Dr. Mario's 2nd 🧠

📖 Leadership BS

29 min read

Why did I want to read it?

In preparation of ✍️ Sin machirulos hay paraiso. Una charla heterofriendly sobre management

What did I get out of it?

Preface

much of the oft-repeated conventional wisdom about leadership is based more on hope than reality. (Location 215)

Introduction: things are bad—Here’s why

Too few good leaders, too many bad ones

“one of every two leaders and managers” is “estimated to be ineffective (that is, a disappointment, incompetent, a mis-hire, or a complete failure) in their current roles.”27 (Location 482)

More than half of the respondents, some 55 percent, reported that they had considered leaving a job because of their leader, and 39 percent said they had done so. (Location 520)

Authenticity: misunderstood and overrated

One of the most important leadership skills is the ability to put on a show, to act like a leader, to act in a way that inspires confidence and garners support—even if the person doing the performance does not actually feel confident or powerful. (p. 98)

Raw highlights

huge, almost unimaginably vast, list of leadership catastrophes. How can this be—all this failure—after the thousands of leadership books, (Location 274)

No reasonable person would accept that a few bad actors on their own accounted for the initial problem and its fallout, events that unfolded over more than a decade. (Location 287)

social psychology that makes the actual traits and behaviors that cause leaders to be successful in their careers and attain senior-level positions quite different from the qualities we hear about or might desire in leaders. (Location 292)

THE FAILURE OF THE LEADERSHIP INDUSTRY

And on the other hand, there sits ample, even overwhelming evidence of workplaces filled with disengaged, dissatisfied employees who do not trust their leaders and whose oft-expressed number one desire is to leave their current employer. (Location 307)

The leadership industry has failed. (Location 311)

“there is scarcely any evidence that all this spending … is producing better leaders.”3 (Location 316)

In this introductory chapter, I lay out evidence demonstrating four things: (1) the leadership industry is large and prominent, but, notwithstanding its magnitude and reach, (2) workplaces in the United States and around the world are, for the most part (as there are obviously exceptional places on best-places-to-work lists), filled with dissatisfied, disengaged employees who do not trust their leaders; (3) leaders at all levels lose their jobs at an increasingly fast pace, in part because they are unprepared for the realities of organizational life, and thus, (4) the leadership industry has failed and continues to fail in its task of producing leaders who are effective and successful, and it has even failed to produce sufficient talent to fill leadership vacancies. (Location 330)

And this fact is at the core of the argument—that the qualities we actually select for and reward in most workplaces are precisely the ones that are unlikely to produce leaders who are good for employees or, for that matter, for long-term organizational performance. (Location 345)

you need to take care of yourself. Although it might be cathartic to bemoan the evidence that positive leadership qualities often go unrecognized and unrewarded while their opposite produces career advancement and wealth, such moralizing changes nothing about organizational decision-making and also does little to help you in your own career challenges. (Location 348)

If these recommendations were comfortable and easily implemented, they already would have been. (Location 357)

THE LEADERSHIP INDUSTRY IS LARGE

Meindl once again observed a positive relationship between mentions of leadership and performance. (Location 376)

if things aren’t going well, just scapegoat the leader and bring in a replacement. (Location 378)

  • Note: Again, a link to our uncertainty

WORKPLACES ARE MOSTLY HORRIBLE

Two management professors reported that 10 percent of employees in the United States said they witnessed incivility daily in their workplaces, and 20 percent of the people surveyed noted that they were targets of workplace incivility at least once a week. (Location 412)

employees are unhappy with their leaders. Very, very unhappy. In the summer of 2012, Parade magazine released a poll of the American workforce. Fully 35 percent of U.S. employees reported that they would willingly forgo a substantial pay raise in exchange for seeing their direct supervisor fired.21 (Location 436)

New highlights added 2023-02-24

If, as scores of studies demonstrate, leadership affects engagement, satisfaction, and turnover, the sorry state of these workplace indicators provides compelling evidence of leadership failure. (Location 448)

failing upward, (Location 454)

