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.