How to Be a Leader: 15 Minutes a Day to Establish Communication, Resiliency, Creativity, and Humility

  • 1h 11m
  • David M. Cote
  • HarperCollins Leadership
  • 2024

What qualities come to mind when you think about a good leader? Good listener, empathetic, good communication skills, humble, and clear expectations. Whether you're leading a small or large team, How to Be a Leader by former Honeywell CEO David Cote is a resource that will help you become the leader everyone respects and follows.

60 entries each focus on a leadership topic, highlight Cote's advice, and end with a prompt to help you build your leadership skills. How to Be a Leader will teach you how to:

  • pursue long- and short- term goals.
  • commit to change and the best ways to implement change.
  • inspire others and push yourself at the same time.
  • create alignment around company strategy.
  • improve productivity and manage different opinions.
  • create a diverse and connected culture.

Leadership isn't about having all the answers or having control of everything. Leadership means bringing out the best in your employees, creating paths that work for your business, and building a presence that exists in small and big moments.

About the Author

As Chairman and CEO of the industrial giant Honeywell over 16 years, David Cote grew the company’s market capitalization from around $20 billion to nearly $120 billion, delivering returns of 800 percent and beating the S&P by nearly two and a half times. Currently, David is Executive Chairman of Vertiv Holdings Co., a global data center products and services provider. Since joining as Chairman, the Vertiv stock has risen 250 percent since its launch in February 2020. He was elected to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in March 2014 and continued through March 2018, as a Class B director to represent the interests of the public. He is a member of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group and former board member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Conference of Montreal. David holds a number of awards, including the Horatio Alger Award, CEO of the Year from Chief Executive Magazine for 2013, and Barron’s Top 30 CEO’s globally for five consecutive years.

In this Book

  • Introduction
  • You Can Do Better
  • You Must Pursue Long-And Short-Term Goals
  • Commit To “Blue Book” Sessions
  • Adopt an Intellectual Mindset
  • Stop Doing the Same Thing Over and Over
  • No More Lame Presentations
  • Stop Intellectual Laziness
  • Leadership Framework
  • Planning for the Long-Term
  • Take Your Three Minutes
  • Pushing Others Means Pushing Yourself
  • Align Your Organization Around the Strategy
  • You are a Performance Coach
  • Tighten Up Your Metrics
  • Start Scheduling “X” Days
  • Meetings & Notes
  • Fewer Leaders
  • Question Yourself
  • What’s Your Meeting Mindset?
  • Control Your Ego
  • Managing Different Opinions
  • Include Special Exercises
  • Instill an Intellectual Mindset
  • Overcoming Short-Termism
  • Make Strategy Part of Daily Work
  • Legacy Issues
  • Enlist Employees to Improve Processes
  • Go Deep On Process
  • Revolutionary Change Isn’t the Way to Move
  • Creating Culture
  • Spread the Culture—And Spread it Some More
  • Don’t Let Your Culture Limit You
  • Hiring
  • Create a Succession Plan
  • Make Performance Reviews Meaningful
  • Hold People Accountable & Beware of Upward Delegation
  • Don’t Hold on to Poor Performers
  • Provide Feedback in a Way Recipients Can Internalize
  • Pay Well
  • Hire Deliberately & Find the Tom Brady Within
  • Smart Isn’t Enough
  • Always Strive to Please Your Customers
  • Metrics are Trickier Than They Seem
  • Pay Attention to the End User
  • Pick Your Growth Priorities
  • Keep Scanning the Horizon
  • M&A: Step One Build a Robust Pipeline (Identification)
  • M&A: Step Two Kill Bad Deals (Due Diligence)
  • M&A: Step Three Never Overpay (Valuation)
  • M&A: Step Four—Great Track Record (Integration)
  • Managing Your Portfolio
  • Postmortem Analyses
  • Leading Through a Recession
  • Maintaining Your Talent Base in Tough Times
  • Common Cost-Cutting Responses to Recessions
  • Keep Supplier Relationships Strong
  • Work Collaboratively When Making Big Decisions
  • Always Be Honest With Your Employees
  • Manage the Leadership Transition
  • Be Relentless
  • Notes
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