Customer Reviews

Courage: The Backbone of Leadership

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We all want bosses with backbone, but they are surprisingly rare. In Courage: The Backbone of Leadership, Gus Lee addresses an issue that hasn't received enough attention in the literature on leadership. He provides leaders at all levels a useful framework for tackling difficult issues with integrity and courage. Lee tells numerous stories of real leaders who used courage to confront unethical behavior, resolve conflicts with colleagues (subordinates, peers, and bosses), and challenge wrongs. Also includes a useful self-assessment tool to help readers identify their deep concerns and establish behavioral objectives.

Corporate employees and managers should take a stand against unethical behavior, but that requires the courage to live, work and lead in congruence with your highest values. Author Gus Lee offers a "primer" on courage, including how it shapes decision making, how leaders can demonstrate it in their work, and how you and your employees can learn courage, and use it to support each other and to build moral businesses. To illustrate ethical behavior, Lee discusses case histories of individual courage in corporate life. His discussion is sometimes repetitious, and the vignettes are occasionally confusing, since he may refer back to examples he presented many chapters ago. Despite such flaws, these accounts offer key lessons. We believe that executives and managers can learn about principled action - and can reinforce it among their subordinates - by reading Lee's book and passing it along.

This is the transformational leadership book. But don't rely on me, just because I run a company. Look above this line, under "Reviews." See who endorsed Courage. This is the only book that's been endorsed by Warren Bennis and General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. General Schwarzkopf says that "when it comes to leadership, Gus Lee has walked the walk." Add to that General Fred Franks, CEOs, Board Chairs, FBI agents, professors, college presidents, corporate senior executives, non-profit leaders, faith organizations, and even Amy Tan. If you're in a company or a family, read this book.

Gus Lee's book is FANTASTIC! This book should be a "must read" for anyone seeking clarification on the principles of leadership, and most certainly should be a "must read" for leadership and management classes at our nations post-secondary campuses. I actually purchased this book and read it about four years ago, and made the mistake of loaning it to an associate; I NEVER GOT IT BACK. So this was my second read of this book, and it was just as good the second time around!

Gus and Dianne-Elliot Lee share captivating stories about real people confronting important "points of decision." The kind of decisions that leaders and people from all walks of business and civilian life face in their everyday lives. The behaviors of people with strong character and some people with little character are analyzed through a lens that reveals more about courage, integrity, and character than I have ever known. Leadership is celebrated, weakness is crushed, and the slippery slope of the behavior headed to the status quo is illuminated in a way that I think that anyone can identify with.

This is a great text book for leaders. It is full of illustrations, charts, and metaphors that drive his concepts home - to heart. There are examples of how interactions of the worst sort can be corrected. Not a passive read; I could not avoid mapping my own life to the outlines and examples throughout the book.

I recommend this book to anyone who is serious about becoming their own personal best. Your spouse, staff, board, customers and friends will all appreciate what you learn through Courage!

What a wonderful world it would be if everyone followed Gus Lee's suggestions for courageous leadership. Within our corporate and personal relationships there would be no more lies, no more back stabbing, no more power grabbing, no more leading by the short-term bottom line, no more backing away from the truth outside and within ourselves. It would be a world of honesty, honor, responsibility, civility, and kindness. While this is clearly utopia, Lee shows, through explanations and short vignettes, that moving toward this ideal is not only possible, but rewarding on a personal, professional, and corporate level. As he instructs the reader on the fine points of his method his prose is clear, sometimes funny, and always insightful. This is a thought-provoking and potentially life-altering book whether leading a scout troop or a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Yes, Courage, by Gus Lee, is about honesty and integrity. Yes, it will help you see yourself for what you are and how you perform. Courage, however, is about communicating.

You communicate with yourself, which demands gut wrenching courage to do accurately and objectively. Communication must take place between co-workers, your direct reports, and the constituencies that subscribe to what you do. Honest and Courageous communication in times of conflict can make or break organizations at their point of decision.

Courage, can quickly and profoundly affect your style of communication and help you to assess the demanding issues hindering your organization's progress. Tools within the text will also help you assess yourself and the required changes needed to communicate and lead powerfully.

Gus Lee does a fantastic job of pointing out that Integrity and Character in business or personal life are of supreme value. However, as he points out, without courage to face conflict and difficult situations in business and life in general, we will not show integrity and character.

The book is filled with fascinating stories of corporate executives who learned how to have courage in the midst of difficult circumstances. The communication model he sets forth in the book is outstanding. I would highly recommend this book to any business owner or Human Resources Manager.

You easily get intriqued with this book. Great reading and examples of management decisions that Mr Lee was involved with. Highly recommend.

