Better Under Pressure: How Great Leaders Bring Out the Best in Themselves and Others [Hardcover]

Justin Menkes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 2011

Most business leaders can take only so much pressure before their performance slides. Yet some CEOs deliver their greatest successes when times get toughest—when customers’ preferences are shifting away from a company’s products, when new regulations are shrinking profit margins, when political unrest is destroying supply lines.

In Better Under Pressure, Justin Menkes reveals the common traits that make these leaders successful. Drawing on in-depth interviews with sixty CEOs from an array of industries and performance data from two hundred other leaders, Menkes shows that great executives strive relentlessly to maximize their own potential—as well as stoke their people’s innate thirst for their own triumphs. To do so, they draw on a set of three essential and rare attributes:

• Realistic optimism: They recognize the risks threatening their organization’s survival—and their own failings—while remaining confident in their ability to have an impact.
• Subservience to purpose: They dedicate themselves to pursuing a noble cause and win their team’s commitment to that cause.
• Finding order in chaos: They find clarity amid the many variables affecting their business by culling data and forming the conclusions that matter most to the company.

The good news: these three capabilities can be learned. Drawing on a broad range of examples from real companies—including Avon, Yum Brands, Southwest, Procter & Gamble, and Ryerson Steel, to name just a few—Menkes demonstrates how each psychological attribute manifests itself in real life and enables top performance under extreme duress. He also shows you how to develop and deploy those attributes—so you can transform yourself into a leader who only shines brighter as the pressure intensifies.

Deeply personal, brimming with compelling stories from real-life CEOs, and packed with powerful insights, tools, and practices, this book is a potent resource for aspiring, emerging, and seasoned business leaders alike.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Brief self-assessments that enhance the reader’s understanding and numerous examples from Menkes’s professional practice make this a worthwhile, practical read.” – CHOICE magazine

“An original and noteworthy contribution to executive selection which is invaluable to those charged with top executive assessment.” —Chartered Management Institute

“Better Under Pressure compliments books like Clutch, but with examples more specific to organizations other than professional sports. Even if you operate a one-person small business, it will give you a blueprint for how to conduct your best performance under pressure.”- Small Business Trends (smallbiztrends.com)

Listed under “Summer [2011] reading suggestions for federal leaders” - Washington Post

“Personal and practical, this book is a potent resource for aspiring, emerging, and seasoned business leaders alike. Most mindful!” – CEO Refresher

“…an extremely interesting book that deserves a wide readership.” - Execupundit.com

“An extremely worthwhile read for leaders, or aspiring leaders, in these turbulent times.” - BusinessandLeadership.com

“What an intellectual feat! Justin takes leaders on a tour of the attributes of truly great CEOs, but the book is so much more than that. By showing us how those attributes connect and come to life, Justin’s stories reveal how the best leaders think and act under the hardest circumstances.”
--Ralph Larsen, former Chairman and CEO, Johnson & Johnson

“I thoroughly enjoyed reading the interviews with the CEO's and Justin's insightful analyses of the lessons learned. His concept of "reaching full potential" hits the nail right on the head.”
--Marijn Dekkers, CEO, Bayer AG

“Better Under Pressure is a well-researched, conceptually sound, practical leadership guidebook for global business executives. Instead of serving up simplistic leadership pabulum, Menkes provides a rigorous and clear-eyed look at the world stage facing CEOs and the critical judgments required for their companies to survive and thrive.”
--Noel Tichy, Professor and Director Global Citizenship Initiative at the Ross School University of Michigan, and co-author (with Warren Bennis) of Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls

“Justin Menkes captures the essence of leadership in today’s tough environment: getting the best out of your people. In this thoughtfully written book, he shows aspiring leaders how to successfully engage and inspire their people, both through their own actions, and through their ability to thrive under pressure.”
--Irene Rosenfeld, CEO, Kraft

About the Author

Justin Menkes is an acclaimed author and leading expert in executive assessment. A consultant for the elite executive search firm Spencer Stuart, he advises the boards of the world’s leading companies on their choice of CEO. He authored the Wall Street Journal bestseller Executive Intelligence: What All Great Leaders Have and has written articles for Chief Executive and Harvard Business Review.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (May 3, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1422138704
• ISBN-13: 978-1422138700
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 0.9 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #65,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Learn From Why Some CEOs Succeed - And Others Don't April 28, 2011

By Miriam

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Look at any newspaper or magazine article featuring the CEOs interviewed in "Better Under Pressure" and you'll likely encounter the oft-repeated leadership tales we've heard again and again. If you like re-reading those, this isn't the book for you. Somehow, Justin Menkes broke past the sound bites and achieved a writer's dream: He got these household name CEOs to tell gripping, candid, never-before-shared stories that must have their PR teams wringing their hands. These are the kinds of revealing anecdotes about tough choices that expose why and how these leaders have reached the pinnacle of greatness.

