Read about our pricing and services
List Price:
| Price | Quantity |
| $21.56 | 1-24 |
| $18.87 | 25-99 |
| $17.52 | 100-499 |
| $16.98 | 500+ |
Bulk discounts are non-returnable. | |
Customize It
Hardcover
205 pages
ISBN 9781118379875 Published Oct. 2012
Jossey-Bass
See all formats
Tweet
Posted March 29, 2013 8:07 a.m. by sally-haldorson
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
POST & WIN! Post a reaction or question for Erika in one of her Thinker in Residence posts, and not only will Erika pop by for the discussion, but we'll randomly pick one participant to win a copy of Leading So People Will Follow!
In our past two Thinker in Residence posts featuring the thoughtful and motivating work of Erika Andersen, we introduced you to her newest book on leadership, Leading So People Will Follow, and also shared an in-depth Q&A with Erika about strategy. We would be remiss if we didn't also recommend her first book, Growing Great Employees, which we chose as one of the best business books written in 2007. Here's what we said:
We also asked Erika if she could give us an idea of what motivates her to do the work she does and why there is value to be found in business literature.
Q: What is the one unanswered question about business you are most interested in answering?
EA: There are two – and they’re actually the unanswered questions about life I’m most interested in answering – I just spend a good deal of my time looking for the answers in the realm of business. The questions are “How does this work?” and “How can we make it work better?” It would be fair to say that everything I’ve created or co-created in my business, and certainly all three of my books, are nothing more or less than extended efforts to answer those questions. I get tremendous satisfaction from being able to crack the code on some aspect of human behavior or organizational function, and then give people practical guidance and support for improvement.
Q: What business book has influenced your work the most?
EA: Without a doubt, Good to Great by Jim Collins. I continue to re-read parts of it over the years, and to recommend it to new generations of leaders. It really does what it purports to do: captures the essence of how to make a company great. And it’s so engaging and straightforward, and uses the power of story so well, that even people who don’t like business books in general can get a lot out of it.
Q: What is the business book you wish you had written and why?
EA: Hmmm. That’s a tough one – I’m not aware of wanting to have written a specific book that now exists. I would, however, love to write a book that doesn’t exist (and perhaps never will, sadly). I’d love to write a book that somehow magically helps senior executives fully understand how critical it is, both on a human level and a business success level, for them to be excellent managers and leaders, and (again magically) inspires them to devote the time, effort, and self-reflection required to become the best leaders and managers they’re capable of being.
We had the pleasure of including an essay by Erika in our 2007 edition of our annual review, In the Books, that we think is still quite relevant today. Here she advocates in favor of business books and gives us a lesson in their history and value.
Why We Love Business Books More Than Ever BY ERIKA ANDERSEN
Around 1500, a guy named Machievelli wrote a book called Il Principe. It could be argued that this tough-minded little volume was the first classic business book of the western world. It was a wild time: he was advising various warring Popes and secular rulers—the Jack Welches and Sumner Redstones of his time—and Machiavelli offered advice he thought would be most helpful to them in consolidating their power and creating thriving and profitable governments. Though it’s now mostly read as a cautionary tale, an example of how NOT to lead, hundreds of generations of leaders have absorbed its lessons, and the business book was born.
The next few hundred years of western civilization (this phrase always reminds me of Gandhi’s response as to his view of western civilization: “I think it would be a good idea,” he said…but I digress) produced a few other volumes of political and economic wisdom. In 1609, for instance, Hugo Grotius published Mare Liberum (The Free Sea), which helped to establish the foundations of international law by formulating the new principle that the sea was international territory and all nations should be free to
use it for seafaring trade. Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, was one of the earliest attempts to systematically study the development of industry and commerce in Europe, and offered rationales for free trade, capitalism and libertarianism. It seemed that only a handful of people felt compelled to share their thoughts about business, and that a slightly larger handful read them.
It wasn’t until the 20th century that the business book began to emerge as an actual category. In the early 1900s, two books on business became standards in the libraries of America’s captains of industry: Henry Ford’s My Life and Work, and a book by a man named Henri Fayol, called General and Industrial Management. They offered very different opinions on business and management (Henry Ford deeply distrusted managers, though he treated his front line workers much better than most of his contemporaries, while Fayol talked about management as one of the six key elements of business success), but both focused on providing personal insights into how business should be done.
Through the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the number of books published about business gradually increased. Still, by today’s standards, business books had a relatively modest readership: in 1975, about 300 new business book titles were published in the US, with overall sales for the business category of just over a million volumes.
Then in the early ’80s, the whole business of business books changed—quite suddenly and dramatically: the bellwether book of this change was Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search of Excellence, which became the first bona fide business best seller. And over the past 25 years, the business book category has literally exploded: in 2006, almost 11,000 new business books were ublished in the U.S., with total business book sales of over $800,000,000.
Why this ever-increasing appetite for business books?
THERE'S GOLD IN THEM THAR HILLS
Part of the explanation, I believe, can be found in the current American mythology that business is the best and most reliable road to fame, fortune and happiness. In fact, this mythology seems to have largely replaced other American mythologies about achieving success, such as “the overnight star,” “marrying rich,” “being plucked by fate from the chorus line (or assembly line),” “virtue rewarded” and (my personal favorite) “persisting through terrible tribulations and being uplifted by some extremely unlikely deus ex machina.” Not that these things don’t still happen (occasionally), or that people don’t pine for them, but I’ll bet if you talked to ten college students who want to become wealthy, nine would say they’re planning to do it by starting or getting involved in some sort of lucrative business venture.
This popular mythology about business, it seems to me, is an amalgam of a number of elements. First, there’s the core American belief in the efficacy of hard work and the possibility of raising oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. This
has formed the basis of how we see ourselves since the very beginning of our nation: the idea that in America, ancestry is not destiny, and that people can become what they envision. Pushing westward, building the railroads, inventing, creating, refining: we have always believed in commerce as the great leveler of society.
Second, there is the assumption spawned by the Internet (the late-’90s bust notwithstanding) that if you just find/create the right product/service/idea at the right time and offer it online in the right way, you can achieve crazy-level financial success. Look at the Google guys. For most of us, there’s still enough mystery and magic about how the web actually works to enable us to imagine that any business having to do with new media might instantly result in thousands of rabbits from hundreds of hats.
Finally, we may no longer think that “greed is good” (in the words of Gorden Gekko, the creepy Michael Douglas character from Wall Street)—or, at least, most people don’t say it out loud—but the legacy of the eighties is this: that young, Bright-eyed men and women can aspire to do well in business without feeling like soulless sell-outs.
So, if we as a nation believe that there is both physical and psychic gold to be had by pursuing business, what better way to find out where to dig than by reading books that provide the needed maps? Unlike previous generations, who had to actually get out and do it (make your way to California, apprentice yourself to a bootmaker, sign up for the next clipper ship to China), we can sit in the comfort of our living rooms and look over the shoulders of those who’ve done it before us, trying to extract the lessons we’ll need to do it ourselves...or at least to let us dream—to convince us that we could do it if we really wanted to.
THE CELEBRIFICATION OF BUSINESS LEADERS
If you scan the business book shelves of any Barnes and Noble or Borders, you’ll see a lot more volumes with faces on them than in years past. Business books used to be serious—if boring—tomes in strong colors with impressive typefaces. Now, more often than not, the front cover shows a slick photo of Donald, Martha, Lee, Carly, Jack or whoever. What gives?
It seems to me the American fascination with celebrity has played a large part in boosting business book sales. As a culture, we seem endlessly intrigued with people who have lives of privilege and wealth, and over the past decade or so, we’ve turned some of our attention away from movie stars, athletes and royalty, and trained it on business tycoons. In fact, it seems that no matter what these celebrity business people are saying (or, in some cases, preaching) in their books, the real draw is that face on the cover.
When I was looking for an agent for my first book a few years ago, one of the people I spoke to—a woman who is agent to a few of these very mega-executives—told me that while my book was very solid and compelling, I didn’t have a “big enough platform.” A novice in these matters at the time, I asked her what she meant. “Well, to be quite blunt,” she replied, “you’re not famous enough.”
So, it’s not so much what these folks have accomplished or the clarity of their wisdom that sells their books—although that is, in some cases, very impressive—it’s quite simply that they’re well-known and therefore interesting. People buy books by “famous” business people for basically the same reason other people buy Entertainment Weekly or listen to Larry King—they want to find out more about people whose lives they find intriguing.
DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME
A few months back, when I was just beginning to think about writing this article, I was out to dinner with my 19-year-old son, and I asked him why he thought there were so many more business books being bought these days. “It’s the complexity of the undertaking,” he replied. At my quizzical look, he continued, “Imagine some guy in the Korean war. All he thinks about is getting back home and starting an auto-body shop, or a pizzeria. And when he gets home, he does it: borrows some money from his dad or the bank, rents a space, buys some stuff and starts fixing cars or making pizza. If he works hard and does good work, he hires a couple of people. Gets married, sends his kids to college. The American dream: simple.” I nodded. “Now, though, that guys’ kids want to be portfolio analysts or music producers. It’s much more complicated and shapeless. How do you do it? And they think, ‘I bet there is a bunch of books about this.’ And there is.”
I think he’s absolutely right. And I’d expand it to include the complexity of everything—not just of the undertaking. People who want to start businesses today, who want to do well in their chosen careers, or who want to figure out how to choose a career are faced with orders of complexity that would boggle the mind of that unconfused Korean war vet.
It seems to me this is the most important factor driving the exponential increase in the popularity of business books: the world—and the world of business—is a complicated place, and we want help figuring it out.
We’ve always used books to explore and to learn. Books about history to explore the past and learn the lessons of others’ mistakes; books about travel to explore distant places and learn about other cultures; books of fiction to explore invented worlds and learn about others’ experiences. Now, as we rush headlong into the 21st century, business books allow us to explore all the emerging worlds of commerce, invention and growth, and teach us how to navigate through those worlds.
Erika is the founding partner of Proteus International, a consulting and training firm that focuses on leader readiness. She serves as coach and advisor to the senior executives of such companies as GE, Time Warner Cable, TJX, NBC Universal and Union Square Hospitality Group. You can keep up with Erika on her blog (erikaandersen.com), at Forbes (blogs.forbes.com/erikaandersen/), and on Twitter (@erikaandersen).
→ Read Wednesday's Thinker in Residence introduction to Erika Andersen and her newest book, Leading So People Will Follow.
→ Read yesterday's Thinker in Residence discussion with Erika Andersen on Being Strategic.
Thinker in Residence: A Q&A Interview with Erika Andersen on Being Strategic
Posted March 28, 2013 7:03 a.m. by sally-haldorson
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
For me, the most exciting thing about being strategic is that it’s learnable. Most people talk about being strategic as though it’s something you’re born with…or not. And too bad for you if you’re not! But we’ve seen over the years, in teaching people to use these skills and this process, that almost everyone can improve their ability to be strategic – and thereby increase the likelihood of creating the business, the career or the life they most want.
~Erika Andersen
Yesterday we introduced you to the newest work by Erika Andersen, Leading So People Will Follow, and today we're going to talk with her about some of the themes she explored in her previous book, Being Strategic: Plan for Success, Out-Think Your Competitors, Stay Ahead of Change.
Q: How do the 15 Chapters of Being Strategic build on each other?
EA: When I thought about structuring the book, I wanted first to provide an overview of the Being Strategic approach, in a simple, compelling and engaging way. Then, once the reader had a framework for what I was offering and why, I wanted to share and teach the mental model and skills of being strategic. After that I figured I could build on that understanding to share the basics of how to use this model with a group.
So that’s how I built it: the first chapter provides the context of the complete approach (including setting up the Llewelyn Fawr “frame story”). Part I teaches the model step-by-step, with real world examples and applications. Finally, Part II offers skills, knowledge and insight for bringing the approach to a group, getting them interested in the idea of using it, and then guiding them through the process.
Q: In the introduction, you promise that, in Chapter 7 – the Art of Crafting Strategy, you’ll demystify strategy and provide a practical and simple selection process. How does that process of demystification work?
EA: The demystification process actually begins when I offer a simple, common-sense definition for the phrase being strategic: Consistently making those core directional choices that will best move you toward your hoped-for future. People use the word “strategy” and exhort each other to “be strategic” so often…and rarely explain what they’re talking about or what they think it means. And we use it to mean so many different things – from “looking at the big picture,” to “focusing on the competition,” to really negative things like “being calculated and deceptive,” or “pursuing your own agenda at the expense of others.” So I thought having a common definition would help at the outset.
And within that definition, strategies are those “core directional choices.” So chapter 7 is devoted to providing a simple, learnable approach to selecting those core directional choices. I walk through how to do it, and – again – provide both business and personal examples as a demonstration for the reader. The heart of demystification, in my mind, lies in saying to someone, “Here’s what this is, and here’s how to do it, and here’s how it will help.”
Q: Tell me about the importance of clarity to being strategic and some of the better ways to achieve it.
EA: Clarity is essential to being strategic, and we teach people three skills to help increase their clarity. I think of these as the actual skills for being strategic, the mental tools that help you move through the steps of the model effectively: becoming a fair witness, pulling back the camera, and sorting for impact.
Becoming a fair witness means getting as neutral and objective as possible about the situation. This is especially important when you have a strong emotional investment in a particular outcome – it’s all too easy to lose your objectivity about your current reality, or what’s possible. My favorite example of non-fair-witnessing are the contestants on American Idol who literally cannot sing…and yet have convinced themselves that they’re going to win the competition!
Pulling back the camera means mentally “stepping back from the action” so you can get more context and get clearer about why things are happening and how they’re connected. Quite often, when someone is told they’re “not being strategic” or are “too tactical,” it means others see them as only looking at things from a very narrow, close-in frame: staying focused only on their own actions, needs and point of view. Good strategic thinkers “pull back the camera” to look more broadly at the factors that might be impacting the current situation, or where it might be possible to take the organization, given the landscape surrounding it.
Sorting for impact means thinking about how much a particular fact, circumstance or event is going to affect your challenge. So, as you stay in fair witness mode and pull back the camera, you “screen” the data that comes into your viewfinder against your challenge, asking, “How important is this to the problem I’m trying to solve?” Sometimes the answer isn’t entirely clear – but far more often than not, it is…and doing this “sorting” process helps you stay focused on the things that are most essential to your success in the challenge you’re addressing.
Then you put it all together, using these three skills as you move through the model. It may sound complex, but once you get the hang of it, it starts to feel pretty natural.
Q: Tell me about your 5-step method for being strategic (define the challenge, clarify what is, etc.) and how best to apply it to modern business.
EA: Here are the steps of the process, and how to apply them:
- Decide what you’re solving for: Define the Challenge. All too often, business people try to solve problems without first getting clear on them. That can result in “dueling solutions” – a team arguing about how to solve a problem without having come to agreement about what that underlying problem is. Once you have a clear and agreed-upon sense of the core challenge you’re trying to address – from “How can we provide a uniquely valuable customer experience that drives our business’ success?” to “How can we build a manufacturing team that delivers on our business model?” – you’re ready begin solving for it.
- Know where you’re starting from: Clarify What Is. Having an accurate and balanced picture of your current reality, relative to the challenge you’ve defined, is a necessary starting point. It’s all too easy to avoid looking at or to under-estimate the less pleasant aspects of your situation: is the slump in July sales just an anomaly, for instance, or part of a larger trend? Being a “fair witness” of your own business is an essential and under-utilized skill.
- Get clear about your hoped-for future: Envision What’s the Hope. Especially during difficult times, it’s easy to get into survival mode. But having – and consistently articulating – a clear sense of your hoped-for future for the business gives your employees a positive frame for action and offers an antidote to fear. For example, if people know that you intend to double your number of retail outlets over the next five years, that can have a significant impact on both morale and productivity. In this part of the process, you create for yourself and others a clear, three-dimensional statement of what success would look like relative to your challenge.
- See the obstacles: Face What’s In the Way. Once you’ve decided and articulated the future you want to create, it’s essential to be very accurate about the obstacles you’ll have to overcome to make it happen. Business people – and human beings in general – tend to either over- or under-estimate the importance and impact of obstacles. Here again, it’s critical to become a fair witness: to look at the possible obstacles to your vision in a dispassionate and objective way. That makes it much more likely you’ll be able to assess them well, and take appropriate action to overcome them.
