This chapter was originally published as Chapter 3 of ‘Better Under Pressure: How Great Leaders Bring Out the Best in Themselves and Others.’ This chapter is excerpted from ‘Better Under Pressure: How Great Leaders Bring Out the Best in Themselves and Others'. The chapter concludes with suggestions about how you can use metrics and feedback to help your people accept greater accountability, overcome seemingly intractable problems, and achieve at their highest levels. They understand that the journey towards success is all about taking action, persisting and overcoming every obstacle life puts in their way.
Each of the relentless leaders quoted in this chapter recognizes that success is dependent on our own actions, and regardless of outside events beyond our control, it is how we react to the realities in front of us that determines whether we succeed or fail. Realistic Optimists believe that success hides behind a mountain of mistakes and failures. Using powerful testimonials from master CEOs - Chevron's Dave O'Reilly, Continental Airlines' Gordon Bethune, Kraft Food's Irene Rosenfeld, and Scripps Health Systems' Chris Van Gorder - Menkes shows how you can energize an entire workforce by intensifying its sense of agency. They pursue audacious goals others would typically view as impossible pipe dreams, while at the same time remaining aware of the magnitude of the challenges confronting them and the difficulties that lie.
In this chapter, psychologist and executive assessment expert Justin Menkes explores this sense of agency and why it can be such a game changer for aspiring leaders. The first is Realistic Optimism, of which they write: Leaders with this trait possess confidence without self-delusion or irrationality. One of the qualities that sets great leaders apart is their belief that their own actions make a difference - that they can influence outcomes.