ACT Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, Updated Edition of the Global Bestseller, with a New Preface - by Herminia Ibarra (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A new edition of the bestseller that has helped aspiring leaders worldwide advance their careers and step up to larger leadership roles.

You aspire to lead with greater impact. The problem is you're busy executing on today's demands. You know you have to carve out time from your "day job" to build your leadership skills, but it's easy to let immediate problems and old mindsets get in the way.

Herminia Ibarra--one of the world's foremost experts on leadership--shows how individuals at all levels can step up to leadership by making small but crucial changes in their jobs, their networks, and themselves. In Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, Ibarra offers advice to:

• Redefine your job in order to make more strategic contributions
• Diversify your network so that you connect to, and learn from, a wider range of stakeholders
• Become more playful with your self-concept, allowing your familiar--and possibly outdated--leadership style to evolve

Ibarra turns the usual leadership advice--generate insight about yourself through reflection and analysis of your strengths and weaknesses--on its head by arguing that you must first act and experiment your way into trying new things. The valuable external perspective you gain from direct experiences and experimentation--which Ibarra calls outsight--provides new and critical information on what kind of work is important to you, how you should invest your time, why and which relationships matter, and, ultimately, who you want to become.

Updated with new examples and self-assessments, this book gives you the tools to start acting like a leader and advancing your career to the next level.

Review Quotes

"Whether you are on track to be promoted, or you are just trying to steer your professional development in a different direction, this book acts as a guide to get you to the next chapter of your career." -- Chief Talent Officer

Advance Praise for Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader:

"Have you had it with navel-gazing? In this terrific book, Herminia Ibarra offers the antidote. She reframes the leader's quest as a process of looking outward rather than inward and includes smart, practical suggestions for expanding your leadership opportunities." -- Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author, The Power of Regret

"Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader provides insightful and practical advice about how to do the hardest thing of all--change ourselves." -- Linda A. Hill, Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; coauthor, Collective Genius

"Herminia Ibarra has created a valuable and successful model for helping forward-thinking professionals move up the corporate ladder." -- Marshall Goldsmith, founder, 100 Coaches; bestselling author, What Got You Here Won't Get You There

"Ibarra powerfully demonstrates how 'outsight' trumps insight for producing sustainable personal growth and provides practical, easy-to-follow lessons on how to use it." -- Stewart D. Friedman, Professor of Management Practice, Emeritus, The Wharton School; bestselling author, Leading the Life You Want and Total Leadership

"Ibarra takes future leaders beyond the normal platitudes to a deeper and richer understanding of what it is to become a better leader." -- Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice, London Business School; bestselling author and coauthor, Redesigning Work and The 100-Year Life

"This intelligent and thought-provoking book is for those who really want to make a difference--those willing to act their way into leadership situations they might previously have thought themselves out of." -- Paul Polman, former CEO, Unilever; coauthor, Net Positive

"In Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, Herminia Ibarra provides us with a wonderfully practical way of taking control of our own leadership transformation." -- Tim Brown, cochair, IDEO; author, Change by Design

About the Author

Herminia Ibarra is an authority on leadership and career transitions. She is the Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School and is ranked among the top management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50. She is a member of the World Economic Forum's Expert Network, a judge for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award, and a fellow of the British Academy. She is the author of the highly acclaimed book, Working Identity, and she writes regularly in leading publications, including Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.

Connect with Herminia Ibarra at herminiaibarra.com