Jossey-Bass Releases 'The Unfinished Leader'

San Francisco, CA

"Once you've stopped learning, you've stopped leading. This book shows you why, and offers proven methods, instructive examples, and practical tools for managing some of our most complex challenges as leaders." -John T. Cahill, Chairman, Kraft Foods Group Inc.

How Do Executives Lead Others to Successful Outcomes When There Are No Right Answers?

Given the constant demands of technology, transparency, and connectedness, leaders from the front line to the C-suite find delivering results is now more challenging than ever in the face of complex dilemmas that cannot be easily solved, denied, or postponed. These perplexing, recurring issues are familiar and present throughout organizations today: the conflicting needs of purpose and profit, short- and long-term goals, local versus global demands, and the need for a flatter, more nimble organization that still executes with discipline.

These are not problems, but paradoxes-situations in which there may not be a single correct solution or right decision, and competing outcomes are continually changing, making closure impossible. While many leaders feel overwhelmed and challenged by this prospect, or engage in denial, in their new book, The Unfinished Leader: Balancing Contradictory Answers to Unsolvable Problems (Jossey-Bass; 978-1-118-45509-8; April 2014; $28.00), Dotlich and his team help them embrace the reality of being permanently "unfinished."

Three Things Successful Leaders Do to Be Successful Today:

? Recognize the Difference Between a Puzzle and a Paradox
? Give Up on the Hope for Control, Consistency, and Closure
? Let a Purpose, Not a Plan, Guide Your Way

The Unfinished Leader provides the mindsets and tools to recognize contradictory requirements, understand competing demands, develop decision criteria, and still be able to take action. The book will help leaders at all levels understand and excel at their true task: guiding themselves and their teams through ongoing paradoxes, reconciling competing outcomes, continually changing and adapting, and thereby building lasting success.

Based on research and interviews with over 100 CEOs and senior executives around the world, the book identifies the three new mindsets and multiple communication tools which successful leaders employ to engage people, make decisions, develop talent, and grow companies in the face of constant competition, change, and complexity. Dotlich, Cairo, and Cowan each bring an amalgam of experience, based on coaching and consulting leaders at the world's foremost companies, such as Nike, Colgate, Deutsche Post DHL, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Walmart, and many more.

About the Authors:

David L. Dotlich is chairman and CEO of Pivot Leadership, one of the world's largest providers of customized executive development for top leaders of Fortune 500 companies, including Walmart, Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Nike, Microsoft, Ericsson, Aetna, Kimberly-Clark, KKR, Deutsche Post DHL, AbbVie, and many others. He is a successful entrepreneur who has started multiple companies and is a former executive vice president of Honeywell International. He is coauthor of eleven books, among them Head, Heart, and Guts and Why CEOs Fail. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and New York City.

Peter C. Cairo is a consultant who advises CEOs and boards at companies such as BlackRock, Colgate-Palmolive, GSK, Avon Products, ITW, PepsiCo, Thomson Reuters, Interpublic Group, KPMG, Boehringer Ingelheim, and the Carlyle Group. A noted author and speaker, he is coauthor of six books, among them Head, Heart, and Guts and Why CEOs Fail. He lives in upstate New York.

Cade Cowan is the head of Pivot Leadership's global Leadership Practice and has led programs in thirty-one countries on five continents with firms ranging from Walmart to GlaxoSmithKline to Aetna. He was director of all global learning for Coca-Cola University, Bottling Investments Group (BIG), and program director at GE's Crotonville. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

For more information, please visit http://www.pivotleadership.com

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