The next critical time comes around twenty years later, when, if successful, people have reached very senior hierarchical levels where everyone around them is smart and accomplished. At that point, the differentiating factor is the ability to navigate increasingly politically charged environments that are peopled by those who mostly do not fulfill the leadership industry’s prescriptions. (Location 475)

“one of every two leaders and managers” is “estimated to be ineffective (that is, a disappointment, incompetent, a mis-hire, or a complete failure) in their current roles.”27 (Location 482)

More than half of the respondents, some 55 percent, reported that they had considered leaving a job because of their leader, and 39 percent said they had done so. (Location 520)

both acknowledging the trade-offs and sorting through that person’s real priorities and the multiple, often poorly correlated measures of a leader’s outcomes. (Location 531)

Social psychologists also have long acknowledged the inherent tension between the need for leaders to help groups function effectively, and the personal interests of group leaders to maximize the power differences they enjoy over others and hold on to and exploit for their own benefits.39 (Location 540)

There are no “barriers to entry” into the leadership industry; (Location 599)

Not only do many of the leadership industry’s participants have no particular qualifications or training germane to their activities, but many also seem to possess little of the interest or intellectual curiosity that would cause them to do the work required to read and learn so as to build their expertise. (Location 609)

FIXING THESE PROBLEMS

The measurement of leadership improvement activities is pathetic. (Location 639)

empirical research conducted over decades suggests that student evaluations are more than unhelpful; instead, they are likely to change the behaviors of presenters in ways that make learning and personal growth less likely. (Location 660)

  • Note: Also said in Range

There are places like the privately owned software company SAS Institute, where the cofounder and CEO Jim Goodnight evaluates managers by their ability to attract and retain talent, and where people can lose their jobs if their units experience excessive voluntary turnover. (Location 689)

many people have soul-crushing jobs and work for ineffective or even abusive leaders, and they apparently think the job of business schools and professors is to provide inspiration and hope. (Location 743)

Motivated cognition is one factor that explains the unreliability of the stories we read. (Location 790)

We know already that the terrifying effect of … helplessness aroused the need for protection… . Thus the benevolent rule of divine providence [or a benevolent leader] allays our anxiety in face of life’s dangers, the establishment of a moral world order ensures the fulfilment of the demands of justice, which within human culture have so often remained unfulfilled. (Location 833)

the all-too-frequent examples of people who profess one set of behaviors and act the opposite produce cynicism on the part of those who see the hypocrisy. His telling conclusion: In our quest for inspiration over insight, we wind up with neither. (Location 848)

not just about the leadership industry but about social science research and its conclusions more generally. (Location 853)

A peer has gone to their mutual boss and suggested that her unit be moved under him—a smart way for him to not only expand his domain but also get more talent working in his unit so the unit’s performance will appear better in the future. “What was your response to all of this?” I ask. Her reply: to use her learning and ideas from a leadership course on interpersonal dynamics, colloquially referred to as “touchy-feely,” to attempt to repair the relationship with her peer. “Why did you do that?” I inquire. “Because,” she responds, “I have been taught to build relationships of authenticity and trust at work.” When I ask how her efforts went, she comments that of course they didn’t work at all, because her peer was not interested in “repairing a relationship” or behaving with trust and authenticity; he was interested in taking over her team for his own advantage—a not-uncommon situation. (Location 863)

When she went to her boss and later to the head of HR to explain what was going on, in each instance reminding them about how her colleague’s behavior was inconsistent with the company’s espoused values and with its many leadership-development activities, their response was to do nothing except to sensibly remind her that she needed to become able to effectively look after herself (Location 870)

he spoke of Martin’s failures to show anger, be forceful, and advocate for himself. These comments seemed particularly surprising because they came from someone who runs seminars filled with speakers who advocate precisely the strengths that Martin has, and someone who would never, because of the audience’s response, have presenters on stage to advocate the opposite. (Location 885)

“Go home and throw out the numerous leadership books—or better yet, give them to career competitors.” (Location 896)

  • Note: But I’m missing research on

this

people invariably see themselves as not measuring up to these mythical leadership figures and therefore either don’t try or excuse themselves from seeking to do things because of their perceived deficiencies compared with these heroic figures; (Location 933)

the belief that good things can be done by imperfect people.” (Location 946)

