Scott - Fierce leadership: a bold alternative to the worst best practices of business today

Fierce Leadership has distilled valuable real-life experiences and provides a clear roadmap for leaders, managers, employees, or any group of people working together to make positive change.

Geri D. Palast, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor, and executive director, Campaign for Fiscal Equity

Susan Scott nails it again with Fierce Leadership. Her powerful imagery and gift for stylish communication lend her message a stickiness and freshness that makes it impossible to forget. As an author, communicator, and leader Susan is peerless. Once again Im wowed!!!

Mark Willis, CEO, Keller Williams

Fierce Leadership is a refreshingly honest and candid book. The author takes a critical look at how our careers and businesses have been held back by so-called best practices, then gives actionable suggestions for revitalizing work and accelerating your success. Read this book for new ideas and to inspire a proactive transition strategy.

Michael D. Watkins, bestselling author of The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels

Of all the worst, best practices in Fierce Leadership, customer-centricity provoked the most thought. I truly believe that when the dust settles after this recession, the companies left standing will be those who know how to connect with their customers human being to human being. If this economic downturn has a silver lining it may be, as Susan suggests, that we will learn to ask, how are you? and be willing to wait for the real answer.

Jackie P. Bayer, director of organizational development, Ernst & Young, LLP

Fierce Leadership is the next best thing to having a world-class management guru like Susan Scott on your boardor as your personal adviser.

Steve Farber, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership and The Radical Leap

Looking for a take on leadership that will stretch your perspective and your comfort zone? If thats what you need (and what leader doesnt), then Fierce Leadership is for you. In her trademark style of tough-love coaching and advice, Susan Scott shoots straight to provide the tips and insights you really need to take your team and yourself to new heights.

Scott Eblin, author of The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success

Wow! I wish Id had Susan Scotts candid and refreshing advice earlier in my career as an executive. Youll never think about management, performance, or professional relationships in the same way again.

Timothy Keiningham, EVP and global chief strategy officer at IPSOS Loyalty, and author of Why Loyalty Matters

Many of these best practices are anything but. Having applied the principles of Fierce Conversations to our organization, I can truly recommend Fierce as a best practice, fundamental to all leadership. Fierce Leadership expands these principles by debunking traditional but misguided notions. After reading the chapter on accountability, I am amazed at the amount of time I spend in victim mode. Scott strips bare the self-serving excuses for accepting external influences and the behavior of others as an escape from the pain of not getting the results we desire. For any leader who wants to learn how to move beyond holding people accountable to the rich and rewarding behavior of holding people able, this book is a must read.

David R. Nielsen, MD, executive vice president and CEO, American Academy of Otolaryngology

I loved the bookwrote all over it and used my highlighter and made lots and lots of footnotes. My staff is already hearing all about it.

Juan Gonzalez, vice president of student affairs, University of Texas at Austin

Fierce Leadership is not for those who want to become shadows in the crowd; it is for those who are willing to tackle the biggest challenges in their lives, toss out the old corporate way of thinking, and execute at a higher level of integrity, both personally and professionally.

Faith Green, cofounder of ARC, A Resource Community for Women

Susan Scotts insightful leadership practices have stimulated my thinking and expanded my context of educational leadershipa must-read for school principals and central-office administrators.

Debbi Hardy, K-12 curriculum director

Susan Scott is clearly one of the sages of the ages! This is a book to move the head and the heart. And it can make a huge difference in the success of your business. She fiercely cuts through the slogans and fads that pass for best practices in business today and shows us what it really takes to get where we need to go. This is authentic, original, and powerfulas only Susan can provide!

Tom Morris, author of If Aristotle Ran General Motors and If Harry Potter Ran General Electric

I had to laugh when I read Susans words What you and I are talking about is so fundamental that if I wrote another book, it would have to be titled The Complete Guide to the Fricking Obvious. And yet reading Fierce Leadership has instilled in me a new energy! It gives language and support to what has been for me simply an instinct as it relates to leadership, and encourages me to to come out from behind myself and put authenticity and the capacity to connect at the heart of the culturethe way we do things around herein our district well, in ALL my relationships. It gives me the courage to make it an absolute reality and not just an idea vaguely emerging.

Elaine C. Cash, superintendent, Riverdale Joint Unified School District

I laughed out loud at Scotts memo to leaders. Humor and the enjoyment of reading for readings sake in a business book what a concept. I think Im seeing a new workshop.

Mardig Sheridan, Beyond Boundaries Learning

You are always practicing something. The question is: What are you practicing?

MARTIAL ARTS SENSEI

W hen I was five and woke with my hair glued to my pillow because Id fallen asleep with chewing gum in my mouth, and when our dog lifted its leg on the neighbors toddler, who ran to his mother screaming, Dat doggy peed on me! and when my brothers forgotten Silly Putty melded forever with the fabric of our new sofa, and when my dad gave my mom a set of pots and pans for Christmas, we anticipated my mothers trademark comment: What fresh hell is this? (Fencing foils went over much better the following year.)

I sometimes find myself muttering this same phrase as I sit in meetings with leaders who have apparently gone round the bend, given their latest mandate guaranteed to ensure fresh hell for all involved, taking the company in the opposite direction from where it wants and needs to go. Or when a commenta throwaway for the person who made itlands with an audible thud and now, well, now were into it.

This puzzles me, since the leaders I know are highly intelligent people with invaluable experience on the firing line, a decent amount of humility, a wicked sense of humor, and a strong desire to grow their companies and champion change. They are usually on the right track, and much of what they do works. Yet so many pour considerable time, intelligence, and cash into significant sinkholespracticeswith no good outcomes and, in fact, costly implications.