Scaling Leadership Read online

  “Pixar is a creative company that has made it a priority to constantly re-examine itself, but even in a company like ours, certain leadership impediments can become impossible to see, and detrimental calcification can set in. As a consultant to me, Bill Adams has been an astonishingly quick study who was able to identify leadership issues and put me on a constructive path to remedy them. Bill's ability to see complex problems and help me generate gettable, actionable solutions has been both remarkable and pivotal in allowing us to bring a fresh leadership reset to a company in its 30th year. Bill and his partner Bob have captured the essence of the wisdom and the tools they bring to helping leaders in Scaling Leadership. I cannot recommend the book strongly enough—especially if you think you don't need it!”

  Jim Morris, President, Pixar Animation Studios

  “The Leadership Circle lens is a gift that keeps on giving! Its enormous database has long provided unrivaled quantitative power. Now, in Scaling Leadership, Anderson and Adams open up the corresponding qualitative treasure-trove to further illuminate the paths to truly transformative leadership. A must-read for all leaders, and those who help them!”

  Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, Harvard University faculty and

  co-authors of Immunity to Change, and An Everyone Culture

  “The future of capitalism is conscious capitalism. A conscious business can only emerge through conscious leadership at scale. Anderson and Adam, in Scaling Leadership, clearly and practically show you how to become a more conscious and effective leader, how to replicate that in your teams, and how to scale conscious leadership throughout the organization. Read this book and put it into practice!”

  John Mackey, Co-founder and CEO, Whole Foods Market,

  Co-founder, Conscious Capitalism Inc.

  “Scaling Leadership and the Full Circle Group approach is a powerful path to step changing leaders' capabilities individually and as a team to drive positive change and deliver outstanding results. As an organization, it moves you from reactive, defensive and excuse making to creative, purposeful and outcome focused. I highly recommend the book and the approach to CEOs and their teams.”

  Erik Fyrwald Chief Executive Officer and President at

  Syngenta International AG and Director Eli Lilly and Company

  “Scaling Leadership is an excellent read—really on the mark. I am enthused to endorse. It hits any number of themes that are essential to leading well. I will call out two that resonate strongly with my experience. First, we lead people, not balance sheets or machines. In the end, our ability to call forth discretionary energy is what distinguishes us as leaders, and that the ability to do that is learnable. This book will challenge you to do just that and will show you how. Second, as I transitioned into the president and later the CEO role, I needed to rethink my role and understand where my leverage came from. The migration was from what had gotten me there—business/financial acumen, strategic skill, problem-solving, focus, etc.—to a far greater focus on understanding how to create a highly engaged culture tied to purpose/aspiration and cultivate leaders who could do the same. The prior skills are really important (I still use them routinely) but would have been limiting if I hadn't augmented them with new skills. The emphasis this book places on these themes—and the way the authors develop the case—makes great sense. I strongly recommend this book to anyone in (or aspiring to) a senior position of leadership.”

  Gerry Anderson, Chairman and CEO, DTE Energy

  “To scale-up your business you must scale exceptional leadership. Anderson and Adams have written a definitive work on Scaling Leadership—the kind of leadership that is built for scale and multiplies effective leadership throughout the organization. Do not miss this book. In this well-researched book, senior leaders describe, in their own words, the kind of leadership that scales, and the kind that fails to scale. This book will challenge you to step up your game, it will confront you and inspire you. More importantly, it will show you what you need to do to scale your leadership.”

  Verne Harnish, Founder Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO)

  and author of Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)

  “Wow! What a book! Anderson and Adams have mined their rich set of data on what makes leaders truly excellent, and they have struck gold. By helping us understand the way that some core leadership strengths actually become liabilities at scale, they solve one of the most important leadership mysteries. Now we understand what the true leadership superpowers are—and we can see how to cultivate them. Scaling Leadership is fascinating, bold, and brave. It will help you shift from the patterns that have helped you in the past to those that will create a better future. I am very excited this book is in the world.”

  Dr. Jennifer Garvey Berger, author Simple Habits for

  Complex Times and Changing on the Job.

  “If it is your aspiration to improve your leadership performance and that of your team . . . read this book! Scaling Leadership is a natural sequel to Adam's and Anderson's earlier book, Mastering Leadership. It introduces a model that produces a .93 correlation between 18 creative competencies and leadership effectiveness. Working from a four-quadrant model based on input from thousands of leaders around the world, the authors lay out a developmental path opens to all. The book is rich with real-life examples, case studies, and supporting metrics. Each chapter ends with a homework assignment that takes the reader on their own personal journey. A powerful examination of the human side of enterprise, the book invites the reader to access the unlimited bank of feedback available to each of us that can inform his/her leadership performance. It is not an easy journey. The first 12 chapters outline the actions and attitudes required for true development. The last chapter presents a compelling assessment of why we need to take the trip!”

  Stephen Ewing: Chairman of the Board of AAA Michigan

  and ACG, Retired President and CEO of MCN Energy

  Group Inc., Retired Vice-Chair DTE Energy.

  “‘Leaders bring the weather.' What a great description of the importance of senior leadership and the reason why we so often focus on trying to change leadership behavior. In my experience, the Leadership Circle Profile described in Scaling Leadership is unparalleled in terms of the leadership mindset (and subsequent behavior) change that it triggers. It isn't an approach that leaves leaders feeling inadequate, but instead empowers leaders to focus their time and energy on those things that really matter, and it helps them avoid those behaviors that cancel out all of the good things that they do. And when applied at scale, it can not only change the lives of individual leaders, but it can transform the organizations they lead.”

  Tammy Lowry, Global Head of Talent Innovation, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd

  “Brave, bold, effective leaders will be inspired by Anderson and Adams new book, Scaling Leadership. This brilliant work combines their deep experience and rich database working with world-class leaders, with keen insights for individual growth, and more importantly, how to nourish and grow your future leaders. Any person in a leadership role, interested in their own growth and the growth and success of their organizations through exemplary leadership should get this book now.”

  Val DiFebo, CEO, Deutsch NY

  “There are healthy and unhealthy ways to scale businesses. We can no longer afford an unhealthy approach to growth—the toll on people and the planet is too high. This book is an indispensable guide to healthy growth, written by two true masters of the art of leadership.”

  Raj Sisodia, FW Olin Distinguished Professor of Global Business,

  Babson College, Co-founder and co-chairman, Conscious

  Capitalism International

  “Scaling Leadership and Mastering Leadership are fundam
ental to our leadership development program, succession planning, and our ability to break through inflection points in our business. They have had an immediate impact on our performance, and more importantly, in our relationships inside and outside the organization.”

  Pierre Trapanese, CEO, Northland Controls

  “Looking back on my thirty plus years in business, Bill Adams has been the single most important positive influence on my development as a leader. His coaching opened my eyes to understand who I was as a leader, who I wanted to be, and how to get there. Equally important, Bill's work doesn't stop with a single person but is always done in the context of team leadership, team effectiveness, and the ways in which individuals bring a greater awareness of themselves and others can leverage that knowledge to drive concrete business results. Through Scaling Leadership, Bill's, and his partner Bob's, insights are available to everyone who wants a chance to expand beyond their Peter Principle—and their organization.”

  Robert Fugate, President, RFA Management, LLC

  “The conversation on leadership has never been so important to the future of our society, our planet and humankind. This book is an invitation to re-think what true leadership is. Anderson and Adams, using hard data, challenge at the core our acquired views on leadership and show us how leadership is first and foremost a transformational journey that has the power to change our lives, our workplaces and make us better human beings. I will add it to the recommended reading list for my teams!”

  —Paolo De Martin, CEO, SCOR Global Life

  “As I wrote in What Got You Here Won't Get You There, leaders must grow and develop if they hope to grow their organizations. In Scaling Leadership, Anderson and Adams reveal their research and life experiences that show how effective leaders evolve in order to scale and expand their influence exponentially. So, if you ever hope to ‘get there,' start here with this book.”

  Marshall Goldsmith, Best-selling author and speaker

  “This book is stunning! Scaling Leadership is a natural and robust sister-book to Mastering Leadership. Clearly concerned about the future of leadership, the authors take a strong stand, based on extensive research, for the necessity of transforming leaders to be equipped to be responsive, thoughtful, aware, real, and visionary in the face of what seems to be an immense and unrelenting challenge. It's not easy to be a leader today. This book contains layers of meaning, and will be more than motivating for leaders, coaches, and organization development practitioners—this is deeply exciting work. And true development of leaders depends on it. Scaling Leadership is a call to development, as well as a call to courage and grace, and it is a practical approach to being a leader in today's pressured and often chaotic world.”

  Christine M. Wahl, M.A.Ed., MCC, Creator of the Leadership Coaching

  Program at Georgetown University, Winner of the Art Shirk Legacy Award

  for Outstanding Contribution to Leadership of the Planet.

  “Scaling Leadership offers a very useful, practical and well-researched way for each of us to assess the quality of our leadership in work and life. It presents a strong business case for self-awareness. The call is to deepen our humanity, our capacity for spiritual consciousness, and our ability to think differently about the complexity around us. These are much-needed qualities in a reductionist world that too often promises a false certainty, an attraction to dominance and an either/or way of thinking.”

  Peter Block, Partner, Designed Learning and author of Flawless Consulting:

  A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used and An Other Kingdom.

  “To thrive in the future, leaders will need to learn how to scale their own leadership. In a world where anything that can be distributed will be distributed, leaders will need to be both very clear about where they want to go and very flexible about how they will get there. The future will reward clarity, but punish certainty. Clarity will scale, but certainty will not. Scaling Leadership shows you how to scale your leadership in a way that is both caring and precise.”

  Bob Johansen, Distinguished Fellow, Institute for the Future and

  author of The New Leadership Literacies

  “Bill Adams and Bob Anderson's extensive data and relentless analytical rigor compel us to consider that vertical development does determine how far we can scale our individual and collective leadership to meet the scope and complexity of the challenges we face at every level.”

  Zafer Achi, Director Emeritus, McKinsey & Company

  “It is rare to find literature on leadership characteristics and the distinguishing markers of excellence that are so thoroughly based on statistical analysis. Anderson and Adams offer some startling new evidence that the conventional view on what makes for great leadership may not be the whole story. Read, be surprised and get clarity in which way both strengths and vulnerabilities can add to effectiveness.”

  Dr. Susanne Cook-Greuter, Research director, Vertical Development Academy (VeDA)

  “Ever wonder what senior leaders have to say about leadership, what works and what doesn't? Well, here it is. Scaling Leadership—drawing on science, experience and story—has answers. This book will show you how to amplify your leadership and multiply leadership throughout the organization. Anderson and Adam's first book, Mastering Leadership, is a classic. Scaling Leadership will join it.”

  Michael Bungay Stanier, author of the WSJ-bestseller The Coaching Habit

  “This is an amazing book! Scaling Leadership takes what is elusive about leadership and puts it in plain sight. The authors expertly unpack how to scale leadership with such clarity that you and your team can apply it day-to-day in operations. If you want to lead your organization to create what matters, then you need to know how to scale leadership, individually and collectively. If you don't want to be derailed by a rate-limiting leadership bottleneck, at a time when your organization can least afford it, then apply what is in this book.

  There is so much unique about Scaling Leadership, especially how it incisively differentiates between the strengths that the best leaders use to get results a very different pattern of behavior ineffective leaders use to cancels out their leadership. The insights and tools that Anderson and Adams so carefully and clearly reveal are simply brilliant and practical.

  What is even more extraordinary, however, is the view you get on the journey through this book. Scaling Leadership gives direction and sets you on the path of developing the highest and best in yourself and those you lead. It shows you how to do the most difficult and yet, the highest leverage thing you can do as a leader—let go so you can scale.

  They say that ‘leaders bring the weather,' following the path laid out here will lead to weather that is, in a word, beautiful.”

  Gary Colpaert, Vice President Clinical & Support Services, Froedtert Hospital

  “In their new book, Scaling Leadership, Bob Anderson and Bill Adams artfully remind us that in business and in life, we either progress (scale) or regress (fail). They teach us why and how we can lead people and enterprises with a proactive, creative style. ‘Be Proactive' is still the first basic habit of highly effective leaders.”

  Stephen M.R. Covey, CEO, CoveyLink and co-author of Speed of Trust

  “Leaders either continue to develop their leadership skills and scale their organizations or risk becoming obsolete. This smart book reveals the direct link between your own development and the organization's growth potential. If you want to learn how to help your business thrive, read this book!”

  Steve Arneson, Ph.D., President, Arneson Leadership Consulting

  “As we transition from hierarchy to networks, emerging and seasoned leaders must develop and deploy new competencies daily in order to scale their organizations. I appreciate the authors' authenticity, as they confess that this book comes in part from their own pain and mistakes and from their research, their many conversations with colleagues, and from their work with leaders who have ‘been there and done that.' They openly share their insights, experiences, and lessons about how b
est to engage, develop and retain talent.”

  Dr. Beverly Kaye, co-author of Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em, Up Is

  Not the Only Way, and Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go

  “Scaling Leadership offers leaders across the globe a profound, challenging, and deeply empowering roadmap to scale leadership within their organizations. Being leaders of an organization deeply committed to scaling its impact in the world, we could not put the book down. The stories, distinctions and practices shared by Bob and Bill throughout the book are both accessible and transformative. For those of us who realize the crucial role leadership plays in the stewarding of our organizations and our shared world, there are no excuses. This book shows you exactly what defines great leadership, why it is of the utmost importance to develop it, and how you can do just that. Enjoy!”

  Laurens van Aarle and Joel Monk, Founders of

  Coaches Rising (or www.coachesrising.com)

  “The world urgently needs more conscious leaders. Without them, we will not overcome our tremendous challenges and create a world that truly works. Nobody understands this better and has studied the phenomenon of conscious leadership more deeply than Bob and Bill. In their seminal work, Mastering Leadership, they taught us what conscious leadership looks like. In this marvelous book, we learn how to scale conscious leadership in organizations and maximize its impact. If you aspire to create a better world through the people you lead, you must read this book.”

  Sebastian Ross, Chief People Officer Telemedicine Clinic

  and President Conscious Capitalism Spain

  “Scaling Leadership delivers the most street-savvy, evidence-based and conscious leadership approach on the planet. If you want to future-proof your organization, thrive in the face of rip-roaring change, and cultivate a flourishing world, then drink deep from the wisdom of these pages and then share it with every leader you know.”

  Barrett C. Brown, PhD, Global leadership expert and author of

  The Future of Leadership for Conscious Capitalism

  “In their groundbreaking book, Scaling Leadership, organizational experts Bob Anderson and Bill Adams have once again raised the bar for leaders in any business in any industry. In these fast-changing and disruptive times, great leadership is needed more than ever before—we can no longer afford to take it for granted. With this book in hand, you'll have a clear path to raising your own performance as a leader, while raising the performance of your teams.”