- Make core directional choices, then get specific: Determine What’s the Path. Strategies are the ‘intentional pathways’ you craft to lead to your hoped-for future. For example, “Concentrate on new product growth,” or “Build an international sales force.” Strategies are core-level decisions about how to best focus your time and energy. Business people often move straight from vision to tactics, without establishing clear strategies, which can result in uncoordinated effort that doesn’t make best use of important resources.
Once you have a handful of clear, high-leverage strategies, you can use them as a filter to decide specifically what to do; the tactics. For instance, what specific actions will you take to build an international sales force? Is the best use of your resources to invest in the existing sales people, by providing more training or better tools, or do you need to add new people in geographic areas of potential growth? By using your strategies as a screen for action, you can make high-leverage choices about what to do and what not to do...one of the most difficult and most important aspects of good business, especially in lean times.
Being – and staying – strategic in this way gives you a way to navigate through these changing times while positioning yourself and your company for future success. It’s a powerful capability; it offers a way to go from simply saying “we need to be more strategic,” to actually doing it, and reaping the rewards that follow.
Q: What is the importance of asking, “What isn’t working?”
EA: As I noted above, it’s nearly impossible to solve a problem without knowing what it is – especially if you’re trying to solve it with a group! By asking, “What isn’t working,” you can start to hone in on the actual problem or challenge.
Q: Would you classify your approach as an advanced form of problem solving? Why?
EA: Hmmm. Interesting question. Maybe – I guess it depends on how you define problem solving! If you define problem-solving broadly as a process of moving from the given state to a goal state, then yes.
I don’t generally think of it as problem solving, though, because using this approach often involves a strong aspirational component. Most problem solving is focused on resolving a current issue to achieve an pre-defined goal. (E.g, let’s increase the speed of this assembly line so it can produce 200 action figures an hour, vs. 150). When you’re being strategic in the sense we’re talking about here, you’re generally thinking about creating a future that doesn’t yet exist, and that you probably haven’t defined yet. It’s a process for envisioning and then achieving a possible goal state, rather than figuring out how to resolve a problem that’s preventing you from reaching an already defined goal. In other words, this approach includes visioning, which may not be a component of most problem solving situations.
However, having said that, I have found that this approach and set of mental skills is almost infinitely scalable up or down – you can use it to grow your business OR get that assembly line ramped up.
Q: How do you recommend one develop and choose strategies – or core directional choices – that will best move an organization forward?
EA: At the risk of being redundant, we’ve found the best way to create powerful strategies is to first have the context provided by going through this process: knowing what your challenge is, where you’re starting from relative to that challenge, what success would look like, and what’s in the way. And my enthusiasm for and commitment to that order of thinking is purely practical: strategies are the “pathways” that lead you from where you are to where you want to go (the future where your challenge is addressed), while overcoming or avoiding the obstacles. So you have the best chance of building good and useful pathways if you’ve gotten clear on those elements before creating your pathways.
There’s another support we offer for creating good strategies: it’s called “sorting for FIT.” FIT is an acronym that stands for Feasible, Impactful, and Timely. As you’re creating your strategies, you need to make sure they’re feasible – that is, that you have the skills, resources and bandwidth to do them; and that they’re impactful – that they’ll give you a “big bang for the buck,” a good ROE in moving toward your vision. And you need to make sure they’re timely, which covers two things, “order” – are these the directions you need to move first? And “opportunity” – do these strategies take good advantage of circumstances that exist now (and may not exist later)?
Q: Tell me more about the distinction between strategy and tactics.
EA: Strategies are, as I noted above, core-level statements of intention. They’re a way of saying “This is a direction we want to move.” Strategies aren’t specific things you can run right out and do. Tactics ARE things you can run right out and do; they’re the specific actions you’ll take to implement your strategies For example, “Build a skilled, motivated workforce,” is a strategy. “Work with an outside consultant to review and redesign our compensation plan to be more in line with the rest of our industry” is a tactic for implementing that strategy.
Q: You spend a fair amount of time in Being Strategic talking about revisiting and revising strategy. Why is that important?
EA: I called the book Being Strategic at least partly because I wanted to convey that this approach is most useful and powerful when it becomes a habit of mind and action; that it’s not a one-time deal. If you create a clear vision and strategy “map” based on this approach, and don’t come back to it…then over time it will no longer reflect reality. It’s important to keep it real, live and true to your situation – then it’s a powerful tool for creating the business, the career, the life you most want.