COURAGE is, quite simply, the best business book I have ever read, and I simply couldn't stop once I started reading it. Though I am now neither a corporate employee nor in any direct way connected professionally to commercial enterprise, I have been in the past. But more important, I am a human being, and the lessons I learned in this book, though perhaps primarily directed to occupants of corporate board rooms, apply directly to normal day-to-day life and social interactions in the post-industrial America of the early 21st century. It gives very direct aand effective instruction on how to be a truly great leader in the business world, and it is the latest approach to a very old problem. To me, the best book on business leadership before this one was The Gamesman, by Michael Maccoby, which I read, I think, in 1979 when I was an aspiring young lawyer. In it, Maccoby spoke of the gradual evolution of leadership types in American business. From the late 19th century through World War II or so, as I remember, including the days of the "Robbber Barons" who established corporate norms for a long time, he said most successful business leaders were what he called "jungle fighters" - ruthless entrepreneurs whose workdays normally included aggressive acts to promote themselves and/or their businesses. That meant stepping on others, back-stabbing, and amorally clutching and clawing their way to the top. Then, as I recall, he described how aggression fell from favor, and I think the next type succeeding the jungle fighter at the top of business came in the 1950s, and was what he described as the "Company Man", in gray flannel suit, white shirt and tie, reliably obedient to corporate rules and standards, conservative and predictable. Safe, but not very good at change. Then Maccoby outlined his perception of the latest successful (in the late 1970s) leadership type, the "Gamesman", who typically looked at his role in the business world as a game, one that he played hard to win, but still just a game in which he very smoothly adapted to change. Typified by a confident, smiling JFK, whose perceived persona became an important model to many, the Gamesman was King. For a while. Maccoby seemed very insightful at the time, but the world has changed much. After Reagan entered the White House in 1981, the American business world went into overdrive. And as technological wonders (personal computers, cell phones, Google, etc.) arrived, authority structures in major businesses began to flatten as more and more people were able to work independently. The command economy was disappearing, and rigid, authoritative power games in the business world began to collapse dramatically. That meant that we all began to recover our basic humanity in the workplace, and respect for others began to dominate as a norm. And that's where Mr. Lee's book comes in. He talks of the continued or even incresed need for leadership in today's marketplace, but he also explains it to us, as well as the underlying principles on which it must be based. His basic theme for success calls for principled behavior under pressure, for boldness and courage to "do the right thing" as the very backbone of leadership, and for complete respect for others always. But he does all this gradually, in language that really captures the reader. Most rewarding of all, he shows in simple and believable terms that anyone who adopts the right mind set and follows his or her own well-established principles of behavior in life can be an effective -- even a great -- leader. Rather than ordering or directing, a good leader listens and interacts, allowing great freedom to subordinates in choosing their path, but requiring strict adherence to agreed-upon behavior, schedule, or production. And as he develops and describes the best behavior for business leaders under pressure, he uses the case method, describing actual events to illustrate his concepts, and he does so very effectively. I am sorry to say that I do not have Mr. Lee's smooth facility with words, and my attempt to give a favorable synopsis of what I believe to be a wonderful series of lessons ends up sounding lumpy and complicated. The book is neither. But perhaps the best way I can describe the effectiveness of Mr. Lee's work would be to tell how it applied immediately in my personal, non-business life. I won't try to describe his recommended approaches here, for though they are simple and straight-forward, he does a wonderful job of teaching them, and they are an eye-opening delight to read. But I hope my personal experince that follows will convey the powerful effect on me of this masterwork. I have a young son who is not as careful with sleep and personal cleanliness, especially washing his hair, as his mother and I would hope. The night I finished reading COURAGE, I went upstairs well after midnight and discovered that son still up and playing video games, long after his bedtime. This has been an issue in the past, and I am sorry to say that it too often resulted in my loud, raging anger, and hurt feelings ranging all the way to tears for my son, unfortunately including his physical fear of me. I always felt bad later and swore it would never happen again. But when next pushed to the edge of my patience, I am sorry to say that it sometimes did. Having just finished this book, however, I knew I no longer had to resort to my old strong-arm tactics. Rather than my nornmal raging, I went into my son's room and followed the pattern proposed in COURAGE, quietly asking hinm what he thought of a boy staying up late on a school night, etc. We had a slow, comfortable exchange of ideas, and he soon agreed that he would be better off the next day if he got right into bed. Smiles on both sides. I then brought up the benefits that might come from his taking a shower before he went to bed, but he quickly dug in his heels, and I as quickly backed off. Shower or not, I thought as I left his room, I had been able to rationally explain to him why he should go to bed, and he had very reasonably explored the idea himself, then agreed to my arguments.No anger or fear on either side -- how refreshing was that? I was quite pleased as I went back downstairs, and I was really quite surprised at how immediately effective the application of Mr. Lee's ideas had been with my son. A few minuteds later, I came back upstairs, and heard, to my surprise, the sound of the shower. I went back downstairs until I heard the shower turned off. Ten minutes later, I crept back upstairs and into my son's room, where I found him asleep, his hair smelling of fresh shampoo. What better change in behavior between father and son could have been desired? And my son and I were both happy at the resolution of the issue, not angry, hurt, frightened, or even sad. Truly, at that moment I felt the sun of human-interaction enlightenment rising inside my own head. And that interaction, I am sure, was far more sensitive than most of those one confronts in the business world. But it was resolved more happily than I ever could have anticipated, simply by my adopting and folowing the humanizing, honest, and honorable approach promoted in this wonderful book. For me, reading it and applying its lessons have brought me monments of true joy. I give it my very highest possible recommendation for all readers, whether you are in the business world or not. Read it: you'll love it!