Take the Lead: Motivate, Inspire, and Bring Out the Best in Yourself and Everyone Around You

Betsy Myers · John David Mann

Sep 2011 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

“Why is it that some people challenge us and motivate us to rise to our best abilities, while others seem to drain our energy and spirit? What is that particular quality certain people have that causes those around them to engage fully and feel connected?”

You are a leader. You do not need to be in a boardroom, on a battlefield, or on a ballot to have a profound impact on everyone around you. In this life-changing book, Betsy Myers—senior adviser to two US presidents and former executive director of Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership—demonstrates how each of us has opportunities to take the lead every day and shares seven core principles that will enable us to be more productive, engaged, and successful.

From the Oval Office to the playground, cabinet meetings to kitchen tables, in public life and private, Betsy Myers has seen firsthand the emergence of a new leadership model where having all the answers up front is less important than asking the right questions, where strength is derived less from the power you wield than from how you make the people around you feel.

With personal stories from her time in government, in academia, and on the campaign trail, as well as her experiences as a wife, daughter, and mother, Myers helps all of us learn to set the right priorities for ourselves; to connect on a deeper level with the people around us; to uncover problems early when they are still easy to fix; to collaborate with those whose points of view are different from our own; and to push through our fears and live our most authentic lives. Myers demonstrates that more than simply making people feel good, this kind of leadership can have a profound effect on the results achieved: it is how initiatives are launched, profits are made, and work gets done.

Personal, practical, and profoundly inspiring, Take the Lead is a book for anyone who wonders where all the great leaders have gone. Betsy Myers helps us see that true leadership is all around us—and within us.

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About the author

Betsy Myers served as chief operating officer and senior adviser to Barack Obama’s 2007–2008 presidential campaign and chaired the Women for Obama organization. A senior official in the Clinton administration, she was the first director of the White House Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach. Before joining the Obama campaign, she was executive director of Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership, and she currently serves as founding director of the Center for Women in Business at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. She lives with her family near Boston. Visit her online at BetsyMyers.com.

John David Mann is coauthor of the beloved classic The Go-Giver, which has sold nearly a million copies in twenty-six languages and was awarded the 2017 Living Now Book Award’s Evergreen Medal for its “contribution to positive global change.” His books have sold more than 2 million copies and have earned the Nautilus Award, the Axiom Business Book Award Gold Medal, and Taiwan’s Golden Book Award for Innovation. Learn more at JohnDavidMann.com.

David Gergen has been a leader in the public arena for more than half a century. He has served as a White House adviser to four US presidents of both parties: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. Gergen then served as the editor of US News & World Report. For the past two decades, he has served as a professor of public service and founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a senior political analyst for CNN where he is a respected voice in national and international affairs.