  • Note: Like XP advocates

People’s desire to see and hear only good things, to ignore contradictory or negative evidence, (Location 954)

learning from rare events is a singularly problematic endeavor. Research by Jerker Denrell, a professor at Warwick business school, shows that in many instances the relationship between skill and observed performance is surprisingly weak. That is because of the effects of luck and other random variations on observed outcomes, (Location 964)

Denrell argues that in many circumstances, people who perform well but are not at the very, very top are actually better people to learn from. That is because their performance is more likely to be a result of their true abilities and actions instead of chance (Location 967)

companies improve their quality by defining what the idea means in terms of specific operational measures, then routinely and frequently assessing those aspects of performance, sharing the outcomes with everyone (often in graphical form), and holding people accountable for improving the measures that are under their control. (Location 1014)

moral licensing. This elegantly simple concept, which has been empirically demonstrated numerous times, shows that if people display moral or ethical behavior in one given instance, they then feel freer to behave less prosocially or less ethically at a subsequent time. (Location 1038)

once people believe they are better leaders—possibly because they have given talks or written about positive leadership, have attended lots of leadership trainings, or because they were once acknowledged for their good leadership—they are less likely to be as vigilant about their subsequent behavior, (Location 1052)

  • Note: No nos decimos lo suficiente lo

buenas que somos

We observed that companies seemed to think that once they had developed a mission statement and had promulgated it by posting it on walls and printing it on little cards, they were done. (Location 1061)

Do Due Diligence on Leaders (Location 1080)

modesty, authenticity, truthfulness, trustworthiness, and concern for the welfare and well-being of others, particularly those being led. Without for a moment denying the extensive, maybe even overwhelming, research connecting these attributes (and others) to various dimensions of group or organizational performance, and while acknowledging that these are great qualities and that work environments would be in much better shape if more leaders had them, (Location 1123)

are there both theory and data that can help us understand why doing the opposite of what the leadership industry recommends might be much more sensible, certainly for individuals and their careers but in some cases even for other outcomes? (Location 1128)

One of the most important qualities Collins identifies that distinguishes these highly successful leaders from others with executive capability is their extreme personal humility—their modesty. (Location 1159)

Because modesty, or at least appearing to be modest, is so desirable for people in power, some research has examined various strategies for reducing perceived power differences and conveying modesty to others, such as the use of self-deprecating humor.8 (Location 1170)

sharing credit and giving people a sense of ownership would be expected to increase their commitment and identification with a workplace or specific projects or tasks. (Location 1191)

Michael Maccoby notes in his book The Productive Narcissist, (Location 1226)

pioneering innovation that, almost by definition, breaks with convention and reinvents products, industries, and business models requires the kind of disdain for the constraining views of others and persistence in the face of adversity and naysaying that characterize narcissists.16 (Location 1226)

narcissism and narcissistic behaviors are quite common, particularly among leaders. (Location 1234)

immodesty in all of its manifestations—narcissism, (Location 1265)

helps people attain leadership positions in the first place and then, once in them, positively affects their ability to hold on to those positions, (Location 1266)

and even helps in some, although not all, aspects of their performance on the job. (Location 1267)

Many, possibly most, leadership roles are ambiguous—there (Location 1271)

Confirmation bias, (Location 1273)

In the case of leadership, if you project confidence and claim competence with enough conviction to be credible, observers will tend to assimilate any information about you in ways consistent with the idea that you know what you are doing and are deserving of a position of leadership. (Location 1276)

No one who is unmemorable is going to be chosen for an important job, because one cannot select what one cannot remember. (Location 1280)

self-deprecation and modest self-presentation work mostly for those who already have such well-established positive reputations that the modesty is seen as charming rather than indicative of some insecurity or incompetence. (Location 1298)

