#724: Claire Hughes Johnson, Building Stripe from 160 to 6,000+ Employees — How to Take Radical Ownership of Your Life and Career

What’s the common thread among the world’s most successful business leaders? In Discover Your True North, business leadership educator Bill George argues that it’s not about being the most talented or the most charming person in the boardroom—it’s about being true to yourself and staying focused on your core priorities and values (your “True North”).

After analyzing interviews with 48 international business leaders about their career journeys, George distills their most salient insights into simple guidelines that anyone can follow to become a leader in their organization. In this guide, we’ll explain how to identify your core purpose and ethics by reflecting on your unique life experiences, common mistakes to avoid on your leadership journey, how to hone a team-oriented approach to leadership, and how to maintain a personal support system. We’ll also compare George’s recommendations to those of other business leaders and include tips for executing his guidelines.

Do you ever find yourself thinking, “If I was in charge, I’d do things differently”? Do you have great ideas but feel like you’re not high enough on the career ladder to act on them? In How to Lead When You’re Not In Charge, business speaker and former evangelical pastor Clay Scroggins explains that you can be a leader even without holding a position of authority. Leadership is the ability to inspire others to strive toward a shared goal of a better future, and you can cultivate that ability regardless of your position in an organization’s hierarchy.

In this guide, we’ll first explore the servant nature of leadership, its biblical roots, and the risks of confusing authority with leadership. Then, we’ll discuss Scroggins’s advice for embracing leadership. In our commentary, we’ll supplement Scroggins’s ideas with those of other leadership experts like Ronald A. Heifetz (The Practice of Adaptive Leadership) and John C. Maxwell (The 5 Levels of Leadership). We’ll also look at the psychology behind his ideas.

In The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp argue that many leadership models are unsustainable because they don’t prioritize self-management and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. This causes leaders to burn out, lose their passion, and succumb to an unhealthy culture of competition and greed. As a result, employees disengage, turnover soars, and organizations break down from within. To overcome these issues, the authors argue that leaders must learn to understand and manage their emotions and mindset, communicate effectively with others, and align their actions and behaviors with their goals and commitments.

Dethmer, Chapman, and Klemp present 15 commitments that conscious leaders must uphold to run an effective organization, which we’ve synthesized into eight primary behaviors. We’ll explain what each behavior is, why it’s important, and how to put it into action. In our commentary, we’ll further discuss how to improve your leadership abilities and adopt the authors’ recommended behaviors, citing experts like Brené Brown (Dare to Lead) and Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth).

Does the idea of attending a wedding solo or standing in a room full of strangers make you cringe? If so, best-selling author Vanessa Van Edwards has a message for you: You got this! In Captivate, she provides strategies to help you become a social superstar. Van Edwards argues that by taking control of social situations and presenting your best self, you can dazzle the people you want to know and forge meaningful relationships.

A self-proclaimed “recovering awkward person,” TEDx Talk presenter, and blogger on how to master interpersonal skills, Van Edwards has drawn on the research of social psychologists and counselors to develop strategies to make yourself magnetic, bring out the best in other people, and build strong partnerships and relationships at home and work.

In this guide, we’ll explore Van Edwards’s strategies for establishing connections and deepening your relationships and compare her ideas to that of other relationship and social behavior experts. Along the way, we’ll suggest additional ways to apply Van Edwards’s strategies.

A third to a half of Americans are introverts, according to author Susan Cain, but they’re often marginalized. In Quiet, Cain contends that Western society is designed around an “extrovert ideal” that celebrates those who are bold and charismatic. However, unbridled extroversion can lead to disasters, such as the fall of Enron and the 2008 financial crisis.

By overvaluing extroverts and treating introverts as misfits, society loses out on introverts’ unique strengths—for instance, they’re highly creative, astute observers, and adept at solving complex problems. Cain argues for a balance in society, school, and work that lets introverts be true to themselves and where the two personality types complement each other.

The Challenger Sale upends the conventional wisdom that building relationships with customers is the key to sales success. Instead, they contend, the best salespeople take control of the sale by challenging customers’ thinking with new insights and pushing back instead of giving in to customer demands. While there are five distinct types of sales reps, it's these so-called Challengers who consistently excel in selling the complex business-to-business solutions required in today’s business world. Based on a massive study of thousands of sales reps worldwide, the authors uncover the skills and behaviors that drive Challengers’ performance and explain how to replicate them in any sales force.

Many people believe that if they work hard, practice consistently, and focus on the things they’re good at, they’ll succeed. However, these aren’t the keys to long-term success. What gives successful people their competitive edge? The answer is high-performance habits.

High performers are people who maintain success and well-being over a long period of time. They excel more than their colleagues and can adapt to almost any situation. In High-Performance Habits, personal development trainer Brendon Burchard defines the six habits you need to become a high performer. These habits range from maintaining your health to generating influence. By developing them, you can take your first steps toward increasing your performance.