Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win

This is one of the most effective leadership books I have read. It is believable and pragmatic. The points are well backed up with substantial anecdotes. Overall the book is a pleasure to read. Because Useem has solid points on being a good follower and a good leader in addition to his main focus, I find this an excellent tool when I mentor junior people. The themes of each chapter make for great discussion and can easily be applied to situations faced by young leaders.

If you ran a Google search on leadership, you would find 167 million hits. These include books, courses, consultants and companies that teach leaders and would-be leaders how to lead their team members and companies to success. Many offer excellent advice and techniques on leadership. Very few, however, examine how a person can lead his or her boss. In examining the successes, and failures, of sixteen individuals from business, politics, war and religion, Michael Useem has elegantly shown how subordinates can change the course of history by leading their leaders (Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win 2001). Starting with the Civil War, Useem presents a birds' eye view of how Joseph Johnson, the commander of the Confederate Army, lost the confidence of President Davis and ultimately lost his command of the army by not keeping the President appraised of the battlefield situation. Useem counterbalances Johnson's unwillingness to appraise his boss with his replacement's insistence of keeping the President informed, even by inviting him to witness the progress of the encounters. His replacement was Robert E. Lee. Useem describes how David Pottruck of Charles Schwab & Co. was able to persuade his boss, Charles Schwab, that internet trading was the new revolution and the company had to move in that direction to preclude financial ruin and reestablish its dominance in the industry. He relates how Romeo Dallaire's attempts to convince UN Secretary General Boutris Boutris-Gali to send additional UN troops to Rwanda fell on deaf ears, resulting in the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans. Had Dallaire flown to the UN headquarters in New York, he may have led up to Boutris-Gali, convinced him of the imminent danger and saved hundreds of thousands of innocent lives from being massacred. Robert Ailing, Eckerd Pfeiffer and Thomas Wyman, the powerful CEOs of British Airways, Compaq and CBS respectively, found themselves out of their jobs by not leading up to their boards of directors. Peter Pace of the US Marine Corps led six bosses by serving each one as if they were his only boss. Sandy Hill Pittman, by not questioning her guide leading the team up to the summit of Mt. Everest, was unable to save his life. Charlene Barshefcky was able to lead President Clinton to accept the free trade agreement with China. Domingo Cavallo, the head of Argentina's economy, was able to lead his President to align the country's inflation raged national currency with the US dollar, ending years of turmoil. Perhaps the most profound examples of leading up were conducted by Abraham, Moses and Samuel, the biblical sages, who were able to lead up to God to convey the needs of their followers, sometimes reversing God's decisions despite rampant hedonism within the community. They were the ultimate practitioners of leading up. As diverse as these examples are, the unifying concept is that no matter where in the chain of command a person is, he or she not on

I was really disappointed to read several of the other reviews that felt this book was so poor. I found the style of the book to be quite helpful. The historical analysis of events were interesting and useful to me in my everyday business interactions. My company needs to be able to "Lead Up", let the boss know what is going on without fear, and "Lead Down", to bring in the ideas from all quarters of the company.Our company is currently in crisis and the book is giving me ideas about how to get inforamtion and ideas up and down the chain of command. There is nothing worse than the image of employees ideas rotting on the shelf while the business goes under. This book encouraged me to speak my mind, lead up, lead down and in general be a better leader.The book also addresses the leadership culture that promotes leading up and leading down.The only reason I can think that other people did not get much out of this book is that they already knew about these concepts, or they did not identify with the stories/analysis.

Great insight on leadership! Should be requirement for all leadership courses.

This book has great ideas and they're well presented. Therefore, I say it is a five star presentation. But, a word of caution. Before trying to implement any of this, you best be able to explain the philosophy behind it all, in case you get "called" on your motives. I recommend, as I do for all "how to" leadership books, that you absorb some of the knowledge in the book with the unlikely name, "West Point", by Norman Thomas Remick.