Positive Leadership: The Importance of Team IQ

Teams have intelligence just like individual people do. But the intelligence factor of human groups is not simply the average of its members, in fact that has only little to do with it. Researchers have now found a way to measure team IQ and what it takes to achieve it.

What is team intelligence?

As individuals, intelligence defines our capacity for abstract thinking, reasoning, learning, planning and rapid problem solving. In essence, it characterises our ability to deal with cognitive complexity, an indispensable quality for today’s global managers. Insofar as it applies to teams, intelligence describes the ability of a group of individuals to tackle and manage complex and non-routine situations together. Intelligent teams can outperform their most knowledgeable members.

How to get a high Team IQ?

It is well known that for teams to function and perform to the best of their ability, they must focus on structure, processes, leadership and the right organisational support and context.

What research now indicates, however, is that collective intelligence in teams can lead to higher performance. We have evidence that speaking in turns by group members, the proportion of females on a team and especially social sensitivity are all elements that lead to higher team intelligence.

For more, see:  http://www.imd.org/research/challenges/TC037-11.cfm

Positive Leadership: The Importance of Team IQ

Positive Leadership: How to deal with people who think they are performing in an acceptable manner

What to do about it: Provide everyone who reports to you with ongoing and timely feedback.

As you do, remember:

• The goal of feedback is to help employees succeed by reinforcing effective performance and redirecting ineffective performance.
• Feedback should be based on specific, observable, and verifiable data and information.
• Feedback should be given as close to the occurrence as possible.
• Feedback should be a two-way process. Be sure to solicit the employee’s input on why his or her performance is good … or lacking.
• Feedback should include a discussion of the potential impact of continued good or deficient performance.
• Feedback should never include threats or promises.

Positive Leadership: How to deal with people who think they are performing in an acceptable manner

Positive Leadership: From Values to Action

From Values to Action: The Four Principles of Values-Based Leadership

By Harry M. Kraemer

Reading this book you get the feeling that Harry Kraemer is the consummate nice guy. When he started his corporate career as the junior member of a team that was working in cubicle, he decided to set as a goal for himself not to advance to the next step, but to commit himself to making a difference by doing the best job he could, treating the people around him with respect, and never putting the his own needs and desires ahead of the goals of his team or organisation. Some years later, having advanced all the way to CEO, he still graced the softball games and dinners of those who served with him in the cubes.

Along the way he developed some principles of values-based leadership that obviously served him well:

·         Self-reflection: Increases self-awareness. It is the key to identifying what you stand for, what your values are, and what matters most. It requires asking yourself key questions, such as, What did I say I was going to do today, and what did I actually do? What went well? How did I treat people? What would I do differently, and what did I learn?

·         Balance: The ability to see issues, problems and questions from all angles, including opposing viewpoints. Encourages you to seek multiple perspectives to gain input rather than consensus.

·         True-self confidence: The ability to see and accept yourself exactly as you are. Helps you to identity your strengths, improve your weaknesses and admit when you are wrong or don’t know something.

·         Genuine humility: Never forgetting who you are, appreciating the value of each person in the organisation, and treating everyone respectfully. This keeps you from forgetting where you came from and keeps you focused on and connected to others.

, Mastering these four principles will lead you to connect with and gain much greater influence over others than mastering networking and various techniques of persuasion. The reason? Your ability to influence people whether one or fifty thousand, depends significantly on their ability to appreciate your values. 

Any of your employees, peers, partners should be able to explain what you stand for in consistent terms, and it should be evident to new people you meet.

Positive Leadership: From Values to Action

Positive Leadership: Dealing with Adversity

When times get tough, some people fold and some are made even stronger. 

Did you ever wonder why some people seem to be able to handle life better than others? Everyone likes to think that they have what it takes to survive adversity and tough times, but when the chips are down, some folks definitely do better than others.

The real survivors in life (not the participants in the recent glut of “reality” survivor TV shows that only seem to bring out the worst in human behaviour) have developed personalities that allow them more options. They also have a strong and clear intention to survive, and to do it in good shape. When problems or setbacks occur, they don’t waste time complaining and they don’t dwell on the past or what they’ve lost. Instead, their energies are focused on getting things to turn out well.

Survivors believe that, no matter what happens to them, they are the ones who are in charge of their destinies. They don’t get mad at the world for not treating them better, but they do have an extensive menu of behaviours they can choose from, depending on the situation. In other words, survivors are option thinkers, instead of black and white, either/or thinkers.

