We are all subjective—it's human nature. We overreact to situations; we judge people too quickly and unfairly; we take something personally when it was not really meant that way. As a result, we lose relationships, reputation, money, and peace of mind. And in our ever-more-complex world, leaders must make decisions faster and with more conflicting information; widespread insecurity makes people territorial and risk-averse; and the consequences of every action are played out on a disproportionately large stage. Imagine how much more prepared Mitt Romney could have been for his landslide loss on election night, if his advisors had acknowledged the facts staring them in the face. To succeed, we must consciously seek to increase our objectivity—seeing and accepting things as they are without projecting our mental models, fears, background, and personal experiences onto them. This way, we not only avoid costly cognitive errors, but open ourselves to engage new cultures, new markets, and new opportunities. In The Objective Leader, Thornton draws on her original research, as well as her years of experience as a manager and entrepreneur, to offer proven strategies for identifying limiting and unproductive ways of thinking and creating powerful new mental models that ensure continued success.

The Objective Leader shows how a simple set of tools can help you overcome bias and subjectivity— and get better results in every endeavor

#1 New York Times Bestseller Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth—and how it can help any organization thrive. In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy, and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. For Google to change the world (or even to survive), Page and Brin had to learn how to make tough choices on priorities while keeping their team on track. They'd have to know when to pull the plug on losing propositions, to fail fast. And they needed timely, relevant data to track their progress—to measure what mattered. Doerr taught them about a proven approach to operating excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He had first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where the legendary Andy Grove ("the greatest manager of his or any era") drove the best-run company Doerr had ever seen. Later, as a venture capitalist, Doerr shared Grove's brainchild with more than fifty companies. Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked. In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions within a set time frame. Everyone's goals, from entry level to CEO, are transparent to the entire organization. The benefits are profound. OKRs surface an organization's most important work. They focus effort and foster coordination. They keep employees on track. They link objectives across silos to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost retention. In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic.

Children in today's world are inundated with information about who to be, what to do and how to live. But what if there was a way to teach children how to manage priorities, focus on goals and be a positive influence on the world around them? The Leader in Meis that programme. It's based on a hugely successful initiative carried out at the A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina. To hear the parents of A. B Combs talk about the school is to be amazed. In 1999, the school debuted a programme that taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleto a pilot group of students. The parents reported an incredible change in their children, who blossomed under the programme. By the end of the following year the average end-of-grade scores had leapt from 84 to 94. This book will launch the message onto a much larger platform. Stephen R. Covey takes the 7 Habits, that have already changed the lives of millions of people, and shows how children can use them as they develop. Those habits -- be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw -- are critical skills to learn at a young age and bring incredible results, proving that it's never too early to teach someone how to live well.

National Bestseller “Students talk about Stewart D. Friedman, a management professor at the Wharton School, with a mixture of earnest admiration, gratitude and rock star adoration.” —New York Times In this national bestseller, Stew Friedman gives you the tools you need to achieve “four-way wins”—improved performance in all domains of life: work, home, community, and self. Friedman, celebrated professor and founding director of the Wharton School’s Leadership Program and its Work/Life Integration Project, explains how three simple yet potent principles—be real, be whole, and be innovative—can help you, no matter what your age or what you do for work, become a better leader and have a richer life. In this engaging adaptation of his hands-on Wharton course, he offers step-by-step instruction to help you create positive, sustainable change in your world. This proven, programmatic method teaches you how to produce stronger results at work, find clearer purpose, feel less stressed, strengthen connections with the people who matter most to you, contribute further to important causes, and gain greater support for your vision of your future. If you’re ready to learn to lead in all parts of your life—this is the book for you. For a full array of Total Leadership tips and tools, visit totalleadership.org. Also look for Stew Friedman’s book, Leading the Life You Want, which builds on Total Leadership by profiling well-known leaders—from Bruce Springsteen to Michelle Obama—who exemplify its principles and demonstrate how success in your work is accomplished not at the expense of the rest of your life, but as the result of meaningful attachments to all its parts.

Leadership is hard. How can you balance compassion for your people with effectiveness in getting the job done? A global pandemic, economic volatility, natural disasters, civil and political unrest. From New York to Barcelona to Hong Kong, it can feel as if the world as we know it is coming apart. Through it all, our human spirit is being tested. Now more than ever, it's imperative for leaders to demonstrate compassion. But in hard times like these, leaders need to make hard decisions—deliver negative feedback, make difficult choices that disappoint people, and in some cases lay people off. How do you do the hard things that come with the responsibility of leadership while remaining a good human being and bringing out the best in others? Most people think we have to make a binary choice between being a good human being and being a tough, effective leader. But this is a false dichotomy. Being human and doing what needs to be done are not mutually exclusive. In truth, doing hard things and making difficult decisions is often the most compassionate thing to do. As founder and CEO of Potential Project, Rasmus Hougaard and his longtime coauthor, Jacqueline Carter, show in this powerful, practical book, you must always balance caring for your people with leadership wisdom and effectiveness. Using data from thousands of leaders, employees, and companies in nearly a hundred countries, the authors find that when leaders bring the right balance of compassion and wisdom to the job, they foster much higher levels of employee engagement, performance, loyalty, and well-being in their people. With rich examples from Netflix, IKEA, Unilever, and many other global companies, as well as practical tools and advice for leaders and managers at any level, Compassionate Leadership is your indispensable guide to doing the hard work of leadership in a human way.