Book Description

A guide for using body language to lead more effectively Aspiring and seasoned leaders have been trained to manage their leadership communication in many important ways. And yet, all their efforts to communicate effectively can be derailed by even the smallest nonverbal gestures such as the way they sit in a business meeting, or stand at the podium at a speaking engagement. In The Silent Language of Leaders, Goman explains that personal space, physical gestures, posture, facial expressions, and eye contact communicate louder than words and, thus, can be used strategically to help leaders manage, motivate, lead global teams, and communicate clearly in the digital age. Draws on compelling psychological and neuroscience research to show leaders how to adjust their body language for maximum effect. Stands out as the only book to address specifically how leaders can use body language to increase their effectiveness Goman, a respected management coach, is widely considered as the expert in body language issues in the workplace The Silent Language of Leaders will show readers how to take advantage of the most underused skills in the leadership toolkit—nonverbal skills—to improve their credibility and stay ahead of the curve.