True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership

For many of us in HBS Section B 2005, (Bill George's first section teaching at Harvard Business School), the most valuable experience of our $120K education was learning from and engaging with Bill to examine the role of ethics, authenticity, and accountability in business leadership. Bill was consistent, constantly challenging our preconcieved notions, asking hard questions that lead us to self-examination, and tirelessly engaging in our development. He came to class with a perspective on leadership born from an unmatched career at Medtronic, Honeywell, and the DoD. When Bill said "Your job as a leader is to define reality for your organization", reminded us to listen more than we talk, and encouraged us to spend at least 5-7 years with one company so that our own mistakes would have time to catch up with us, we listened. Unfortunately, very few others will ever get the opportunity to sit in a section of 90 people with him. True North, and Authentic Leadership are the next best thing. Every business leader should have to read these books at the beginning of their career and then again every time they're up for promotion.

George and Sim's book makes you think about leadership and your own being. Each chapter has a list of questions which encourage interaction with others. It brings out the authentic leader in yourself - including the set of values / principles on which you have built your own foundation of leadership. This book is about being a true leader, leading with passion and purpose, while being authentic as well. George and Sims have written a "text book", which I am sharing with my entire leadership team. "Remember it is a process not a destination."

True North is an instant classic -- that rare kind of book that can change your life. I read an early copy of True North and it knocked my socks off. Bill George and Peter Sims chart a compelling new course for the way we think about leadership and what it means to be a leader in the 21st century. It couldn't come at a better time, when we are in desperate need of more enlightened leaders in our society. True North re-centers the leadership journey on authenticity, not celebrity, and grounds it in our most personal values. True North empowers leaders to give themselves permission to be human, and to discover their greatest leadership potential in that humanity. The authentic leaders profiled here demonstrate this beautifully and show how authenticity leads to healthier, more innovative, and more successful organizations. This book is destined to have a far-reaching impact on the business world. George and Sims have articulated what many leaders feel intuitively but struggle to express. In the coming months, True North will provoke powerful "ah-ha's!" around the world and with any luck will help create a new generation of True North leaders.

This book is for people who care deeply about being leaders, true to themselves, and focused on creating a positive impact. By analyzing over a hundred of the world's most resourceful leaders in every field and of every age, the authors give the reader a sense of companionship on the journey of life. True North makes you comfortable in your own skin, while pushing you to be a better you, rather than to be things that you are not. We learn that leadership is sustainable when it is built on authentic values and passions, not just ambition and competence. What I loved most about True North were the stories of all the leaders who have given us details of their struggles and triumphs. Those stories gave me great insights into these unique individuals, but more importantly, they helped me better understand myself, my purpose and my life. The book is an easy read, and ranks high on "number of cool insights per page."

It is preferable but not imperative to have read previously published Authentic Leadership before reading this book which Bill George also wrote, with Peter Sims. In the former, George observes that authentic leaders are first and foremost authentic human beings. For me, this is his key point and because it seems so obvious, it may also seem simplistic. On the contrary, he has cut through all the rhetoric and urges his reader to examine her or his own core values. For most of us, that is an immensely difficult, perhaps painful experience. In this context, I am reminded of the fact that in The Inferno, Dante reserves the last and worst ring in hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserve their neutrality. Throughout all manner of organizations, there are women and men who are authentic leaders and should be commended. The reality is, their respective organizations need more of them. Indeed, all of us in our global community need more of them. In Authentic Leadership, a truly unique and compelling book, George challenges us to join their number. What we have in True North is a further development of George's concept of authentic leadership but also a rigorous, revealing, and rewarding analysis of what George and Sims learned during their interviews of more than 100 leaders. Most of their names were previously unfamiliar to me, although all are eminently worthy of the attention they receive. (That's a key point: Many - too many - studies of "leadership" limit their attention to C-level executives - usually "celebrity CEOs" -- when, in fact, authentic leadership is needed at all levels and in all areas of an organization, whatever its size and nature may be.) At twenty-three, Jonathan Doochin was the youngest leader interviewed; while a senior in college, he created Harvard's Leadership Institute. Ninety-three-year old Zyg Nagorski was the "senior" leader" interviewed for this study; after running the Aspen Institute's Executive Programs for a decade, he stepped aside at seventy-five and then, with his wife, started the Center for International Leadership and continues to conduct values and ethics seminars eighteen years later. George and Sims discuss an unusually diverse group of men and women in terms of what is characterized as a three-phase "journey to authentic leadership" which begins with character formation and culminates (not concludes) with full development of authentic leadership within five separate but related dimensions: pursuing purpose with passion, practicing purpose with passion, practicing solid values, leading with heart, establishing connected relationships, and demonstrating self-discipline. Hundreds (thousands?) of self-help books on leadership also invoke the "journey" metaphor while suggesting all manner of "phases," "stages," "dimensions," etc. What sets this book apart from them is the authenticity of what interviewees share so candidly and so generously. More specifically, as in Geeks and Geezers co-authored by Warr