Review: What Makes a Leader?

What Makes a Leader? by Daniel Goleman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book packs quite a punch. Picked this book because it's one of the HBR classic series and boy doest it deliver?

In simple and no nonsense terms author talks about self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. A must read, and here is a summary from the book itself about the EI skills.

The EI skills are:
• Self-awareness—knowing one’s strengths, weaknesses, drives, values, and impact on others
• Self-regulation—controlling or redirecting disruptive impulses and moods
• Motivation—relishing achievement for its own sake
• Empathy—understanding other people’s emotional makeup
• Social skill—building rapport with others to move them in desired directions

Such was the impact that I was immediately able to identify a couple of things that I need to change/incorporate into my routine to be a better executive/employee/person.

Each topic had some kind of example. I wished there were more or better examples for motivation and empathy. That's my one minor gripe. Regardless, I'd be reading expanded versions of these by the same author and also these are some of the things that I'd work on for the coming year, now that I've identified things that I can improve about myself.

A must read. This is a short book, don't dither too much.

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