What Makes Great Leaders Great: Management Lessons from Icons Who Changed the World


Book Description

Master the skills that icons throughout history have used to achieve the highest levels of success “This is an intelligent, knowledgeable presentation of management. The pragmatic approach of learning from icons makes the book extremely worthwhile reading for up-and-coming and experienced managers alike.” —Dr. Helmut O. Maucher, Honorary Chairman of the Board, Nestlé “Embracing a broad variety of successful personalities from all walks of life, this analysis of management skills makes for interesting reading and provides a great source of inspiration." —Dr. Josef Ackermann, Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee, Deutsche Bank AG “Arnold cleverly explains the keys to successful management with references to real-life challenges successfully overcome by iconic leaders. This entertaining book is insightful, thought-provoking, and of immense practical value.” —Fred B. Irwin, President, American Chamber of Commerce in Germany “Profound management know-how and coverage of a wide range of valuable issues provide great inspiration for anyone seeking to apply effective management principles in practice.” —Professor Klaus Evard, founder and former President of the European Business School “Management know-how translates into knowledge of how to succeed in all levels of life, and everyone can learn to be successful. That is the simple premise behind this book.” —Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung What do Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Pablo Picasso, and Napoleon have in common? EXCELLENT MANAGEMENT SKILLS It doesn’t matter what your field of expertise is, whom you know, or how educated you are. If you have powerful management skills, you will succeed; if you don’t, you’ll hit the ceiling sooner rather than later. In What Makes Great Leaders Great, bestselling author and leadership expert Frank Arnold gathers 56 icons from various fields—from business and sports to politics and pop culture—to reveal the specific management skills they used to reach the top. For every line of work or personal goal, effectively applying these management skills will lead to ultimate success. All the people in this remarkably diverse group figured out what they needed to know to manage their rise to the top—and executed it with superb skill. What Makes Great Leaders Great includes: Bill Gates on harnessing the power of a business mission Nicolaus Copernicus on questioning every assumption Phil Knight on fine-tuning the right strategy Michael Dell on making the customer your number-one priority Michelangelo on focusing on a single objective Joseph Schumpeter on practicing creative destruction Roger Federer on self-motivation Hippocrates on behaving responsibly Steve Jobs on implementing ideas Ray Kroc on envisioning the future Gen. George Patton on clearly defining assignments Warren Buffett on demanding effective management Stephen Hawking on making the best use of your time Pablo Picasso on fostering life-long creativity Muhammad Yunus on looking beyond your own interests Learn from the best in the business—and history—how to leverage your skills, knowledge, and talent to reach levels of success you never dreamed possible.




Heroic Leadership


Book Description

Leadership Principles for Lasting Success Leadership makes great companies, but few of us truly understand how to turn ourselves and others into great leaders. One company—the Jesuits—pioneered a unique formula for molding leaders and in the process built one of history’s most successful companies.In this groundbreaking book, Chris Lowney reveals the leadership principles that have guided the Jesuits for more than 450 years: self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism. Lowney shows how these same principles can make each of us a dynamic leader in the twenty-first century.




Leadership Sustainability: Seven Disciplines to Achieve the Changes Great Leaders Know They Must Make


Book Description

MAKE YOUR LEADERSHIP EFFORTS STICK Every day, thousands of people put great effort--and money--into becoming more effective leaders, through seminars, personal coaching, and employee development plans. These undertakings can do wonders to help leaders of all stripes improve their effectiveness. But not every leader finishes what he or she starts--and many revert back to less effective habits, often without even realizing it. How can you ensure that you stick with all the positive changes you have made? How do you make sure you don’t slip back into your old ways? Answer: Leadership Sustainability Dave Ulrich--the man BusinessWeek referred to as the "#1 Management Educator and Guru"--teams up with leadership expert Norm Smallwood to go where no leadership guide has gone. This dream team provides sophisticated, proven leadership sustainability ideas and tools that you can put to use immediately. Leadership Sustainability helps you turn good intentions into effective actions by mastering seven critical disciplines: Simplicity: Focus on the few key behaviors that will have the most impact. Time: Allocate your time so your calendar matches your intentions. Accountability: Take personal responsibility for doing what you say you will do. Resources: Support your leadership with effective, ongoing coaching and HR systems. Tracking: Develop metrics for measuring your leadership improvement. Melioration: Learn from your mistakes and demonstrate resilience. Emotion: Draw on deep personal values to keep yourself motivated. The journey to great leadership doesn't end with learning and implementing effective new skills. Great leadership is about consistency, and the drive for consistency is a never-ending process. Use Leadership Sustainability to ensure leadership greatness today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your life. PRAISE FOR LEADERSHIP SUSTAINABILITY: "Dave and Norm propose a practical approach to solving the problem of leaders turning what they intend into what they do. The seven principles provide a simple and practical way to get things done." -- Ram Charan, coauthor of the New York Times bestselling Execution "Dave and Norm do a great job about teaching leaders not just what to do, but how to make sure that they do it. The ideas in the book are insightful, specific, and actionable." -- Gina Qiao, SVP Human Resources, Lenovo "Finally, a 'how-to' book that is grounded in the real-world dynamics of leading organizations!" -- Dixon Thayer, CEO, HealthNEXT "Dave and Norm provide both an in-depth understanding of why we often fall short and a set of tools for getting on with it." -- Morgan W. McCall, Jr., Professor, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, and author of High Flyer "Leaders all over the world will celebrate Dave and Norm’s powerful new gift: the concept of Leadership Sustainability and its seven disciplines." -- Frances Hesselbein, President and CEO, The Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute "Finally, we have two scholar-practitioners who correctly address evidence that one of every two leaders fails and offer solutions about proper execution that leads to sustainability." -- W. Warner Burke, Professor of Psychology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University "Dave and Norm understand that one of the keys to success is disciplined continuity and sustainability--which constitute a required core competency among leadership." -- Kathleen Wilson-Thompson, Chief Human Resources Officer, Walgreen Co.