  • Note: Counter signaling

Research finds that narcissism produces higher levels of short-term likeability, possibly because of the greater extraversion and flamboyance that narcissists exhibit. (Location 1328)

while narcissism and guiltlessness created problems with subordinates because of the leader’s management style, this personality profile was positively related to having better communication skills, creativity, and strategic thinking. (Location 1375)

the researchers discovered an interaction between narcissism and tenure in the job such that over time “more narcissistic CEOs who have longer tenure claim more compensation and have greater variance in pay within the senior management team than do CEOs who are less narcissistic, (Location 1409)

narcissistic individuals are often superior performers in at least some dimensions; they are great at selling their ideas and vision, effective in attracting the support of others (particularly outside others), good at getting attention and its attendant benefits, and often effective at getting things done. (Location 1420)

  • Note: Not sure about getting things

done, apart from what is

achieved with charm,

or the suicidal tendency to

reach innovation

Leaders do not need to be true to themselves. Rather, leaders need to be true to what the situation and what those around them want and need from them. And often what others want and need is the reassurance that things will work out and the confidence that they are on the right track. (Location 1474)

  • Note: Not sure if this is true for

everybody

the importance of exuding confidence to attract employee talent (Location 1479)

Meaning-making jobs … put more premium on the individual’s capacity to do emotion work. (Location 1494)

middle-class families doing a better job than lower-class families of preparing their children to manage their emotions, (Location 1499)

By this definition, the former New York congressman and New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, famous for sending pictures of his private parts to various women he met on the Internet, was, if nothing else, authentic. He was certainly “owning” his thoughts, needs, and wants. As this extreme example suggests, getting along, let alone being successful in the world, often requires a large amount of inauthenticity and self-regulation. (Location 1560)

if you are both senior executives in an organization in a relationship that inevitably entails a high degree of interdependence, you cannot afford to not “like” the other person. (Location 1576)

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, founded a movement, Lean In, on the basis of the insight that women are often not quite pushy enough—but (Location 1607)

Acting is essential to effective leadership. (Location 1646)

Grove insisted that his brilliant but shy managers attend a seminar they called “wolf school.” (Location 1653)

The basic idea motivating this research—“a person’s role will have an impact on his attitudes”—is a fundamental tenet of role theory (Location 1677)

The sociologists Melvin Kohn and Carmi Schooler conducted numerous studies investigating the effects of someone’s occupation and job conditions on such dimensions of their personality as their cognitive flexibility. They consistently found a pattern of reciprocal relationships such that personality affected the type of jobs and occupations people chose, but that once in those jobs, personality was also affected by the job and occupational conditions. (Location 1690)

  • Note: So I changed too once I

started leading

One of the reasons lying persists is that there are few adverse consequences for it; and as we will see, positive results very often come from not telling the truth. (Location 1726)

the very fact that such behavior is heroic—which implies it is exceptional and exemplary—speaks to how unusual such behavior, such as honesty, actually is. (Location 1780)

Just pick up a newspaper or consult your favorite news source online; some reasonable fraction of news stories every day are about senior people in all sorts of organizations—our so-called leaders—not telling the truth. (Location 1812)

“Does Larry lie,” asks Ed Oates, an Oracle cofounder who’s known him for twenty-five years. “We prefer to say that Larry has a problem with tenses. (Location 1823)

sometimes survival demands that you do what prevails in the ecosystem in which you are competing. (Location 1836)

“several individuals questioned Mr. Jobs’s honesty stating that Mr. Jobs will twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals.” (Location 1841)

the ability to create “credible, deceptive messages predicted dominance in preschool children and men but not women.”16 (Location 1844)

  • Note: Sin machirulos hay paraiso

“power, even when minimally endowed in the laboratory, mitigates the impact of stress associated with dishonesty… . (Location 1847)

high-power individuals are less sensitive to societal norms; (Location 1849)

An experimental study of deception found that engaging in deception helped the individuals who deceived to present their communications in a more dominant fashion.29 Being forceful and dominant—a form of exhibiting confidence—helps individuals to be seen as more powerful. (Location 1901)

“Participants felt empowered by the act of deception itself.” (Location 1905)

There are few sanctions for lying, and, by contrast, there are often punishments for those who have the temerity to call out others who engage in deception. (Location 1917)

34 The title of the study, “Nobody Likes a Rat,” (Location 1924)

Marc Effron, the president of the human resources consulting firm the Talent Strategy Group, (Location 1964)

