How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers
How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers book cover

How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers

Hardcover – Illustrated, September 1, 2020

Price
$15.55
Format
Hardcover
Pages
448
Publisher
Simon & Schuster
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1982132156
Dimensions
6.13 x 1.2 x 9.25 inches
Weight
1.46 pounds

Description

“A wonderfully entertaining book about leaders from very different professions and walks of life. David Rubenstein’s dialogues with individuals as different as Jeff Bezos and Yo-Yo Ma skillfully evoke their personal life stories and the qualities that led to their success. Above all, Rubenstein discerns the attributes of leadership they all have in common. How To Lead is an exceptionally instructive and inspirational book.” — Robert M. Gates, formerxa0U.S. Secretary of Defense, author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller Duty "In these fast-moving, often tumultuous times, wise and effective leadership is critical. David Rubenstein’s How To Lead provides a compelling view into how legendary leaders are made.xa0This is required reading for today's leaders looking to up their game—and future leaders looking to enter the arena." — S heryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and founder of LeanIn.Org and OptionB.Org “Leadership is not a science but an art, and the wonderful David Rubenstein has convened a Louvre-like gathering of masters in the engaging and illuminating How to Lead . From statecraft to sports, this is an invaluable book about the things that matter most.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America “David Rubenstein deftly distills the key qualities of effective leadership while treating the reader to a feast of his inimitable interviews with many of our nation’s most accomplished leaders, How to Lead is a gripping compilation of intimate and fascinating conversations peppered with powerful lessons in how to compete and thrive in the most demanding environments.”xa0 — Susan E. Rice, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and National Security Advisor “It’s time to add David Rubenstein to the roster of master interviewers like Bill Moyers, Lesley Stahl, Anderson Cooper and Jim Lehrer.xa0Rubenstein persuades two dozen prominent Americans to tell the inside stories of how they rose to power and leadership. xa0Fascinating tales at a snappy pace — and a fresh reminder that we still have real leaders in our midst.” — David Gergen,xa0CNN Senior Analyst; Founding Director, Center For Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School “David Rubenstein is an expert on leadership. Reading this invaluable trove of advice from the greatest leaders of our time is like sitting in an armchair and listening to the masters reveal their secrets.” —Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times Bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs "Rubenstein wants readers to see the full spectrum of assets and liabilities in leaders." –Forbes “Rubenstein shares his unparalleled access to many influential leaders, using his stature and experience to provide insights otherwise unavailable to many....An introduction launches into Rubenstein's ruminations on life; his 12 attributes of leadership, from luck and focus to failure and integrity; plus his belief that real success occurs during the second and third "thirds" of life on earth....Readers will want to keep a pen handy: “Most of our regrets are acts of omission” (Jeff Bezos). “Your legacy is every life that you’ve touched” (Oprah). “Data is actually sexist” (Melinda Gates). “If you’re willing to make the trade-offs that you need to make, you can have it all” (Indra Nooyi). Words for life.” — Booklist , starred review David M. Rubenstein is the New York Times bestselling author of How to Lead , The American Experiment , and The American Story . He is cofounder and cochairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful private equity firms. Rubenstein is Chairman of the Boards of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the National Gallery of Art. He is an original signer of The Giving Pledge and a recipient of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and the MoMA’s David Rockefeller Award. The host of Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein on Bloomberg TV and The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations on Bloomberg TV and PBS, he lives in the Washington, DC, area.

