Leadership BS | Jeffrey Pfeffer | Talks at Google

Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer stops by the Googleplex for a conversation with Karen May, VP of People Development.
Too many leadership failures. Too many career derailments. Too many toxic workplaces filled with disengaged, distrustful employees. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the author of Power, offers an incisive dissection of the multibillion-dollar leadership industry and presents ways to fix its many problems.
In Leadership BS, Jeffrey Pfeffer pulls back the curtain, showing how leadership really works and why so many leadership development efforts fail. In this forthright and persuasive critique, Pfeffer argues that much of the oft-repeated wisdom about leadership is based more on hope than reality, on wishes rather than data, on beliefs instead of science. In an age when transparency is considered a virtue, Pfeffer makes the case that strategic misrepresentation isn't as harmful as you think, that breached agreements are a part of business, that immodesty is frequently a path to success, and that relying on the magnanimity of your boss is a bad bet.
Using research findings from social psychology, sociology, and sociobiology, and filled with practical, actionable advice, Leadership BS encourages readers to finally stop accepting sugar-laced but toxic potions as cures and to understand the realities of organizations and human behavior.
To make real change, Pfeffer argues, we need to get beyond the half-truths and self-serving stories that are so prominent in the mythology of leadership. In calling BS on so much conventional wisdom, Leadership BS offers both a provocative, scientific examination of how leadership actually works-and how it doesn't-and a prescription for leaders future and present.

[@taochentc]

I have witnessed good employees got fired because they trusted the company and fell into the trap . The corporate asked for feedback and survey, after they gave honest feedback, they got fired. Is that interesting 😎

[@lisastone5228]

The most toxic leader I've encountered in my 25+ year career was a Google People Operations VP who was also a Stanford Graduate.

[@abdulios]

+Lisa Stone 'Toxic' how?

[@tangsai]

Are you suggesting "leadership bs" book taught him to become toxic?

[@robeltadesse8370]

Interesting perspective. Biggest takeaway for me is the alternative consideration of authenticity and how to navigate that in the cases where individual and group interests are not aligned.

[@NewtralHuman]

@7:55 Google is not an exception. Modesty, honesty etc. is not rewarded at Google. The elephant in the room: promotion of consumerism, so far has not been addressed! The interest of the preferred stock holder(s) seems to be in conflict with the interest and well-being of the worker/machinery of the organization.

[@NewtralHuman]

@3:10 Stanford Business School, one of the most prestigious schools in the *world*, and it's student who are selected from the cream-of-the-crop, who graduate and move on to work in the industry are actually *fired*! This is amazing! Most students who go to and graduate from Stanford carry an attitude of elitism. Google is headed in a similar direction. This is eventually what happens with inbreeding; inbreeding of a certain mentality: elitism. The industry is infested with this disease of hypocrisy within its leadership. And this elite hypocrite class are tightly and covertly knit with the hypocrite-leadership of our nation. Both help each other in exploiting and maintaining misery within the common people.

[@NewtralHuman]

@2:00 : If Karen May does not see the gap between leadership in practice and in theory, then it is because executives at her level don't make it a point to immerse themselves into the machinery of the company/organization. Why should an executive immerse themselves (at least occasionally) into the machinery of the organization? Because this is where one can see/feel first-hand the dynamics/politics of the-leadership-culture in the organization. The upper executives breed the-leadership-culture across the organization. My definition for the machinery of the organization is: the humans who develop the core product of the organization. The majority of these are located mostly at the lower end of the food-chain. You want to understand what rape is? Ask, the victim, not the perpetrator! As an advanced society we tend to assume that our leadership knows our condition. In fact, leadership of today cares about and maintains our condition only to the extent that we will not revolt to change the whole system to alleviate our condition. Our condition helps the leadership maintain it's power/influence. It doesn't take a genius to understand this. But it does require a way to ask the machinery about what their condition is in such a way that their anonymity will not be compromised. What are the chances of this happening in a highly competitive dog-eat-dog organization?

[@kanakmakvana3793]

Great talk thank you very much

[@taochentc]

Finally there is a person who spoke the truth

[@invisiblewallflower6601]

Great talk!

[@laurencefox5884]

A great demonstration of the leadership BS usually produced from business schools...and a speech he has given before.

[@JurijFedorov]

Great talk. But you really need to fix the sound. The noise in the background is too high.

[@dagwould]

Check the spelling error on the title screen!

[@campusseoul]

Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer’s courses on organizational behavior at Stanford GSB has been excellent.

[@NewtralHuman]

To Karen May at Google; Is Google really the innovative risk taker that it once was 10+ years ago? It sounds like Jeffrey Pfeffer either sincerely does not know for sure about the current culture in Google, or he is being polite in Karen May's presence.

[@krampdrucker1753]

Work is work. Do it, and go home. Come back the next day, and do more. How hard is that? Very, if you are a talker and not someone who has something doable to do.

[@iluvdata]

more BS... Work is Work. You get a paid check. Save and Invest and get the hell out and do your own thing. Anything else is brain washing ...

[@dasuongho1690]

haha

[@jeremiaarie]

Ggg

[@amphiphil844]

This just sounds like more bs. 25min of rambling on definitions

[@olxblydpuzziavotqpcc4346]

text

[@MinhNguyen-tt3rm]

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