Power Ambition Glory


Book Description

Based on an extraordinary collaboration between Steve Forbes, chairman, CEO, and editor in chief of Forbes Media, and classics professor John Prevas, Power Ambition Glory provides intriguing comparisons between six great leaders of the ancient world and contemporary business leaders. • Great leaders not only have vision but know how to build structures to effect it. Cyrus the Great did so in creating an empire based on tolerance and inclusion, an approach highly unusual for his or any age. Jack Welch and John Chambers built their business empires using a similar approach, and like Cyrus, they remain the exceptions rather than the rule. • Great leaders know how to build consensus and motivate by doing what is right rather than what is in their self-interest. Xenophon put personal gain aside to lead his fellow Greeks out of a perilous situation in Persia–something very similar to what Lou Gerstner and Anne Mulcahy did in rescuing IBM and Xerox. • Character matters in leadership. Alexander the Great had exceptional leadership skills that enabled him to conquer the eastern half of the ancient world, but he was ultimately destroyed by his inability to manage his phenomenal success. The corporate world is full of similar examples, such as the now incarcerated Dennis Kozlowski, who, flush with success at the head of his empire, was driven down the highway of self-destruction by an out-of-control ego. • A great leader is one who challenges the conventional wisdom of the day and is able to think out of the box to pull off amazing feats. Hannibal did something no one in the ancient world thought possible; he crossed the Alps in winter to challenge Rome for control of the ancient world. That same innovative way of thinking enabled Serge Brin and Larry Page of Google to challenge and best two formidable competitors, Microsoft and Yahoo! • A leader must have ambition to succeed, and Julius Caesar had plenty of it. He set Rome on the path to empire, but his success made him believe he was a living god and blinded him to the dangers that eventually did him in. The parallels with corporate leaders and Wall Street master-of-the-universe types are numerous, but none more salient than Hank Greenberg, who built the AIG insurance empire only to be struck down at the height of his success by the corporate daggers of his directors. • And finally, leadership is about keeping a sane and modest perspective in the face of success and remaining focused on the fundamentals–the nuts and bolts of making an organization work day in and day out. Augustus saved Rome from dissolution after the assassination of Julius Caesar and ruled it for more than forty years, bringing the empire to the height of its power. What made him successful were personal humility, attention to the mundane details of building and maintaining an infrastructure, and the understanding of limits. Augustus set Rome on a course of prosperity and stability that lasted for centuries, just as Alfred Sloan, using many of the same approaches, built GM into the leviathan that until recently dominated the automotive business.




Learning Journeys


Book Description

This book brings together a who's who of today's most successful leadership experts and consultants who share personal lessons.




Good Leaders Learn


Book Description

How do leaders learn to lead? How do leaders set themselves up for success? This book explores the real-life experiences of a wide variety of leaders from different industries, sectors, and countries to bring to light new lessons on the importance of life-long learning. Consisting primarily of a series of probing interviews, Good Leaders Learn presents the challenges, triumphs, and reflections of 31 senior and high-profile leaders, offering insight into how they learned to lead during their careers. The book pulls important and useful perspectives into a robust theoretical framework that includes the importance of innate curiosity, challenging oneself, risk-taking, and other key elements of good leadership. With practical insights complemented by the latest leadership research and theory, this book will help current and potential leaders to build a solid foundation of the leadership qualities vital to their continuing success.