They also have a wonderful ability to laugh at adversity because they know that even if they lose everything else, they will still have themselves. People with survivor personalities can walk confidently into the unknown because they expect to find a way to make things work out.

So, if you want to be a true survivor, try focusing your attention less on safety and security and more on developing positive beliefs and expectations.

Positive Leadership: Dealing with Adversity

Positive Leadership: Do Their Eyes Shine?

Boston Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor Ben Zander had a startling realisation at the age of 45 as it occurred to him that “the conductor doesn’t make a sound. His power depends on his ability to make other people powerful. My job is to awaken possibility in others. If their eyes are shining, you know you are successful.”

Zander’s lesson is a valuable one for those in leadership.

Positive Leadership: Do Their Eyes Shine?

Positive Leadership: How to Lead From a Distance

Let’s face it; the days of everyone going to work and seeing everyone you work with are gone forever! 

Separation brings a whole new set of issues and challenges. And leaders must adapt by bridging the gaps that occur when people work apart from one another.

One of the things that leaders need to do is to demonstrate reliability to each team member so that people have confidence that you, as a leader, will honour the commitments you make.

Here are a few reliability trust builders for your consideration:

• Keep a written list of all agreements/promises/commitments you make, check it frequently.
•  Ask your people to tell you one thing you can do to be more reliable in their eyes – then DO IT!
• Be available to support and respond to team members. When not available, follow up as soon as possible.

Positive Leadership: How to Lead From a Distance

Positive Leadership: Endurance on the Field and at Work

Kathy Button Bell is vice president and chief marketing officer at Emerson, the manufacturing and technology company in St. Louis. A sports background, she says, “makes you a good sharer” and more empathetic in the office.

'I think everybody benefits from having played sports.  It makes you a good sharer, for one thing, in lots of ways.  And it makes you more empathetic in general.  I love to see sports in a résumé.'

For more, read: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/business/03corner.html?_r=1

Positive Leadership: Endurance on the Field and at Work

Positive Leadership: Leadership Quotes 2

Positive Leadership: Leadership Quotes 2

Positive Leadership: Leadership Quotes

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Positive Leadership: Leadership Quotes

Positive Leadership: Ethical Leadership

How do we know what’s ethical or what’s the right thing to do? 

Here are some solid leadership guidelines for you and your team members.

• Is it legal?
• Does it comply with our rules and guidelines?
• Is it in sync with our organisational values?
• Will I be comfortable and guilt-free if I do it?
• Does it match our stated commitments and guarantees?
• Would I do it to my family or friends?
• Would I be perfectly okay with someone doing it to me?
• Would the most ethical person I know do it?

Positive Leadership: Ethical Leadership

Positive Leadership: How and When to Give Positive Feedback and Reinforce Positive Performance

The most effective encouragement for positive performance is positive feedback – it’s also the best way to reinforce that desired behaviour for the future. 

Here are some guidelines for doing just that:

Be sincere. Giving positive feedback can backfire if it’s not perceived as genuine. Most people are experts, or at least think they are, at reading the sincerity of their manager. Faking positive feedback is risky. Be sincere … or wait until you can be.

Be quick. The sooner you give feedback after the behaviour you’re trying to reinforce, the better your results will be. If you only give positive feedback at performance review time or on other formal occasions, you miss a major leverage point for improving productivity.

Give feedback often. There’s a significant difference in the perceptions of managers and their followers as to how often positive feedback is given. Don’t be fooled into thinking you recognise positive behaviour too often. Do it twice as often as you think you should, and you’ll have a good chance of meeting your employees’ needs.

Positive Leadership: How and When to Give Positive Feedback and Reinforce Positive Performance

Positive Leadership: Finding a Great Mentor

Here are four tips for finding (and keeping) a great mentor:

1. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. The search for a mentor should begin right away. Don't put it on your future to-do list for a year or two from now. Especially when starting a new job, strike while the iron is hot.

2. SECURE BOTH A MENTOR AND A SPONSOR. Look for support at varying levels of your company's hierarchy. Seek out a mentor to help navigate daily concerns and a sponsor willing to sing your praises when it comes time for a raise or promotion.

