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Lead to Win
How to Be a Powerful, Impactful, Influential Leader in Any Environment
Carla A. Harris • Summary of Lead to Win published by Nicholas
Brealey Publishing Copyright © 2022 Carla Harris • 240 pages

Leadership

Take-Aways
• Corporate leaders once ruled via fear and threats.
• Many employees who worked from home during the COVID pandemic are examining their job options.
• Firms must become more attractive to retain employees.
• You can demonstrate quality leadership by following 10 principles.
• Meet the needs of your staff and customers.
• