Leadership BS

Finalist for the 2015 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year

Best business book of the week from Inc.com

The author of Power, Stanford business school professor, and a leading management thinker offers a hard-hitting dissection of the leadership industry and ways to make workplaces and careers work better.

The leadership enterprise is enormous, with billions of dollars, thousands of books, and hundreds of thousands of blogs and talks focused on improving leaders. But what we see worldwide is employee disengagement, high levels of leader turnover and career derailment, and failed leadership development efforts.

In Leadership BS, Jeffrey Pfeffer shines a bright light on the leadership industry, showing why it’s failing and how it might be remade. He sets the record straight on the oft-made prescriptions for leaders to be honest, authentic, and modest, tell the truth, build trust, and take care of others. By calling BS on so many of the stories and myths of leadership, he gives people a more scientific look at the evidence and better information to guide their careers.

Rooted in social science, and will practical examples and advice for improving management, Leadership BS encourages readers to accept the truth and then use facts to change themselves and the world for the better.

This unflinching look at business reality reveals:

• The Leadership Industry Failure: Why billions of dollars spent on books, talks, and training have failed to improve employee engagement or prevent career derailment.
• A Social Science Approach: Pfeffer dismantles feel-good stories and popular leadership myths, replacing them with a more scientific look at the evidence of what actually works.
• The Truth About “Good” Leadership: An unflinching analysis of why common prescriptions—be modest, be authentic, be truthful—often lead to failure in the real world.
• Navigating Organizational Reality: Practical advice and clear-eyed strategies for guiding your career based on facts, not fables, and understanding the political dynamics of organizational life.