3. DON'T BE AFRAID TO ASK. If you wait for a mentor to seek you out, you could wait a long time. Remember, the worst your prospective mentor can say is no. When you ask, be clear and up front with what's required in terms of time and commitment. 

4. BE ASSERTIVE. If you want a strong and assertive mentor, start acting that way yourself. Stride into a room. Make eye contact. Use a firm handshake. Choose the best available seat. Stop apologising. And then, when the time comes, say thank you.

Positive Leadership: Finding a Great Mentor

Positive Leadership: Why You Need Women Leading In Your Organisation – A Summary of the Data

More women in leadership measurably helps companies succeed.

Here’s a summary of some of the data out there on women in leadership and the benefits they bring to the organisations they serve, starting with the hard line performance and profitability numbers.

 •“…. Companies with three or more women in senior management functions score more highly on average (on nine dimensions of company excellence). It is notable that performance increases significantly once a certain critical mass is attained, namely, at least three women on management committees for an average membership of 10 people. “   (Women Matter, McKinsey 2007)

 •“Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women board directors attained significantly higher financial performance, on average, than those with the lowest representation of women board directors.” (Catalyst, October 2007)

 •“A selected group of companies with a high representation of diverse board seats (especially gender diversity) exceeded the average returns of the Dow Jones and NASDAQ Indices over a 5 year period.” (Virtcom Consulting)

 •“An extensive 19-year study of 215 Fortune 500 firms shows a strong correlation between a strong record of promoting women into the executive suite and high profitability. Three measures of profitability were used to demonstrate that the 25 Fortune 500 firms with the best record of promoting women to high positions are between 18 and 69 per cent more profitable than the median Fortune 500 firms in their industries.” (European Project on Equal Pay)

There are many other studies about the softer benefits of female leadership.

 •“The standard argument is that diversity is good and you should have both men and women in a group. But so far, the data show, the more women, the better.” (Harvard Business Review on of group intelligence, June 2011)

 •“The status and role of women is a very good clue to a company’s growth potential. When women are at the table, the discussion is richer, the decision‐making process is better and the organisation is stronger. Integrating a gender lens into investment strategies can, in my view, improve long‐term investment performance. Investors need to start taking notice.” (Joe Keefe, President,  Pax World Investments, February 2011)

 •“Female managers – as rated by their bosses, themselves and the people who work for them – were rated significantly better than their male counterparts. This difference extends beyond the ‘softer’ skills such as communication, feedback and empowerment to such areas as decisiveness, planning and setting standards.” (Pfaff & Associates, September 2009)

 •“Of particular interest is the fact that overall trust in female CEOs remains higher than trust in male CEOs, as was the case last year. And most of this increasing level of trust was experienced by non-managers, who registered an increase of a massive 11 index points in their trust for their female CEO between 2009 and 2010.” (Management Today September 2010).

 •“Women leaders are more persuasive, assertive and more willing to take risks than male leaders. Women leaders were found to be more empathetic and flexible, as well as stronger in interpersonal skills than their male counterparts. These qualities combine to create a leadership style that is inclusive, open, consensus building, collaborative and collegial.” (Caliper Corp. 2005)

Despite the fact that these studies have been published across the last decade, little has changed in our business culture.  The “30% solution” – identified by McKinsey (above) and coined by Linda Tarr-Whelan in her book, Women Lead the Way: Your Guide to Stepping Up to Leadership and Changing the World  - now commonly references the point at which individual businesses and the business sector in general will benefit from women’s special talents and skills in their leadership ranks. 

However, “(i)n (the last) 10 years the proportion of women board members on Fortune 500 companies has barely crept up from 12 to 15 per cent and 60 have no women.” (Linda Tarr-Whelan, Financial Times April, 2011). 

So we’re barely half way to the tipping point and as Calvert Investments reports recently, there are still many all-white, all male boards who do not believe they have a diversity issue.

Women in the USA constitute:

 •40% of the management workforce

 •46.8% of the total workforce

 •42% of MBAs

 •59% of bachelor degrees

 •61% of master degrees

 •about 50% of of law and medical degrees.

So what do we do to get more women into leadership without overthinking? Some advice seems self-evident and very cheap.

 •Men – put your irrational fears aside. Open yourselves up to a new way of doing business and invite this plentiful resource in to help you thrive.