The Secret


Book Description

The authors of Great Leaders Grow use a fable to lay out what is the secret to great leadership in this internationally bestselling guide. It’s a question that everyone in a position of authority—whether in a multinational corporation or a local volunteer group—wonders sooner or later. Here Ken Blanchard, whose books on leadership have sold over twenty million copies, and Mark Miller, who worked his way up from line worker to vice president of Chick-Fil-A, one of the largest fast-food restaurant chains in the country, uncover the secret that great leaders already know and detail what you need to do to truly inspire and motivate others. The authors get at the heart of what makes a leader successful using a classic business fable. Newly promoted but struggling young executive Debbie Brewster asks her mentor, “What is the secret of great leaders?” His reply—“great leaders serve”—flummoxes her, but over time he reveals the five fundamental ways that leaders succeed through service. Along the way, Debbie learns: • Why great leaders seem preoccupied with the future • How people on the team ultimately determine your success or failure • What three arenas require continuous improvement • Why true success in leadership has two essential components • How to knowingly strengthen—or unwittingly destroy—leadership credibility This new edition includes a leadership self-assessment so readers can measure to what extent they lead by serving and where they can improve. The authors have also added answers to the most frequently asked questions about how to apply the SERVE model in the real world. As practical as it is uplifting, The Secret shares Blanchard and Miller’s wisdom about leadership in a form that anyone can easily understand and implement. “You don’t have to be older to be a great leader. The Secret shows how to lay the foundation for powerful servant leadership early in your career to maximize your impact.” —Claire Diaz-Ortiz, Head of Corporate Innovation and Philanthropy at Twitter, Inc. and author of Twitter for Good and Hope Runs “When you learn The Secret, don't keep it to yourself. Share it and use it with your people. It will make a difference in their lives and their performance.” —Donald G. Soderquist, former Vice Chairman, Wal-Mart, and founder of the Soderquist Center for Leadership and Ethics, John Brown University “If you know The Secret, both relationships and results will prosper. It's a perfect move in your life from success to significance.” —Bob Buford, author of Halftime




Lessons in Leadership


Book Description

In this practical guide, Emmy Award-winning public broadcasting anchor Steve Adubato teaches readers to be self-aware, empathetic, and more effective leaders at work and at home. His powerful case studies spotlighting dozens of leaders—from Pope Francis to New Jersey governor Chris Christie—are complemented by concrete tips and tools based in real-life scenarios. With Lessons in Leadership, readers can learn to steer others through difficult economic times, to mentor rising leaders, to provide straight talk to underperforming employees, and even how to lead a company through a significant change.




Leaders Make the Future


Book Description

We are in a time of accelerating disruptive change. In a VUCA world - one characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity - traditional leadership skills won't be enough, noted futurist Bob Johansen argues. Drawing on the latest forecasts from the Institute for the Future - the first futures think tank ever to outlive its forecasts - this powerful book explores the external forces that are shaking the foundations of leadership and unveils ten critical new leadership skills. How adroit are you at dilemma flipping - turning problems that can't be solved into opportunities? Can you develop bio - empathy - the ability to learn from and apply the principles of nature in your leadership? Are you able to practice immersive learning - dive into very different - from - you physical and online worlds and learn from them? Johansen provides role models, tools, and advice to help you develop these and seven other future leadership skills. In addition, Johansen deals with two new forces that are shaping the future. The first is the ''digital natives'' - people fifteen years and younger who have grown up in a digital world. The second is cloud - based supercomputing, which will enable extraordinarily rich new forms of connection, collaboration, and commerce. In this thoroughly updated and expanded second edition, Johansen is joined by the prestigious Center for Creative Leadership. CCL's contributions help readers understand the new leadership skills by linking them to existing skills, and they provide analytics and exercises so readers can more fully develop these new skills.




Leadership on the Line, With a New Preface


Book Description

The dangerous work of leading change--somebody has to do it. Will you put yourself on the line? To lead is to live dangerously. It's romantic and exciting to think of leadership as all inspiration, decisive action, and rich rewards, but leading requires taking risks that can jeopardize your career and your personal life. It requires putting yourself on the line, disrupting the status quo, and surfacing hidden conflict. And when people resist and push back, there's a strong temptation to play it safe. Those who choose to lead plunge in, take the risks, and sometimes get burned. But it doesn't have to be that way say renowned leadership experts Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky. In Leadership on the Line, they show how it's possible to make a difference without getting "taken out" or pushed aside. They present everyday tools that give equal weight to the dangerous work of leading change and the critical importance of personal survival. Through vivid stories from all walks of life, the authors present straightforward strategies for navigating the perilous straits of leadership. Whether you're a parent or a politician, a CEO or a community activist, this practical book shows how you can exercise leadership and survive and thrive to enjoy the fruits of your labor.