Credible
The Power of Expert Leaders
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- £11.99
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE SABEW BEST IN BUSINESS BOOK AWARD 2023 FOR MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP
What makes a leader credible?
Who would be an expert in a world where expertise is under siege? Hard-won know-how and experience seem to count for nothing in the eyes of everyone from high-profile business leaders to populist politicians. But what evidence do we have that this perception is right?
Amanda Goodall has been asking this question for the last twenty years. Her research has taken her from boardrooms and F1 race tracks to hospitals and higher education. She has proven time and again that, when it comes to top performance, we need people - especially bosses - with the expertise that only comes from a deep understanding of the worlds in which they operate.
That's what makes the people around them feel happier, better appreciated and more productive.
In Credible, Goodall identifies the key characteristics of expert leaders and provides a model for career development and success based on going deep into a business, working hard and knowing your stuff.
We all want to be led by people we can relate to and trust, people who have the credibility to make us want to follow them. When it comes to credible leadership, expertise really matters.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Experts with technical background and experience make the best leaders, according to this cogent treatise. Goodall (Socrates in the Boardroom), a leadership professor at London's Bayes Business School, laments the rise of "itinerant CEOs" and "all-purpose managers" who jump from company to company, suggesting that their ignorance of the industries they work in has disastrous consequences. According to the author, the core qualifications of an expert are industry experience and the ability to excel at the duties of those who report directly to them; when these are met, employees are happier and more productive. Case studies illustrate the failures of corporate "generalists," as when Goodall tells the story of Andrew Hornby, who had no background in finance when he left his position running a supermarket chain to become the CEO of the British bank HBOS and pushed it to make risky investments that contributed to its demise in 2008. Contending that experts are just as important in government, Goodall shows that Canada's decision in 2019 to replace epidemiologists with cheaper "generalist civil servants" in its pandemic readiness system impeded the government's response to Covid-19. The stories of corporate and political folly enrage, and the case for how organizations can promote and reward expertise by fostering "informed dissent" and granting line managers "freedom and responsibility" is well made. This spirited defense of specialists convinces.
