Unleashed - by Frances Frei & Anne Morriss (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Bestselling authors Frances Frei and Anne Morriss champion a bold redefinition of leadership and offer a real-world guide for unleashing greatness in other people and, ultimately, yourself. When leaders want to improve, they find an abundance of ideas to help build themselves up. They're told to identify and develop natural-born strengths, to mine their failures for insights into what they need to change, and to work hard to correct any real or perceived career-limiting deficiencies. Own the room. Eat last. Do you. Frances Frei and Anne Morriss argue that this popular leadership advice glosses over the most important thing you can do to be a great leader: Build others up. Leadership, at its core, is not about you. As Frei and Morriss show through inspiring stories from the NBA to ancient Rome to Silicon Valley, real leadership is about how effective you are at making other people better--and making sure that this impact endures even in your absence. Unleashed helps you do just that. Showing how the boldest, most effective leaders use a special combination of trust, love, and inclusion to create a space in which other people can excel, Frei and Morriss provide practical, battle-tested tools--based on their work in companies such as Uber, Riot Games, Walmart, and others--along with interviews and stories from their own personal experience to make these ideas come alive. This book is your indispensable guide for unleashing greatness in other people...and, ultimately, in yourself"--

Book Synopsis

Unleashed is worth an afternoon of your time, whether or not you are already a leader. It is sparkily written and personal, drawing on the experiences of co-authors (and spouses) Frei and Morriss.— Financial Times

Leadership isn't easy. It takes grit, courage, and vision, among other things, that can be hard to come by on your toughest days. When leaders and aspiring leaders seek out advice, they're often told to try harder. Dig deeper. Look in the mirror and own your natural-born strengths and fix any real or perceived career-limiting deficiencies.

Frances Frei and Anne Morriss offer a different worldview. They argue that this popular leadership advice glosses over the most important thing you do as a leader: build others up. Leadership isn't about you. It's about how effective you are at empowering other people—and making sure this impact endures even in your absence. As Frei and Morriss show through inspiring stories from ancient Rome to present-day Silicon Valley, the origins of great leadership are found, paradoxically, not in worrying about your own status and advancement, but in the unrelenting focus on other people's potential.

Unleashed provides radical advice for the practice of leadership today. Showing how the boldest, most effective leaders use a special combination of trust, love, and belonging to create an environment in which other people can excel, Frei and Morriss offer practical, battle-tested tools—based on their work with companies such as Uber, Riot Games, WeWork, and others—along with interviews and stories from their own personal experience, to make these ideas come alive. This book is your indispensable guide for unleashing greatness in other people . . . and, ultimately, in yourself.

To learn more, please visit theleadersguide.com.

Review Quotes

Silver Medal Winner for Best Leadership Book in the 2021 Axiom Business Book Awards

Shortlisted for the OWL (Outstanding Works of Literature) Awards in Management and Culture

Named one of 8 New Books That Will Make You a Better Leader In 2021 — Forbes

Full of superb stories, this book first dispels an enduring misapprehension for many leaders—it's just not about you—then makes clear that a leader's job above all else is to unleash potential in others. — SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management)

Their book is generous, humane—and yes, empowering. — BizEd magazine

Advance Praise for Unleashed:

Frei and Morriss have written the definitive guide to leadership today, just when we need it most. In voices that are fresh, playful, and unapologetically direct, they give us permission to look beyond ourselves and focus instead on the true challenge of leadership: how to help others unlock their full potential. — Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO, Thrive Global

Through insight drawn from their extensive work teaching leaders and companies how to thrive, Frances Frei and Anne Morriss offer more proof that trust is a competitive advantage and the key to building effective, happy teams. — Doug McMillon, President and CEO, Walmart

No matter where you are on your leadership journey, the engaging stories and real-life examples Frei and Morriss use to illustrate the traits of effective leaders will help you empower others to do their best work and create lasting impact. — Peggy Johnson, Executive Vice President, Business Development, Microsoft

Frei and Morriss have a unique gift of understanding how to empower leaders to unlock the potential in themselves, their teams, and their businesses. The guidance they share in Unleashed is invaluable for me and for the leadership teams I work with. — Jacqui Canney, Chief People Officer, WPP

In Unleashed, Frei and Morriss provide an incredibly compelling case for effective leadership by distilling what leadership is all about. The stories and frameworks have helped me take meaningful steps on my lifelong journey toward being a better person and a better leader. — Marc Merrill, cofounder and Cochairman, Riot Games

Frei and Morriss have brilliantly encapsulated what normally takes a leader many years and many mistakes to learn and have given it back to the reader in the form of a beautiful blueprint for successful leadership. Unleashed is full of relevant experiences I wish I'd had when I moved from leading individuals to leading teams—and realized it was no longer about me. — Jennifer Morgan, Co-CEO and Member of the Executive Board, SAP

The first step to breakthrough is self-realization. The next step is harnessing the career-catapulting lessons in Unleashed. — Bozoma Saint John, Chief Marketing Officer, Endeavor

About the Author

Frances Frei is a professor at Harvard Business School. She recently served as Uber's first Senior Vice President of Leadership and Strategy to help the company navigate its very public crisis in leadership and culture. Frei regularly works with companies embarking on large-scale change and organizational transformation, including embracing diversity and inclusion as a lever for improved performance. Her TED Talk on the topic of building trust has logged over four million views.

Anne Morriss is a highly sought-after leadership coach and the executive founder of the Leadership Consortium, a first-of-its-kind leadership accelerator that works to help more and diverse leaders thrive. Her collaborators have ranged from early-stage tech founders to Fortune 50 executives to public-sector leaders building national competitiveness. She has spent the last twenty years building and leading mission-driven enterprises, serving most recently as founder and CEO of GenePeeks, which addressed the urgent need for better personal health information.

You can find the authors at:
Frances Frei: hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6587
Anne Morriss: linkedin.com/in/anne-morriss-b1238b8/ and twitter.com/annemorriss?lang=en