Better Under Pressure

by Justin Menkes

Most business leaders can take only so much pressure before their performance slides. Yet some CEOs deliver their greatest successes when times get toughest—when customers’ preferences are shifting away from a company’s products, when new regulations are shrinking profit margins, when political unrest is destroying supply lines.

In Better Under Pressure, Justin Menkes reveals the common traits that make these leaders successful. Drawing on in-depth interviews with sixty CEOs from an array of industries and performance data from two hundred other leaders, Menkes shows that great executives strive relentlessly to maximize their own potential—as well as stoke their people’s innate thirst for their own triumphs. To do so, they draw on a set of three essential and rare attributes:

• Realistic optimism: They recognize the risks threatening their organization’s survival—and their own failings—while remaining confident in their ability to have an impact.
• Subservience to purpose: They dedicate themselves to pursuing a noble cause and win their team’s commitment to that cause.
• Finding order in chaos: They find clarity amid the many variables affecting their business by culling data and forming the conclusions that matter most to the company.

The good news: these three capabilities can be learned. Drawing on a broad range of examples from real companies—including Avon, Yum Brands, Southwest, Procter & Gamble, and Ryerson Steel, to name just a few—Menkes demonstrates how each psychological attribute manifests itself in real life and enables top performance under extreme duress. He also shows you how to develop and deploy those attributes—so you can transform yourself into a leader who only shines brighter as the pressure intensifies.

Deeply personal, brimming with compelling stories from real-life CEOs, and packed with powerful insights, tools, and practices, this book is a potent resource for aspiring, emerging, and seasoned business leaders alike.

Genres: Leadership, Business, Nonfiction, Management, Self Help, Entrepreneurship, Professional Development

210 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 3, 2011

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another entry to a crowded bookshelf of advice for leaders. Menkes' insight is that leaders who do well score high on three variables: realistic optimism, subservience to purpose, and finding order in chaos. There's a little more to it than that, and many stories of CEOs who manage all three of these things well, but overall the book feels slight. It's not that it isn't well observed; it is. It's just that it doesn't feel like Menkes has re-thought leadership in general, or offered us a breakthrough program to strengthen leadership, or anything like that. It's a modest meditation on 3 habits of mind that if you follow them you will be a better leader. Maybe I've read too many leadership books that claim to blow everyone else out of the water (and rarely d0); maybe Menkes' modest approach isn't such a bad thing after all.

[Miranda Moberg Diaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read on managing emotional aspects of leadership, highlighted by profiles of both successful and failing CEOs. Keys according to Menkes include the ability to re-frame a dire situation into an opportunity to drive action, and being able to critically identify the most crucial pieces of a given situation in the face of a crisis. Almost a 5 star read as it strongly resonated with me in identifying the most glaring weaknesses of young leaders.

[Marianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just skimmed, a few good points

[Lori Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read book on executive ability in managing your career.

[Madhur Ahuja · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great read...

[Bharath Kota · Rating 1 out of 5]

A few chapters are really good. Many not good !