Features & Highlights

  • The New York Times
  • Bestseller
  • #1
  • Wall Street Journal
  • Bestseller
  • The essential leadership playbook. Learn the principles and guiding philosophies of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, and many others through illuminating conversations about their remarkable lives and careers.
  • For the past five years, David M. Rubenstein—author of
  • The American Story
  • , visionary cofounder of The Carlyle Group, and host of
  • The David Rubenstein Show
  • —has spoken with the world’s highest performing leaders about who they are and how they became successful.
  • How to Lead
  • distills these revealing conversations into an indispensable leadership guidebook. Gain advice and wisdom from CEOs, presidents, founders, and master performers from the worlds of finance (
  • Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, Christine Lagarde, Ken Griffin
  • ), tech (
  • Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Tim Cook
  • ), entertainment (
  • Oprah Winfrey, Lorne Michaels, Renee Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma
  • ), sports (
  • Jack Nicklaus, Adam Silver, Coach K, Phil Knight
  • ), government (
  • President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Nancy Pelosi
  • ), and many others. -
  • Jeff Bezos
  • harnesses the power of wandering, discovering that his best decisions have been made with heart and intuition, rather than analysis. -
  • Richard Branson
  • never goes into a venture looking to make a profit. He aims to make the best in field. -
  • Phil Knight
  • views Nike as a marketing company whose product is its most important marketing tool. -
  • Marillyn Hewson
  • , who grew up in a fatherless home with four siblings in Kansas, quickly learned the importance of self-reliance and the value of a dollar.
  • How to Lead
  • shares the extraordinary stories of these pioneering agents of change. Discover how each luminary got started and how they handle decision making, failure, innovation, change, and crisis. Learn from their decades of experience as pioneers in their field. No two leaders are the same.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
60%
(974)
★★★★
25%
(406)
★★★
15%
(244)
★★
7%
(114)
-7%
(-114)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Does Not Say How To Lead - Superficial Interviews that Make the Stars Happy but Fail the Reader

I was so looking forward to the arrival of this book, and can't remember a time when I have felt so ripped off by an author. I'm sorry to say that the many interviews focus on the person's history and successes (glamor!), but do not reveal how the person leads. The author writes a lot about himself, and it seems the book was constructed to sell books. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. How disappointing. This is a great title that is looking for a wonderful researcher and writer to do it justice.
86 people found this helpful
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Please don't bother - just search Google and you'll get better insights

What a waste of money! The book is a series of interviews and questions were not even thoughtful - they were very basic. I found that most of these individuals were disinterested in answering the questions and were coerced into sitting in the interview. Please don't bother - just search Google and you'll get better insights
52 people found this helpful
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Deceptive Title

This is an enjoyable read, consisting of interviews with various celebrities. It has absolutely nothing, however, to do with leadership. The author never even asks his various interview guests about their leadership nor about leadership skills and essentials. If you want a pleasing read and wish to learn more about famous people, buy this book. If you want to learn anything about leadership, save your money.
39 people found this helpful
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How to Lead : Lessons of Listening & Learning

I purchased both the kindle and Audible version of the book – on the day it was released. Why because I thought it would be an opportunity to learn more about the ability to lead from those who have done so in diverse disciplines under diverse circumstances and from diverse backgrounds. I also attended the virtual book launch interview given by David Rubenstein at the Economics Club of Washington. I am a fan of David Rubenstein; I met him in March 2019 when he gave an interview of his story at the Economics Club of New York where I am a member.

What I love about the book is Rubenstein, the author/editor narrates an introduction to all the interviews giving updates, commentary, and additional context. While I started following the Audible version with the kindle, I quickly gravitated to the Audible version – why? Because it was like being transformed into a studio hearing the voices and words of men and women I may never meet. There was however one difference I noticed between versions; in the kindle version Condolezza Rice is cited in an interview between General David Petraeus and James A. Baker III interviews; her interview is not in the Audible version.

Most of the persons interviewed are Americans with few exceptions, therefore, this is an American story. Rubenstein is a skillful interviewer, who prepares purposeful questions, anticipates answers, listens, and responds in a rapid fire manner yielding engaging and thoughtful commentary on a broad array of topics. One can almost consider, “How to Lead” is like a master class in authentic leader voices from business to the arts.

There are many great quotes in this book but my favorites are from Nancy Pelosi, “My why I do this is because 1 of 5 children in America are in poverty,” and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when asked how would she change what was done by the founding fathers, “ I would include in the constitution that all men and women are created equal.” Both quotes focus on disparities in America both quotes give voice to many in the invisible majority.

