TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 11
Part 1 12
Standing Out, Getting Heard and Getting Ahead: Secrets of Fast Tracking Superstars 12
¿Know the organization and build relationships¿ 13
¿Invest in yourself and invest in others¿ 15
¿Be smart in real time¿ 17
¿Plan your moves, and work your plan¿ 19
¿Know yourself¿ 21
¿Invest in, don¿t mortgage your future¿ 23
¿Get an early start to be better than best¿ 25
¿Ladies, put your ideas on the table, without reservation¿ 27
Part 2 30
The Rising Star: What Succeeds and What Derails the Individual Contributor in a New Leadership Role 30
¿Manage the conditions that foster important psychological shifts¿ 31
¿Strive to create all star performance, not all stars¿ 33
¿Don¿t over-rely on the assessments of others¿ 35
¿Identify the broader impact you want to have¿ 37
¿Constantly demonstrate self-confidence, optimism, and focus¿ 39
¿Get others to see what you see without over-using authority¿ 42
¿Establish a cross functional orientation in order to see the whole puzzle, not just a single piece¿ 44
Part 3 47
Powerful Developmental Experiences: Lessons from Stretch Assignments and On-the-Job Adversity 47
¿Be a credible communicator¿ 48
¿Use authority to command resources, not people.¿ 49
¿Stand for what¿s right when things are unraveling around you¿ 51
¿Adversity makes Teflon out of you¿ 53
¿Be willing to admit what you don¿t know¿ 56
¿Step up to courageously overcome the fear that diminishes you¿ 58
¿How you manage through adversity can make or break your career¿ 60
¿Transform adversity and Pay it Forward¿ 63
Part 4 66
Getting Leadership Bandwidth: What It really Takes To Succeed as a Leader with Broader Organizational Leadership Responsibility 66
¿Build breadth versus depth and enhance communication¿ 67
¿Develop a framework that supports team versus me¿ 69
¿Use the power of your personality to make people feel important¿ 71
¿Seek out multiple stretch assignments to create bandwidth¿ 73
¿Learn to create clarity out of complexity¿ 75
¿Reinvent your brand to gain leadership bandwidth¿ 77
¿Ask for assignments in areas outside of your core expertise¿ 79
¿Maintain a strategic focus in everything you do¿ 81
Part 5 84
Managing Complexity and 24 x 7 Stress: Secrets for Staying Sane with a Full Plate 84
¿Get Involved¿ 85
¿Create scenarios and plan your actions before the day you need to execute them¿ 87
¿Manage the critical few pieces of information¿ 88
¿Anticipate what can go wrong and have a communications strategy¿ 91
¿Managing complexity is about managing your environment¿ 94
¿It¿s like herding cats¿ 96
¿Have a simple, crisp vision that taps into people¿s passions¿ 98
¿Don¿t allow ¿manufactured complexity¿ to overwhelm your organization¿ 101
¿Manage the 20% that drives 80% of the work¿ 103
Part 6 106
Managing Up: Maneuvers that Win when You Need To Lead those above You 106
¿Communicate, communicate, communicate¿ 107
¿Understand your boss¿ 109
¿Take on an advisory role¿ 110
¿Be willing to seek guidance, and you¿ll be allowed to guide¿ 113
¿Don¿t just know your function; know the business¿ 115
¿Identify the synergies¿ 117
¿Employ stakeholder analysis to effectively manage up¿ 119
Part 7 122
Lessons Learned from Bad Bosses: Now You Know Exactly What NOT To Do 122
¿Don¿t ask if you don¿t want to hear the message¿ 123
¿The team behind you is your biggest priority¿ 125
¿It¿s not about the results, but how you get the results¿ 127
¿Don¿t be seduced by your power or position¿ 130
¿Lead as if you have no authority¿ 132
¿Practice connective leadership by getting close to people and allowing them to be their best selves¿ 134
¿Don¿t be an energy vampire¿ 136
Part 8 The Paradox of Success: Leader Behaviors that Score early Wins but Create Train Wrecks in Higher Level Roles 139
¿From Me to We¿ 140
¿From Aggressive to Persuasive¿ 141
¿From tactical to strategic¿ 143
¿From personal ownership to shared ownership¿ 145
¿From delivering results to facilitating results¿ 148
¿From local to global plans and actions¿ 150
¿From self interests to shared interests¿ 153
Part 9 156
Going Against the Grain: Secrets for Succeeding with Challenging the Status Quo 156
¿Manage but don¿t try to eliminate risk¿ 157
¿Learn on the go¿without a roadmap¿ 160
¿Break the rules that weaken and constrain¿ 162
¿Create fewer messes with a more methodical approach¿ 164
¿Be entrepreneurial about preserving the past¿ 167
¿Help people be the best they can be with crystal clear clarity every day¿ 169
¿Create an organizational culture that challenges the status quo¿ 172
Part 10 175
Managing Peer Relationships: Advice from Successful Collaborators 175
¿Understand and align with the goals of those you seek to collaborate with¿ 176
¿Collaboration is a choice; it¿s never forced¿ 178
¿Create the environment that supports courageous conversations¿ 180
¿It¿s not about winning but about creating win-wins¿ 182
¿Embrace that there is enough to go around¿ 185
¿Bring humility and do your homework to be an effective collaborator¿ 187
¿Make collaboration an organizational imperative for success¿ 189
Part 11 192
Lessons from Missteps and Setbacks: When Experience IS the Teacher 192
¿Take care to manage the political side of any new initiative.¿ 193
¿It¿s never too late to wake up to your potential.¿ 195
¿Manage, but don¿t over-manage¿ 197