 •Women – you’re powerful no matter where you are or what you’re doing. The research says that your very presence in a group helps the group become more intelligent. Don’t hide your natural talents even though they look different than what the male-dominated culture around you says they should look like. It’s what they need from you even though they don’t know it. Step out and stop waiting for someone to give you permission and just shine. What are you waiting for?

Try it. See what happens.

Positive Leadership: Why You Need Women Leading In Your Organisation – A Summary of the Data

Positive Leadership: Moving Towards a Values-based Culture in Your Organisation

The journey toward values-based cultures — are you on the way?

Culture, values and leadership are critical priorities for business leaders. No matter how many resources your company deploys, how many experts you retain and no matter how many programmes you run, little matters if you’re not reaching your global workforce at heart, mind and gut level.

Companies are grasping this and embracing values-based corporate cultures, governance and leadership as new sources of advantage. In the USA, Southwest Airlines, Zappos and Google are leading the way, demonstrating the benefits of values-based behaviour.

What are some ways your company can advance its ethical journey?

Treat culture as a strategy: An ethical culture is not created by accident. It is deliberately crafted at many levels of the organisation under the guidance of leaders who hard-wire it into the processes and practices by which business gets done.

To make ethical considerations truly central to operations, ethics and compliance must expand beyond education and communications and encompass the wide variety of corporate practices, including performance appraisals, promotion and recruiting practices.

Seek better alignment and purpose: Ethics and compliance programmes serve a distinct purpose, but they cannot adequately fulfil that role unless they help reinforce corporate priorities. They fall short if they operate in isolation from rapidly shifting business needs and conditions.

Seek partners beyond your traditional domain: Ethics and compliance leaders can extend their influence and better fulfil their mandate by building deeper partnerships with business units, human resources, corporate communications, and environmental and social responsibility departments. Isolated compliance and ethics functions will never reach the hearts and minds of employees.

Culture as a strategy, fuelled by values that are translated into tangible behaviours and embedded in the gears of a business, can create a sustained competitive advantage in the marketplace. Ethical cultures are not created overnight. But ultimately, tomorrow’s winners will be those who invest in systems inspired by values-based culture.

Positive Leadership: Moving Towards a Values-based Culture in Your Organisation

Positive Leadership: Are You Committed To Leadership Development?

Do you have a relentless commitment to your leadership development programme?

This is not necessarily a question for the training manager but rather you as a leader. As we introduce Positive Leadership to organisations we sometimes find that there is not really a strong commitment to leadership development. Here are some questions that can be answered in the positive by those who we find do have a strong commitment to leadership development. 

How are you doing on these questions?

Do your emerging leaders know they are emerging leaders?

Do you discuss career development regularly with your emerging leaders?

Do you share stories of your development progress to this point and your next steps?

Do you hire emerging leaders or do you merely fill positions?

Do your emerging leaders work on the challenges of the company?

Do your emerging leaders teach each other?

Do your emerging leaders teach you?

Do your emerging leaders have access to the top executive?

Are career plans measured in your performance measurement?

Do your emerging leaders make cross-boundary staffing decisions?

Just a few questions to get you started.

Positive Leadership: Are You Committed To Leadership Development?

Positive Leadership: Overlooked Attributes of Successful Leaders

According to Garret Kramer, the author of  Stillpower: The Inner Source of Athletic Excellence, the four most overlooked attributes of successful coaches, as well as leaders of any kind are:

1. They look to the state of mind of the athlete or individual in question, not his or her behaviour.

Poor performances or behaviours are the result of an individual’s low mindset. Nothing more, nothing less. Rather than holding players or employees accountable to their actions (judging behaviour), the best leaders hold them—and themselves—accountable to recognising the thoughts and feelings that accompany high states of mind, and only acting from this mental state. This type of coach distrusts his own thoughts from low moods and encourages his players to do the same.

2. They understand that the spoken word is far less important than the level of psychological functioning from which the word is spoken.

Here’s a simple reminder. Words are merely an echo of a feeling. A coach might say to a player, “I was really proud of your effort tonight.” But if there is no feeling or passion behind the words, they might actually have a negative impact. Successful coaches take notice of their own level of functioning moment to moment. They know that positive words only originate from positive states of mind.

3. They keep goal setting in perspective.

Successful coaches know that the more athletes focus on the ‘prize,” the more they thwart their own awareness, shrink their perceptual field, and limit the imaginative possibilities. These coaches understand that achieving goals does not elevate self-worth or happiness. Instead, they relish the journey—the relationships and experiences—as the path toward creating exactly what they want becomes clear.

