Ashkenas Ron - Harvard Business Review Leaders Handbook : Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level (9781633693753)

HBR Handbooks provide ambitious professionals with the frameworks, advice, and tools they need to excel in their careers. With step-by-step guidance, time-honed best practices, real-life stories, and concise explanations of research published in Harvard Business Review, each comprehensive volume helps you to stand out from the packwhatever your role.

Harvard Business Review Entrepreneurs Handbook

Harvard Business Review Leaders Handbook

Harvard Business Review Managers Handbook

RON ASHKENAS | BROOK MANVILLE

Harvard Business Review Press

Boston, Massachusetts

Harvard Business Review Press titles are available at significant quantity discounts when purchased in bulk for client gifts, sales promotions, and premiums. Special editions, including books with corporate logos, customized covers, and letters from the company or CEO printed in the front matter, as well as excerpts of existing books, can also be created in large quantities for special needs.

For details and discount information for both print and ebook formats, contact .

Copyright 2019 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to , or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

The web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the time of the books publication but may be subject to change.

Cataloguing-in-Publication data is forthcoming.

Hardcover ISBN: 9781633693760

Paperback ISBN: 9781633693746

eISBN: 9781633693753

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48-1992.

Linda ran marketing for a midsize online retailer and was thriving: her team had helped drive six straight quarters of growth, and she was praised by sales for her strong partnership and performance. Linda was also a member of the companys customer council and well respected by the CEO and other managers.

But she felt stuck in second gear. Her ideas for more innovation were politely listened to in executive meetings, but never seemed to go any-whereYeah, interesting concept, Linda, but way too blue-sky right now. She raised her hand for bigger jobs in her company, but repeatedly lost out to more experienced outsiders. She wanted to have more impact and occasionally thought about outside opportunities. But when recruiters called, she wasnt able to picture how she could grab the new job and be successful in it.

Linda was frustrated in her quest for a more significant role but had twinges of confusion and insecurity: Is becoming a leader some mystical transformation? Do I have to be some Sheryl-Sandberg-in-the-making to fulfill my professional dreams?

Lindas business school friends, Sam and Natalie, also ten years into their careers, wrestled with similar questions. Both were also eager for more opportunities for leadership but were struggling with the transition.

Sam, known for quick learning and hard work, had risen from fund-raising manager to chief operating officer at a growing community nonprofit. Im totally jazzed by the work here and have 100 people reporting to me, he told Linda proudly. But I keep waking up at 3 a.m., wondering if I can do this.

Natalie, a rising tech star in Silicon Valley, was itching to found her own startup. She had good management experience and now also some venture backing and a slate of potential employees eager to join her. But she didnt want to launch the business only to have investors force her to hand it over to a more seasoned executive. She sensed that running an entire company would be a biggerand scarierchallenge than anything shed done so far.

Linda, Sam, Natalie: this Leaders Handbook is for you. If youre hitting a leadership wall like many midcareer professionals, this book will help you break through. Its also for you if youre an established manager wanting to take your career to the next level or to increase the scope of your current job, if you want to start your own business, or if you just want to generally reach for more impact in whatever youre doing. Its for you whether youre at a traditional company, startup, nonprofit, or government organization, or even looking to lead in a more informal or networked enterprise.

Breaking through to a higher level of leadership will require you to think differently and may even be an identify shift for you. Youll have more privileges but also more risk: your daily actions will be much more exposed. But most of all, this shift will require you to do different things. Youll be moving from a role where youre focused on your own learning, collaborating with colleagues, and executing on a direction set by someone else, to a role where success depends more on the direction that you set and mobilizing many other people to get the job done. This book will describe the areas you need to excel and how to build those abilities.

Todays world desperately needs more and better leaders. Intensifying global competition, rising performance expectations, and proliferating social and economic problems everywhere have put an unprecedented premium on leadership. Furthermore, organizations continue to change (as always); they are now less hierarchical, more networked, more nimble, and more technology-enabled than a generation ago.

These changes are driving demand for guidance that has resulted in an explosion of books, articles, and other methods for building leadership skills and knowledge. There are thousands of leadership titles available on Amazon, with many more appearing every year. Much of it is helpful, but theres also a growing stream of gimmicky quick solutions flooding and confusing the market.

But despite all the change that swirls around us and the cacophony of advice, in its fundamentals, leadership has not changed: it is still about working with other people to achieve common goals.

Given that reality, we believe the best way for any aspiring leader to succeed and to navigate turbulent times is to tune out the noise and refocus on these fundamentals. By mining the wisdom of the most enduring ideas published in Harvard Business Review, our own expertise, and the experience of some of the worlds top leaders, this book will cut through the noise and provide you with grounding in those fundamentals so you can break through the kinds of barriers that Linda, Sam, and Natalie are facing.