Adam Bryant > Quotes

“People leave companies for two reasons. One, they don't feel appreciated. And two, they don't get along with their boss.”
― Adam Bryant, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed

“You often have to be an actor when you’re a leader, That doesn’t mean that you’re not yourself and that you’re not authentic. It means that depending on the person you’re speaking to and what you need from them, you have to become an actor in terms of how you deal with them. It’s an art.”
― Adam Bryant, The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership

“Several of them have moved up to the highest ranks of the organization, thanks to a strong track record of proving to their bosses, day in and day out, that they have what it takes to help the company succeed. They are passionately curious about the entire organization and how it can beat the competition. They have shown repeatedly that they can tackle tough assignments. They have built teams of complementary staff and rallied them around ambitious goals. They have distilled complex strategy decisions down to just a few priorities, helping align their employees around just a handful of focused goals. And they have pushed and prodded their bosses to shake up the organization, taking bold steps even when there was no burning need to do so. These are the people you find at the top of organizations. They embody these qualities and, as leaders, help develop them in others.”
― Adam Bryant, The Corner Office: How Top CEOs Made It and How You Can Too

“As the old-school approach of command-and-control leadership fades, companies in all industries will inevitably move in the same direction as these tech firms, and try to tap into the deeper passions of employees.”
― Adam Bryant, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation

“Making the leap to leader requires killing your old self.”
― Adam Bryant, The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership

“So many problems at work occur because people don’t have these kinds of conversations.”
― Adam Bryant, The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership

“[That] speaks to one of the most important roles of a leader; to boil down an organization's many priorities into a simple plan, so that employees can remember it, internalize it, and act on it.”
― Adam Bryant, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation - Insights from The Corner Office

“SendGrid had its own four values of hungry, happy, honest, and humble. “It seemed like the perfect time to say, let us take this moment to rearticulate our values,” Lawson said.”
― Adam Bryant, The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders

“Yes, you need toget all the input. Be collaborative. Get the data you need. But in the end, it's your call, and a lot of people have trouble with this ownership. Then they have trouble sticking with their decisiom, and they point fingers when it doesn't work out. You have to be able to live with your decisions and own them”
― Adam Bryant, The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership

“We think about our values in pairs, and there is a tension or a balance between them. We talk about listening and leadership; accountability and generosity; humility and audacity. You’ve got to have the humility to see the world as it is—and in our world, working with poor communities, that’s not easy to do—but have the audacity to know why you are trying to make it be different, to imagine the way it could be.”
― Adam Bryant, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation

“You should have a life plan. But your life plan shouldn’t be thrown off by having a really bad boss who doesn’t like you. If your plan is so narrow that you can’t survive a bad boss then you are not doing the planning right.”
― Adam Bryant, The Leap to Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make the Jump to Leadership