¿Setbacks are comebacks¿ 200
¿Being a leader is not about being ¿one of us¿, but it is about creating inclusion¿ 201
¿Success is about the work¿and the networks¿ 203
¿Don¿t let winning at work mean losing at life¿ 205
¿Trust your intuition when things are tough¿ 207
Part 12 210
The Change Agile Leader: What It Really Takes To Lead Change 210
¿Envision success and engender hope in the future¿ 211
¿You must manage three critical factors in any radical change process¿ 214
¿Lead change, don¿t let it lead you¿ 217
¿Lead change with boldness¿ 220
¿Mine for the gold¿ 222
¿Embrace competition and use it to improve your organization¿ 225
¿Do a pilot to push the envelope ever so slightly when leading incremental change¿ 227
¿Demonstrate pride, passion and personal commitment¿ 229
¿Respect those who¿ve helped you grow your business when going against the grain¿ 232
¿Take a creative customer stance when implementing a step change in a commoditized business¿ 235
Part 13 238
Leading High Performance Teams: Secrets for Optimizing Group Intelligence 238
¿Establish the discipline and the focus¿ 239
¿Build a strong team foundation by building individuals¿ 242
¿Define the need for teamwork before charging a team¿ 243
¿Get the team talent and structures right¿ 246
¿Figure out how to be a servant in order to inspire high performance teamwork¿ 249
¿Make corporate social responsibility your license to operate¿ 251
¿Survival in a global environment requires a shift from a culture of self to a culture of service¿ 253
¿Stay close to the team and point to the future during disruptive transition¿ 255
Preface
When I was presented the opportunity to author this book, I did not hesitate to offer an enthusiastic, ¿Yes!¿ As an executive coach and consultant to organizational leaders, and as someone who¿s held a number of organizational leadership roles, I was keenly aware of the issues leaders grapple with at every level and at every age and stage of leadership. The topics in this book represent the coaching agendas of literally hundreds of leaders I¿ve worked with over the past decade. Through first hand experience, I also knew that much of what leaders need to know to lead effectively isn¿t written in management text books. Moreover, the personal attributes of effective leaders and many of the real world applied skills aren¿t taught in leadership courses, and they aren¿t explicitly communicated in organizations. That¿s one reason so many leaders have sought executive coaching.
It¿s clear that the organizational landscape has irrevocably changed, and every leader must lead from a different place in order to deliver today¿s most needed results. It isn¿t simply a matter of being smarter and faster. That¿s a given. What¿s needed is a different kind of leader for the very different world we live and work in today. The marketplace is heated up, and global competition is creating unprecedented organizational churn. All of this is against a backdrop of a fundamentally altered employment contract. Not only are jobs no longer guaranteed for the lifetimes of those who hold them, the shelf life of every job and its attendant skills is being dramatically shortened by rapid advances in technology and global competition.
Every leader¿s imperative today is to find ways to engage the full commitment of employees to deliver high impact results in the midst of continuous whitewater. And that¿s not all. Leaders themselves must navigate steep learning curves their Industrial Era counterparts never imagined. They must hit the ground running, act decisively and create a sense of urgency before they get run over. But the sobering reality is that there is a widening gap between what leaders may have been trained to do and what they need to do to be effective in today¿s organization. For example, the flattening of many organizations means that the need for advanced communication and problem solving skills are being pushed further down the organization, but the development of those skills is lagging. New leaders are finding that there are very few road maps to guide them.
There is no doubt that a compelling sense of urgency and decisiveness are watchwords for today¿s organizational landscape. The leaders who have staying power and who win the respect and full commitment of organizational members understand what they must do to lead differently while acting with urgency and decisiveness. How they think about their roles as leaders and how they lead differently is the basis of much of what you will read in this book. What they have to offer isn¿t simply re-packaged 1980¿s management theory. Indeed, those who have created sustainable success have reinvented themselves for leadership in the 21st century workplace. They have conviction and verve, and they have a treasure trove of practical strategies born of their personal experiences to offer. They have been tested through adversity, radical and disruptive change, and yes, even bad bosses. They have experienced serious missteps and setbacks, and they have had to negotiate the paradoxes of their own success. They have shared their lessons learned with the grace and humility characteristic of those who have been chastened by their experiences but who have nonetheless been grateful for having taken the ride.