He reported that “73% of companies have decided that lying to their employees about their potential to advance is the right choice.”39 In hierarchical organizations, where there are many fewer promotion opportunities than contenders, companies have apparently decided that telling people the truth about their actual promotion prospects will demotivate them. (Location 1965)

performance made a statement about their abilities. The authors noted, “Even when prospects for self-deception about unethical behavior have been reduced, the high cheaters experience from ‘getting away with it’ overwhelms the negative affective consequences that people mistakenly predict they will experience after engaging in unethical behavior.”40 (Location 1975)

people who are expected to do well often perform at a high level because of those expectations, while those, including students in school, for whom others hold low expectations, often underperform.43 (Location 1991)

  • Note: Pigmallion effect?

But often, if people believe you can do the job, you can, because they will give you the advice and support to make you successful. (Location 2027)

This is all to say that sometimes, maybe even often, saying what is not true at the moment helps make the statement true down the road. (Location 2032)

  • Note: The well known fake till you

make it

New highlights added 2023-02-24

One of the most important leadership skills is the ability to put on a show, to act like a leader, to act in a way that inspires confidence and garners support—even if the person doing the performance does not actually feel confident or powerful. (Location 1634)

New highlights added 2023-02-28

In the conflict between money and truth, bet on the money—in (Location 2050)

No one wants to hear that the golden eggs being laid by the goose aren’t actually golden, so people close their eyes, either actively or passively, to lies and distortions all the time. (Location 2052)

  • Note: So again, a mess if you work

in Data

CEOs who receive overly optimistic sales forecasts often hope that they will come true and therefore don’t ask too many probing questions. (Location 2056)

“reasoning processes consumers use to generate support for public figures who have acted immorally.”47 The study identified and demonstrated empirical support for two distinct processes. One process is moral rationalization, “the process of reconstruing immoral actions as less immoral in order to maintain support for an immoral actor.”48 (Location 2066)

The second process the authors call “moral decoupling,” which is “a psychological separation process by which people selectively dissociate judgments of performance from judgments of morality.”49 So the marital infidelities of golfer Tiger Woods could be argued to be irrelevant to his skills as a golfer, and Bill Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky believed to not detract from his performance in foreign affairs and stewarding the economy. (Location 2071)

I no longer believe that trust is essential to organizational functioning or even to effective leadership. Why? Because the data suggest that trust is notable mostly by its absence. (Location 2126)

we are likely to trust those who are similar to us, something that the Edelman surveys also confirm. (Location 2142)

our ability to accurately discern who is taking advantage of us is remarkably poor. (Location 2143)

Gates and Microsoft bought the operating system that led to Microsoft’s success from Seattle Computer for $50,000—an operating system essentially copied from one developed by a computer whiz with a Ph.D. named Gary Kildall. Kildall died at fifty-two after twice being hurt by Gates. (Location 2175)

As Roderick Kramer, a social psychologist, has persuasively argued, we are predisposed to trust and have an evolutionary need to do so. Therefore, people are motivated to overlook a violation of trust as a onetime thing that won’t occur again, or at least won’t happen to them—because they are, after all, above average in their ability to detect (Location 2214)

when someone is taken advantage of, others engage in a “blame the victim” exercise in which they actively seek out information that demonstrates how the victim was complicit in some way (Location 2219)

Most important, people are frequently strategic in their interactions. This means that they consider not just what someone has done to them, but what that individual might be able to do for them in the future. (Location 2224)

the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. People who have reneged on commitments, stolen intellectual property, sued or forced out their partners, failed to fulfill promises, and moved on to greener pastures in the past will do so again. (Location 2247)

People will frequently act in their own interests, and if those interests involve breaching commitments made to you, then you should probably kiss those commitments good-bye. (Location 2279)