Q: How can being strategic benefit one’s personal life?
EA: Over the years, I’ve found this process almost universally applicable. In Being Strategic, I use the example of envisioning and creating my dream house overlooking the Hudson – a true story with a hugely beneficial outcome!
I also used this process to find my wonderful husband Patrick. After my first marriage broke up, I decided I wanted to draw upon everything I’d learned to create the relationship I really wanted. I defined my challenge: “How can I create a core relationship of mutual love, friendship, passion, and support that will grow and flourish throughout both our lives?” Then I got clear about my current state, my hoped-for future, and the obstacles to achieving that future, both inside me and around me. With that understanding in place I created strategies and tactics for achieving my vision, the relationship I truly desired. And I met Patrick about 3 months later.
Erika is the founding partner of Proteus International, a consulting and training firm that focuses on leader readiness. She serves as coach and advisor to the senior executives of such companies as GE, Time Warner Cable, TJX, NBC Universal and Union Square Hospitality Group. You can keep up with Erika on her blog (erikaandersen.com), at Forbes (blogs.forbes.com/erikaandersen/), and on Twitter (@erikaandersen).
→ → Check in with us tomorrow for more insight "On Business and Books" from Erika Andersen.
→ → Read yesterday's Thinker in Residence introduction to Erika Andersen and her newest book, Leading So People Will Follow.
Thinker in Residence: Erika Andersen, author of Leading So People Will Follow
Posted March 27, 2013 7:13 a.m. by sally-haldorson
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
The next featured author in our Thinker in Residence series is Erika Andersen, author of Leading So People Will Follow (Jossey-Bass, 2012); Being Strategic: Plan for Success, Out-Think Your Competitors, Stay Ahead of Change (St. Martin's, 2010); Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People Into Extraordinary Performers (Portfolio, 2007), and the author and host of Being Strategic with Erika Andersen on Public Television.
Erika is the founding partner of Proteus International, a consulting and training firm that focuses on leader readiness. She serves as coach and advisor to the senior executives of such companies as GE, Time Warner Cable, TJX, NBC Universal and Union Square Hospitality Group. You can keep up with Erika on her blog (erikaandersen.com), at Forbes (blogs.forbes.com/erikaandersen/), and on Twitter (@erikaandersen).
In an informal Q&A with Erika from last year, she explained the curiosity that drives her work:
“It would be fair to say that everything I’ve created or co-created in my business, and certainly all three of my books, is nothing more or less than extended efforts to answer these questions: “How does this work?” and “How can we make it work better?” I get tremendous satisfaction from being able to crack the code on some aspect of human behavior or organizational function, and then give people practical guidance and support for improvement.”
Let's look a little more closely at how she addresses those questions while exploring leadership in her newest book, Leading So People Will Follow.
Our Review:
Call it what you will: “Buy-in,” “Loyalty,” or “Enthusiasm.” Use whatever metaphor for the phenomenon you like—maybe “Everyone’s onboard” and “rowing the oars together”—but the simple reality is that every organization needs leaders, and leaders need followers. It’s how business gets done.
There is a lot of mythology surrounding effective leaders, but one need not be a “natural born leader” to inspire people. In her book, Leading So People Will Follow, leadership coach and acclaimed business author Erika Andersen lays out “six leadership characteristics that inspire followers to fully support their leaders,” making the qualities that define great leaders accessible to all.
As in her previous two books, Growing Great Employees and Being Strategic, Andersen employs metaphor to illustrate her ideas. In this book, she spins readers a “folktale” of a soon-to-be prince and the princess he rescues. Using this “hero’s journey” as a device to illustrate the behaviors of “the acknowledged leader” (being Far-sighted, Passionate, Courageous, Wise, Generous, and Trustworthy), she sets readers out on a journey of their own to “help you find your own happily ever after as a truly accepted, fully ‘followable’ leader.” While each chapter includes insight from Andersen’s own experience as a leadership consultant, as well as examples of real-life successful leaders, she understands that myths as metaphor have been utilized to instruct behavior since the dawn of time, and that we as contemporary business people are not immune to the effectiveness of a good story.