But as instructive it is to learn why some leaders succeed, it's certainly just as instructive (and more fun) to read why - and how - others fail. The author's unique position within the world-class executive search firm Spencer Stuart gives him access to hundreds of confidential assessments of leaders who have been considered for the top positions in the world's most prestigious Fortune 500 companies. Without disclosing names (though it's sure fun to try and guess who they are!), Justin Menkes takes us step by step through a series of spectacular leadership blunders. He then explains why these leaders buckled at moments in which other CEOs would have shone.

This isn't a simple "how to" book, and I urge readers not to approach it this way. Instead, consider "Better Under Pressure" a thoughtful manual of excellence that teaches us to recognize how we confront and handle the stress that naturally accompanies leadership in the 21st century. Justin Menkes then gives the tools, exercises, and encouragement to help leaders (and their organizations) achieve the same results as the successful CEOs interviewed for this book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another "business classic" May 21, 2011

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Those who have read Justin Menkes's previous book, Executive Intelligence, probably agree with me that it sets an exceptionally high standard in terms of brilliant insights that are eloquently expressed. Well, he has not only met but elevated that standard with this book, one in which (as its subtitle correctly indicates) he explains how great leaders bring out the best in themselves and in others. Here's an exercise that I have conducted to begin countless workshops and seminars: Draw up a list of the world's greatest leaders throughout history. No matter which ones are listed, each of them met those two criteria. In fact, they are defining characteristics. Menkes interviewed more than 60 CEOs from whom he has learned a great deal and then selects 25 (whom he characterizes as "representative") to serve as a specific resource throughout his narrative.

This book responds to an especially important question: "How to realize your own potential while helping others to do so?" Moreover, helping others to do so is central to fulfill one's one potential. "My research has shown that the best leaders work [begin italics] with [end italics] the people they lead to seek their mutual maximum potential together: they co-create their success." After briskly identifying the "what," Menkes focuses most of his attention to explaining "how" and, when appropriate, "why." His vast and rigorous research suggests that there are three traits, each of which serves as a catalyst for the development process: realistic optimism, subservience to purpose, and finding order in chaos.

I commend Menkes for including timed self-assessment exercises that are relevant to the three traits/catalysts: "Evaluating Your Level of Realistic Optimism" (Pages 52-54), "Evaluating Your Level of Subservience to Purpose" (Pages 100-103), and "Evaluating Your Ability to Find Order in Chaos" (Pages 144-145). There is a brief explanation of how to interpret responses at the conclusion of each exercise. Menkes also provides a fourth timed exercise, "States of Pressure" (Page 174) that will help the reader to perform better in stressful circumstances.

In the final chapter, Menkes explains how David Dillon (CEO of Kroger) "elucidates all three catalysts for realizing potential [his and others'] in a global economy." Throughout the massive economic downtown in recent years, he acknowledges that he was both "scared every day, almost all the time" and confident that the problems (however severe) were "just obstacles to be overcome, things to be fixed." By example and with seamless faith, he inspired others to embrace Kroger's commitment to "find a way to make [their customers' lives] better." Finally, Dillon recognized that "a gigantic shift" was occurring, obtained the data he needed to understand it, and then facilitated "his team's triumph of Kroger's competition."

Early in the book (Page 39) Justin Menkes observes, "we are all a committee of selves." Later, when concluding the book, he notes that "people do not act as isolated entities, but are reflections of an essential interaction between themselves and the context in which they are placed." This is precisely what Lao-Tzu means in my favorite passage in Tao Te Ching:

"Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves. "

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fantastic Read ... May 13, 2011

By Deepak Pandhi

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Justin Menkes's "Better Under Pressure" is truly a worthwhile read more so for senior executives and the HODs fraternity.

It is a serious work to be preferably read through in one go and then revisited selectively from time to time. It is not the typical "How to ..." leadership guide with the HBR references but more a work to be dipped into for some deep and private introspection. The interview passages with the CEOs and their analysis interpersed throughout are very revealing as so are some of the executive case situations discussed in the book.

What you can take from most of the chapters could depend a lot on how you would like to think through on the concepts presented which could be a function of your present work situation and profile. The book also has a small number of "timed exercises" built in for further "reflection" but it is not for the faint hearted.

Some of the references presented in chapters 3, 5 and 6 are first rate and are definitely worth exploring for more depth and clarity. Going through the "marshmallow studies" (in chapter 5) which originated from Stanford University Professor Walter Mischel's seminal work on "delay in gratification in four-year-olds" and thanks to the reference(s) was in itself a "moment of truth" for me. Though the chapters do have a strong psychological bent there are some tremendous learnings and insights to be gained.

All in all an excellent read and a worthwhile investment!