There is empirical evidence consistent with the argument that breaches of contract done by companies are perceived as being not as serious or morally repugnant as when such breaches are done by individuals. (Location 2375)

servant leadership sometimes entails more than just putting the interests of one’s employees and others before one’s own. Reviews of the servant leadership concept define and distinguish it by its heavy focus on the well-being of followers in contrast to the typical emphasis given to organizational well-being.2 In that sense, the idea gives primacy not so much to followers over leaders as to putting the interests of employees over organizational performance. (Location 2403)

develop superior company performance as a consequence of the effort to put people and their well-being first.3 Servant leadership is characterized by trust, the appreciation of others, and providing empowerment4—letting followers make more decisions—something that is good for both people’s learning and development and also their sense of personal efficacy. (Location 2408)

The evidence suggests that taking care of employees also makes business sense. (Location 2422)

the gap between CEO pay and average employee pay has increased on average from about 20 times in 1965 to more than 200 times some forty years later, (Location 2485)

Research shows that people are more likely to help those who are similar to them, even in trivial, unimportant, and random ways—a (Location 2513)

people are attracted to others who are similar—in fact, similarity in attitudes and other dimensions is one of the most important, fundamental bases of interpersonal attraction16—and prefer those with whom they share some commonality, including similarities in speech patterns, pace, and tone of voice.17 (Location 2516)

more likely to choose occupations whose names remind them of their own.18 (Location 2521)

in many work organizations, leaders share little or nothing in common with those they lead. (Location 2523)

Research shows that leaders take credit for good company performance and attribute poor performance to environmental factors (Location 2553)

or sometimes to other organizational interests, particularly frontline employees.19 (Location 2554)

Outside succession, and particularly succession by industry outsiders with limited frontline experience, exacerbates the tendency for leaders to not give the interests and well-being of others much priority. (Location 2567)

As noted earlier, before Hewlett-Packard got carried away with a series of unfortunate outside CEOs, the company at one point based manager reviews in part on survey results from people working in the managers’ units. That measurement provided managers with some real incentive to look out for their people. (Location 2583)

management-by-walking-around practice that has been discussed and advocated for decades.21 (Location 2600)

You may think your employer owes you something for your past contributions and good work—but most employers don’t agree. (Location 2629)

But to be clear, the military’s honoring of past contributions arises in part because not to do so would be to discourage others from joining and staying and making similar contributions to the common good. (Location 2668)

the question posed by the counterparty is typically not “What have you done for me in the past that deserves repayment?” but rather, “What can you do for me in the future (Location 2671)

Her job performance would protect her from the many vicissitudes visited upon employees by jealous and insecure leaders. Bad bet. (Location 2690)

These studies reinforce what commonsense observation suggests: workplaces are primarily instrumental, calculative settings largely free of moral sentiments and even normative constraints. (Location 2727)

1941 book Escape from Freedom by the Frankfurt-born psychologist Erich Fromm. Fromm sought to understand why people voluntarily embrace authoritarian regimes such as Hitler’s Germany. Fromm argued that when people are freed from the restrictions placed on them by institutions or other individuals, not everyone experiences this freedom as a positive thing; in fact, many do not enjoy it and find the absence of constraint uncomfortable. Fromm suggested that some of the ways that individuals seek to minimize the negative feelings associated with freedom include engaging in conformity, destructiveness, and authoritarianism. (Location 2733)

  • Note: I can connect this to the “need for closure”

if a leader feeds their individual or collective egos, people may not ask too many questions about the leader’s own behaviors and motives as they bask in the warm glow of feeling special. (Location 2756)

Cognitive dissonance runs rampant inside workplaces. The idea that I have joined and voluntarily remain in a place, and the idea that the place I am in is run by some incompetent, venal, mean individual, are two highly discordant thoughts. It is often difficult to change the reality of my joining and remaining in my present place of employment. It is much easier to change my perception of the leader (Location 2759)

The Men’s Wearhouse paid higher wages, used fewer part-timers, and offered more training and internal promotion opportunities, than other retail chains, and in turn its employees quit less frequently, often because they understood and appreciated the unique retail work environment they enjoyed. (Location 2779)

Once again, we have an example of why there is no assurance that the person in charge will remain in charge, and certainly no assurance that this individual will be replaced by another with the same values and qualities. (Location 2783)