4. When in doubt—they turn to love.

Great coaches set guidelines and expectations based on one overriding principle: love for their players. They know, above all else, that love will always provide the answers to helping others—and to success.

Positive Leadership: Overlooked Attributes of Successful Leaders

Positive Leadership: Investing In Your People

“If you are all alone at the top, you are not a leader. You are a hiker.” John Maxwell

No one creates success alone. To win in business, you must win with people. Running over people will only get you so far. To create true and lasting success you must nurture and invest in your people. Here are 3 essential ways to do this.

Care about them - The main question every employee in every organisation is asking is, “Do you care about me; can I trust you?” Employees want to know if you care about them. If you do, they will be more likely to stay on the bus and work with you. Employees are more engaged at work and will work at their highest potential when their manager cares about them.

Develop a relationship with them - Author Andy Stanley once said, “Rules without relationship lead to rebellion.” Far too many managers and leaders share rules with their people, but they don’t have a relationship with them. So what happens? The people rebel and they disengage from their jobs and the mission of the team. To develop a relationship with your employees, you need to build trust, listen to them, make time for them, recognise them and mentor them.

Appreciate them - The main reason why people leave their jobs is because they don’t feel appreciated. For example, Doug Conant, the CEO of Campbell Soup, has written more than 16,000 thank-you notes to employees in the past seven years and created a very positive business in the process. It’s as easy as saying (or writing) “Thank you.”

It’s a simple truth: When you care about your employees and the people you work with, they are more likely to stay with you and work harder, with more loyalty and greater positive energy. In turn, they are more likely to share their positive energy with your customers, thus enhancing service and the bottom line. The greatest customer-service strategy has nothing to do with customer service, but it has everything to do with how you treat your employees. If you model great service, they will provide great service.

Remember, leadership is not just about what you do, but what you can inspire, encourage and empower others to do. Instead of running over the people in your team/organisation, invite them along with you and engage them to help you create an amazing and successful ride.

Positive Leadership: Investing In Your People

Positive Leadership: Embracing Constructive Criticism

“When you see yourself doing something badly, and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care.” Randy Pausch

Criticism has become almost taboo within the workplace – often avoided at all costs or reserved for the most extreme situations. And yet, constructive criticism is one of the most meaningful gifts you can receive from another.

Ask yourself this; if an individual had a piece of information that would make you a better professional, manager, team contributor, or person in general, wouldn’t you want to know it? Of course you would! So why do we view criticism in such a negative light? Are we really that scared of learning that we are doing something wrong or that we could be more effective if we acted differently?

Leaders understand that they cannot and do not do everything well. Leaders understand that they can always be better – they can always grow. Individuals who are willing to point out areas to us where growth is needed and should be pursued should be held in high regard. These individuals are the ones who are looking out for your personal and professional development. These individuals care about you most.

The next time someone criticises you, your work product or your actions, stop and seek to understand what they are attempting to convey. Their criticism may just be the best gift you have ever been given.

Positive Leadership: Embracing Constructive Criticism

Positive Leadership: Rory McIlroy

“Own your defeats and you will be defined by your victories!”

What a great statement on the Oakley homepage (http://uk.oakley.com/). Oakley celebrates their sponsored champion Rory McIlroy, who just won the US Open Golf Championship. 

What a performance by young Rory, especially since a few months ago at the US Masters he blew a 6 shot lead in the final round. For the past few months he has been hounded by the media on why he ‘choked’. Every interview this past weekend he navigated the questions on “will you choke?” with utter maturity, wisdom and humility. Over and over Rory mentioned that Augusta prepared him for this weekend. That loss prepared him and launched him into his future. He became a wiser, more focused and maturer golfer from that failure. Rory also sought the counsel of Jack Nicklaus, a master of the game. Jack gave him counsel on dealing with the failure. At the end, Rory turned a failure into on of the greatest victories ever. He smashed 13 records on the weekend too.

Positive Leadership: Rory McIlroy

Positive Leadership: Great Places To Work Also Perform Better

Do happy workplaces perform better? 

An analysis by Fortune magazine this year, based on the US Great Workplace surveys, gives very firm evidence that they do.

Fortune tracked the stock price of companies from 1998, the first year the Great Workplaces list was published, to 2010. Each year the investment was reset to match the latest list (ie, shares of companies dropping out of the list were sold and those of companies joining the list were bought). The result over the 12 years was clear:

The average annual return on the great workplace companies was 10.06%.