The voices of leaders in this book represent a broad spectrum of leadership roles, types and sizes of organizations, and levels of leadership. There are young, up and coming leaders, those well on their way, and those at the twilight of their careers. There are leaders from the Fortune 500, the United States Government, the non-profit sector, and even international leaders. Despite the diverse backgrounds, organizations and leadership experiences represented, what emerges is a picture of what makes a modern day leader successful, what accelerates a fast tracking leader¿s career, and what gives a leader the staying power that translates into sustainable organizational results. Delivering business results has never been tougher, but the need for leaders to lead with compassion and heart has never been more compelling. The leader who is successful today knows the business at every level, envisions and communicates success, engages commitment and gets results without over-using authority. The successful leader also knows how to manage peer relationships with aplomb and how to harness the intelligence of teams. And, this leader has the know-how to artfully manage complexity rather than being at the effect of it and to successfully work within the system to challenge the status quo. Influence has supplanted authority as the most useful tool in the leader¿s arsenal.
The ability to effectively lead change may well be the single most saleable capability of today¿s successful leader. We¿re not talking about incremental, internally driven change of the sort that typified the Industrial Era Workplace. The kind of change we¿re talking about is for the most part externally driven change that disrupts people and systems and that forces the reinvention of the business and its processes¿repeatedly. Despite the fact that much of the change that occurs in organizations today is externally driven, those who are successful in their leadership roles see the trends that are creating change, and they steer their organizations proactively rather than reactively. To do so they must garner leadership bandwidth.
Leaders with bandwidth have a grasp on both the internal organizational environment and the external environment, and they use their knowledge to make strategically sound decisions¿often without a lot of information and well ahead of the market. They know all too well that if they wait until a comfortable amount of data has been assimilated, they will have lost valuable time and a host of opportunities. But that¿s not all. Leaders with bandwidth understand at a fundamental level how to use themselves differently in order to be strategically effective. These leaders, armed with an understanding of exactly how they add value to the organization, effectively design their work in order to optimize their contributions and those of others.
The leaders who have shared their sage advice and practical wisdom so generously on the pages of this book are real world leaders in real world organizations. Interestingly, many expressed reservation about being showcased in a book on leadership. They just didn¿t see themselves as all that special. I came to recognize that their humility is in fact one of the attributes of leadership most worthy of celebrating. We only need to look as far as the recent spate of corporate scandals and associated meltdowns in executive integrity to appreciate what a leader¿s humility can bring to the table. But there is something even more compelling to consider, and that is that leadership is not a role or a position. Leaders are nominated. There is no leadership without followership. The personal attributes of a leader that inspire and engage followership will in all likelihood be ultimately recognized as more instrumental to an organization¿s success than any formula for casting organizational strategy or waging a competitive marketing campaign. The leaders represented here make a solid case for melding business acumen with compassion and heart. Armed with courage and conviction and a passion to succeed, they are redefining organizational leadership excellence.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply grateful to the 101 leaders who made this book possible. Some of them are my clients, each a servant leader in his or her own rig

What No One Ever Tell You About Leadering will be a book for aspiring and up and coming leaders, as well as those already well on their way in their leadership roles who want to take stock of where they are and apply valuable tips and strategies to enhance their leadership effectiveness. This book will be a literal gold mine of leadership tools, tips, strategies, lessons learned, leadership acumen and practical advice from real world leaders at all levels. What No One Ever Tells You About Leadering will feature the real world stories from leaders who are able to speak to such edgy topics as lessons learned from working with ineffective leaders, the paradox of success, going against the grain and more. This book will be more than merely a good read. It will be a field guide and desk companion for those who want to lead using the information from leading edge thinkers on what it takes to succeed in the sometimes daunting role of leader. Leadership coach and consultant Jan Austin will interview 101 different leaders at all levels of an organization and offer their inside secrets for this difficult skills to master, including:
-Lessons from Stretch Assignments and On-the-Job Adversity
-What It really Takes To Succeed when Assuming Broader Organizational Leadership Responsibility
-What Succeeds and What Derails the Individual Contributor in a New Leadership Role
-Secrets for Staying Sane with a Full Plate
-Maneuvers that Win when You Need To Lead those Above You
-Secrets of Fast Tracking Superstars
-Now You Know Exactly What NOT To Do
-Leader Behaviors that Score early Wins but Create Train Wrecks in Higher Level Roles
-Secrets for Succeeding with Challenging the Status Quo
-Advice from Successful Collaborators
-When Experience IS the Teacher
-What It Really Takes To Lead Change
-Secrets for Optimizing Group Intelligence