The lesson of W. Edwards Deming and his peers in the quality movement is that relying on individual motivation and acts of great competence is a singularly unreliable way to produce consistently high levels of system performance. (Location 2826)

redesign governance that would reduce the dependence of employee well-being on the vagaries of people’s doing a better job of selecting and training all-powerful leaders. (Location 2831)

building in formalized countervailing power, such as that provided by works councils in some European countries or unions in other places; (Location 2834)

  • Note: I think Piketty argued in favor of this

presume that others are acting on the basis of their self-interest, and you will be better equipped to forecast and understand their actions. (Location 2859)

Grant also summarized research, including his own, that found that givers were not only among the most successful individuals, they were also among the least successful, and he provided advice about how to be generous without being a patsy. (Location 2867)

It is interesting, to say the least, that while many people and much social science theory presumes that individual voters, acting at least partly out of their own self-interest, can produce better electoral outcomes than any other system, inside economic entities, which in some cases dwarf the size of at least some governments, a different calculus is advocated. (Location 2890)

maybe self-interest is as sensible a motive inside companies, which are, after all, in many respects political entities, as it is in electoral politics. (Location 2893)

The difference between management science and medical science is telling. “Depressing” may be an emotion felt by medical researchers and by practitioners confronted on a daily basis by the inevitable limitations of current treatments, and certainly people would love to be “uplifted.” (Location 2939)

the Stockdale paradox, (Location 2960)

Carly Fiorina, the former president of Lucent’s $19 billion global service-provider business and the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard—the first woman to ever run a Dow 30 company—who has been described as someone with “a silver tongue and an iron will.”2 Fiorina was not one to brook opposition to her decisions, (Location 2976)

  • Note: The fear of reproducing the same behavior than men

Linda Wachner rose rapidly from the position of buyer to become the CEO of the clothing manufacturer Warnaco; (Location 3000)

Wachner’s management approach, something that got her to the top and kept her there for a while as she amassed a pot of money: swearing at and publicly berating her subordinates (which drove away key talent), exhibiting colossal ego, and showing an “abrasive and abusive” style of management.8 (Location 3003)

This list of leaders who, on the one hand, earned vast sums and retained power for decades while, on the other hand, being in almost every way contradictory to the customary bromides about modesty, serving others, and being truthful is almost endless, and it’s a list that grows longer all the time. (Location 3023)

Stop Confusing the Normative with the Descriptive, (Location 3077)

sensible leaders do not permit sustained, close observation of their real behavior. (Location 3110)

Become a skilled and unbiased observer, and, to the extent you can, eliminate hopes and expectations from your observations. Everyone has to navigate a number of organizations, each with its own leader and culture. You would be well served to pay attention to what you see and not to what people are saying and the lovely values and sentiments they are expressing. (Location 3128)

Simply put, there are occasions when you have to do bad things to achieve good results. (Location 3134)

Making change, improving situations, getting things done, winning in very competitive environments, often requires being willing and able to engage in behaviors and exhibit qualities that some people might find repugnant. (Location 3144)

Sometimes, maybe even often, the choice comes down to playing the game, whatever that game is, the way others do or losing. (Location 3153)

Machiavelli’s The Prince. (Location 3155)

if you are not a scorpion or a spider in a forest of them, your survival chances may be quite low. (Location 3185)

This fact means that answering the question “What should I do to be a better leader?” depends not just on what your personal objectives are and how you define “better,” although those are obviously crucial considerations. The answer to how to be a better leader also depends on knowing the environment you are in, its norms, and, most important, what behaviors will be seen as demonstrating weakness and incompetence and what actions will signal strength, confidence, and skill. (Location 3189)

quite different from those required in the food retailer Trader Joe’s, the former president of which is a leading figure in the Conscious Capitalism movement, an ideology that emphasizes the idea of serving multiple stakeholders and taking customer and employee well-being seriously. (Location 3196)

“Andrea Jung, who … stepped down as the chief executive of Avon amid a bribery investigation and financial struggles … is still a director of Apple.” (Location 3263)

The elite glom on to powerful people partly because they forgive past transgressions and partly because of the “fear of alienating themselves from other people” who associate with those with power. (Location 3290)

Graph View

Backlinks