The average annual return on the US stock market (S&P 500) was just 3.83%

This means that if you had invested £10,000 in 1998 in the great workplace list you would have ended up with £31,590 by 2010. If you had simply tracked the stock market, you would have got only £15,700. So investing in great workplaces would have reaped a profit of £21,590, almost four times the £5,700 profit from following the stock market as a whole.

Companies frequently state that their aim is to maximise shareholder value. This analysis is a powerful statement that the best way to do that is to focus on creating a great workplace, where your people are trusted and valued. As the Great Place to Work Institute says, “our data shows that building workpace trust is the best investment your company can make.”

So: How would your workplace be different if the focus was on building trust and creating a great workplace? The evidence is, if you want financial success, that is where you need to put your attention.

Positive Leadership: Great Places To Work Also Perform Better

Positive Leadership: What CEO's Do With Their Time

A CEO's schedule is especially important to a firm's financial success, which raises a few questions: What do they do all day? Can they be more efficient time managers? 

HBS professor Raffaella Sadun and colleagues set out to find some answers. Key concepts include:

•On average, some 85% of a CEO's time was spent working with other people, with only 15% spent working alone.

•The time CEOs spent with outsiders had no measurable impact on firm performance. But time spent with other people inside the company was strongly correlated with positive increases in productivity.

•In companies with stronger governance, CEOs spent more time with insiders and less time with outsiders, and at the same time were more productive.

•The research could help CEOs learn to be more productive. 

For more, see: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6665.html

Positive Leadership: What CEO's Do With Their Time

Positive Leadership: Openness and Transparency

Liz Elting is president and C.E.O. of TransPerfect, a translation service. This interview was conducted by Adam Bryant of the New York Times:

‘Q. When you started the company with your partner, did you have discussions about the culture you wanted to create?

A. Meritocracy was always a big concept to us — making sure that the best people were promoted and rewarded, and that is very much how we run our company now. Virtually all of the senior people at our company were promoted from within. Most of them started at entry-level positions. And so it’s very much a meritocracy. We also believe in holding people accountable. We’re also big believers in being completely open and transparent.

Q. Make that real for me. How do you do that?

A. We share with our people what’s going on in the company. We’re open with our financials because it’s better if they understand what’s going on. We make sure they’re clear on the vision and that they understand it. We also let them know our accomplishments and our challenges as well as our shared goals.

Here’s another example of being open: If we have a manager who says one thing, and another employee who says something else, and they come to us independently, we’ll put them together in a room with one of us and have a three-way conversation. There’s no reason to have side conversations. We simply bring everyone together, we talk about the issue, and we resolve it.

And when we have other meetings, we really encourage people to talk and let us know what’s on their minds so we can address it. We don’t want meetings to be a couple of people talking and everyone else listening. I do think people need to contribute. Some people are more executers, some people are more innovators, and some people are a combination but we need ideas. People often have them, and they don’t share them, so we need to encourage them.’

For more, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/business/29corner.html?_r=3

Positive Leadership: Openness and Transparency

Positive Leadership: Are You Fit Enough To Lead?

Are you fit enough to lead?

Exercise is not only good for your health, it is also good for your leadership effectiveness.

For more, see: http://www.ccl.org/leadership/enewsletter/2011/MAYspotlight.aspx?sp_rid=&sp_mid=36650204

This book is also worth reading: The Corporate Athlete: How to Achieve Maximal Performance in Business and Life

Positive Leadership: Are You Fit Enough To Lead?

Positive Leadership: Straight Talking and Honest Answers

Among the reasons why Bob Lutz became the best-known auto executive of the last two decades are 1) his outsize public personality and cultivated personal style; 2) his continuing association with fast, sexy cars; and 3) his penchant for straight talk and honest answers.

This last trait has served him extremely well in writing what will become a milestone of his remarkable 47-year career. Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business is the best book written by an auto industry insider since Iacocca in 1984, and deserves to be shelved alongside Alfred P. Sloan's management classic, My Years with General Motors. Lutz wrote every word -- in longhand -- and every sentence bears his distinctive voice.

For more, see: http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/08/autos/bob_lutz_book_review.fortune/?section=money_latest

Positive Leadership: Straight Talking and Honest Answers