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Leadership starts with being authentic, the genuine you. If you are guided by an internal compass that represents your character and values, you re going to be fine. Let your values guide your actions and dont ever lose your internal compass. Everything isnt black or white. There are a lot of gray areas in business - Sara Lee BRather than waiting to get to the top to become leaders, they looked for every opportunity to lead and to develop themselves. Without exception, these leaders believed bei...
An excellent book on leadership. Bill George has interviewed numerous leaders and allows them to speak for themselves in this book. This is a must read for those who are supervisors, managers and business leaders.
(read for a work book club)If you're going to read a business book, there are far worse and far more vapid bools to read. Likewise, if you're going to be in management, you might as well do it for a reason beyond wealth, short term stockholder value, and employee exploitation. While this book is a little too heavy on vague anecdotes and glittering generalities, it's at least consistent in its message that you shouldn't become a leader unless you have a well thought out moral code and a strong pu...
Book is written for CEOs and leaders in a business sense. I liked the connections made between a leader's personal story and her chosen leadership path. Leadership is defined as turning personal values and a real intrinsic desires into concrete actions and ways to help others. Everyone's path is different and there are many ways to do meaningful work.
Sigh, this book was supposed to change my life, according to my mentor. But, despite its best attempts it's really written for men, and beyond that I find myself lacking the things this book takes as a given, and chock full of the things this book suggests that everyone is seeking. So, I'm not finding myself radically altered, but the points are well taken.
I’ll concede I am probably not the author’s target demographic. It’s written for a type A aspiring CEO bro (CE-bro?) who could use a values transplant. (People are important! Listen to them! Except when they’re patients who are suing your pharma company for harming them. Listen to them. Put your family first.... Except when you are goaded into taking a global role a world away from your spouse.)It’s unfortunate that many of the principles, such as leading with values & purpose, are directly cont...
Not sure about this one. The good thoughts about values, purpose and social responsibility of companies were drowned in fluff, vagueness and repetition. So many stories about so many CEOs who made a difference. Yet, somehow this information did not come alive for me when I read it. It was just information, interesting, but with no emotional access. And that might be the reason why I perceive it as forgettable. Maybe because I did not read the previous books, I don't get the full picture about th...
I read this book for a work book club. It just wasn't for me. A review previously posted said it best..."It’s written for a type A aspiring CEO bro (CE-bro?) who could use a values transplant. (People are important! Listen to them! Except when they’re patients who are suing your pharma company for harming them. Listen to them. Put your family first.... Except when you are goaded into taking a global role a world away from your spouse.)"
At first I was a bit skeptical about this book. It looked like one of those self-help kind of books that just state the obvious and are nothing more than a positive feedback loop. Nonetheless, it came highly recommended to me from one of my friends taking Bill George's course on Authentic Leadership at Harvard Business School. To my surprise, the book was excellent. If you read this book with an open mind focused on improving yourself, then there is a lot that can be learned here. Not sure? Here...
A great book in reflecting our self-leadership as foundation of becoming a great leader.Integrating pivotal moments to reflect it means is great and I used this book to reflect with others, which just worked great :-)
There are many interesting anecdotes in the book, which is its strength. There is no clear structure to the book as a whole though. Occasionally there are lists, but they are not the helpful type. My biggest gain from reading this was getting a glimpse into people's life paths and why they may have made certain decisions about those paths.
[3.5/5]Background: Last year while at HBS we had a session with Thomas DeLong which I found very profound and powerful while many of the alpha males who were in the program with me thought it was just fluff. In the session DeLong mentioned Bill George's True North more than once and I immediately went on Amazon and ordered it. I finally got around to reading it now. Quick review: I totally believe in the concepts in True North. It is important for a leader to be able to frame his life story and
Bill George is so full of shit that I had to wipe my hands off with toilet paper after I finished his book.He has to update this book periodically because so many of the "authentic leaders" he interviews are arrested for fraud.His "insights" are mostly applicable to living a life of unbelievably extreme privilege and wealth (none of which he acknowledges even for a second), and the exceptions to this theme are universally people who've grown completely cynical about capitalism and left industry
Meh. I didn’t much like it at all.After hearing so many great things about this book and how essential it is for leadership learning, and how great of an individual Bill George is, I was very disappointed when this book did entirely nothing for me.Who knows, maybe I just need to read it 15 years from now and it will all come together. But when I read this, I felt it was mostly platitudinous, saying a lot of “well, duh” things to make the reader feel good about overcoming their “crucibles.” The b...
I was given this book as an assignment for my employer's annual meeting (we all were) so I charged through it, annotating and marking discussion points, only to have the book NOT mentioned, discussed, or in any way interacted with at the entire 3-day annual meeting.Which seems about right.At the end of the day this isn't the worst "professional self-help" book I've ever read but it's all name dropping, platitudes, and - at the end of the day - has a strong undercurrent of the 'divine right of ki...
The main thing I learned from this book is that I will never be a high-powered billionaire executive. And that's okay. I do like the concept of understanding yourself and your priorities and using that to navigate your career. That's much of what we focused on during my recent leadership training at work. It's important to understand who you are and to stay grounded in that rather than getting caught up in doing what you think you need to do to get ahead. All that said, I think I'm going to stay...
Had to read for class. It’s very cliched and the vignettes are not very in depth and are repetitive.If you’re looking for a “self help” book that will actually motivate you and inspire you, read Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.
I began reading this book because my daughter Kayla had read it as part of her Master's Degree work in human resources management. As a retired pastor, I found it to be an excellent book which integrated business principles with spiritual awareness. George does well in establishing that a business leader who only focuses on the bottom line financially, will often fail. Rather the best leaders are those who work toward a higher purpose which integrates their own giftedness with providing a servic...
I really loved the book in the beginning and was skeptical of all the negative reviews this book got. However, as I progessed further into the book, the content although was really good, kept on repeating the same thing again and again and soon I was so bored that I had to stop reading it as I literally had to force myself to read the book. I am not taking away anything from this book though, it is a well written, documented and researched book consisting of the experience of many business manag...
An interesting book covering a wide range of ideas on how to an "authentic leader". It discusses such topics as "understanding your past" to "how to become more self-aware". It is full of stories of successful world leaders and anecdotes about successes and failures. It provides a number of thought-provoking questions and ideas to ponder. Simply stated True North is about gaining a grounded sense of direction in one's life and holding fast to critical personal principles. If you enjoy thinking a...