For example, Andersen begins Chapter 5, “Courage,” by furthering the “boy-saves-princess” tale she has been unraveling episodically since her Introduction. Here we find the “King-in-training” being pitched a rather grand and grave idea. Agree to be shrunken by fairy dust to become “smaller than an almond” in order to be shot out of a blow-dart gun and surmount the treacherous mountains that stand between him and the princess. Anderson parallels this episode with the courageous decision-making of John McDermott, the head of Global Sales and Marketing for Rockwell Automation, emphasizing that courage isn’t always physical, and can often mean “doing things that we simply don’t want to do” to benefit of a larger cause. The lesson here is that, when people watch their leaders act courageously—in their defense, for their benefit—they open up, begin to trust their leaders, and emulate that courageousness.
I have the good fortune of knowing Erika Andersen, and can tell that all of the qualities you find in the book are also in the woman. And I can confidently tell you that her new book, Leading So People Will Follow, is as engaging—-and yes, as “followable”—-as she herself is. So grab a copy, grab an oar, and get onboard!
Explore Further:
Further explore Erika Andersen's leadership philosophy with these articles written in her own words:
In Leading--Now and Always (via erikaandersen.com), Andersen posits that "good leaders are going to become increasingly important as everything in business gets flatter, faster, more disrupted" and presents the key qualities--Far-sighted, Passionate, Courageous, Wise, Generous, and Trustworthy--that leaders need to increase their effectiveness.
In Are Leaders Born or Made? (via Forbes.com), Andersen asserts that any leader, born or made, who want to become a great leader must first become self-aware. To do this takes the development and practice of three key abilities: Become a Fair Witness; Invite Feedback; Listen.
Next:
Check in with us tomorrow as we continue our Thinker in Residence series on Erika Andersen with a Q&A interview that focuses on strategy.
Jack Covert Selects - Leading So People Will Follow
Posted Oct. 11, 2012 8:20 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Call it what you will: “Buy-in,” “Loyalty,” or “Enthusiasm.” Use whatever metaphor for the phenomenon you like—maybe “Everyone’s onboard” and “rowing the oars together”—but the simple reality is that every organization needs leaders, and leaders need followers. It’s how business gets done.
There is a lot of mythology surrounding effective leaders, but one need not be a “natural born leader” to inspire people. In her new book, Leading So People Will Follow, leadership coach and acclaimed business author Erika Andersen lays out “six leadership characteristics that inspire followers to fully support their leaders,” making the qualities that define great leaders accessible to all.
As in her previous two books, Growing Great Employees and Being Strategic, Andersen employs metaphor to illustrate her ideas. In this book, she spins readers a “folktale” of a soon-to-be prince and the princess he rescues. Using this “hero’s journey” as a device to illustrate the behaviors of “the acknowledged leader” (being Far-sighted, Passionate, Courageous, Wise, Generous, and Trustworthy) she sets out on a journey of her own to “help you find your own happily ever after as a truly accepted, fully ‘followable’ leader.”
While each chapter includes insight from Andersen’s own experience as a leadership consultant, as well as examples of real-life successful leaders, she understands that myths as metaphor have been utilized to instruct behavior since the dawn of time, and that we as contemporary business people are not immune to the effectiveness of a good story.
For example, Andersen begins Chapter 5, “Courage,” by furthering the “boy-saves-princess” tale she has been unraveling episodically since her Introduction. Here we find the “King-in-training” being pitched a rather grand and grave idea. Agree to be shrunken by fairy dust to become “smaller than an almond” in order to be shot out of a blow-dart gun and surmount the treacherous mountains that stand between him and the princess. Anderson parallels this episode with the courageous decision-making of John McDermott, the head of Global Sales and Marketing for Rockwell Automation, emphasizing that courage isn’t always physical, and can often mean “doing things that we simply don’t want to do” to benefit of a larger cause. The lesson here is that, when people watch their leaders act courageously—in their defense, for their benefit—they open up, begin to trust their leaders, and emulate that courageousness.
I have the good fortune of knowing Erika Andersen, and can tell that all of the qualities you find in the book are also in the woman. And I can confidently tell you that her new book, Leading So People Will Follow, is as engaging—and yes, as “followable”—as she herself is. So grab a copy, grab an oar, and get onboard!