How to lead is a masterpiece of personal and national stories of mavericks, scholars, trailblazers, and heroes in their authentic voices of which I highly recommended for students of leadership and all those who want to learn more about a cohort of successful men and women in America.

Maya Angelo once said people will remember how you made them feel. I found How to Lead to be a feel-good book. In our lifetimes we have witnessed a world that grooms, grows, and rewards innovators, visionaries, and those with plain ole' grit. How to Lead shares a curated sample of these stories in candid yet diverse authentic voices. I found that if one listens — one can learn many lessons.

I understand that interviews of the "rich and famous" may not be of interest to some. I have co-edited a body of work that believes that leadership in the future of work and entrepreneurship can be driven bottom up instead of top down. See The Future of Work & Entrepreneurship for the underserved on Amazon.
36 people found this helpful
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No leadership advice or guidelines in this book

No real leadership advice, like nothing. Nothing new Interview transcripts with the individuals listed.
22 people found this helpful
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A witty and insightful book into the life and work of some of the contemporary leaders

In this book, the author interviewed 30 contemporary leaders, putting them into six categories: visionaries, builders, transformers, commanders, decision-makers, and masters. Among the objectives of the interviews was to extract from each the answer to the question: What does it take to be a leader?
This format distinguishes from most, if not all, of the numerous books on leadership, which typically feature the authors expositing their knowledge and experience about leadership.
Although leadership is the central theme, the interviews also reveal interesting episodes of each interviewee’s life experiences, as well as reflections, some of which may resonate with the readers’ own experiences. A couple of examples:
Bezos:
Interesting Episode: Before “Amazon”, he named his company “Cadabra”. It did not work well.
Success Secret: Among his secrets to success is “not making key decisions too early or too late in the day.”
Reflection: “When I’m eighty, I want to have minimized the number of regrets that I have in my life.”

Oprah:
Interesting Episode: Oprah’s name was the result of “Orpah” misspelled the first day she went to school, and it stayed that way. “Orpah” came from a biblical source. It was the name on her birth certificate.
Success Secret: “My skill comes from my listening ability, and trying to understand the impact of what was being said.”
Reflection: Many times, getting demoted or getting fired is an opportunity for something else to show up.

While almost all of the leadership attributes enunciated in this book are not new, in the sense that they can be found in other leadership books, it is nonetheless refreshing that they were gleaned directly from present-day leaders, many, if not all, are household names and TV personalities. As mentioned, the author puts his interviewees into six categories. Missing from the six is the category “Academic Leaders”. It should be noted that, although Condolezza Rice served as Provost of Stanford University, she was interviewed in the "Commanders" category, on account of her service as former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. As someone whose entire career is in higher education, this reviewer would be interested in the secret(s) of successfully leading a group of professors, who typically see themselves as prima donnas. If the author happens to be reading this, perhaps he would take this into consideration if and when he contemplates a second edition.
In summary, a witty and insightful book into the life and work of some of the contemporary leaders.
4 people found this helpful
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Superficial interviews

I listened to the audio version of this book. The author has had tremendous success and I wanted to hear some insightful dialogue with some very successful people. Unfortunately, as many of the critical reviews state, this is something that is sorely lacking. The author is able to interview some real titans of our time. But we learn superficial (and irrelevant) trivia about their life. I think the first chapter of the book is probably all that one needs. The rest is something that I recommend serious students of leadership skip.. Sorry David. I expected real substance from you. Not this people magazine tabloid nonsense.
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Superficial interviews

I listened to the audio version of this book. The author has had tremendous success and I wanted to hear some insightful dialogue with some very successful people. Unfortunately, as many of the critical reviews state, this is something that is sorely lacking. The author is able to interview some real titans of our time. But we learn superficial (and irrelevant) trivia about their life. I think the first chapter of the book is probably all that one needs. The rest is something that I recommend serious students of leadership skip.. Sorry David. I expected real substance from you. Not this people magazine tabloid nonsense.
2 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Really Good

This book is really good as it relates to the titans of industry and how they think and built businesses.
1 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Really Good

This book is really good as it relates to the titans of industry and how they think and built businesses.
1 people found this helpful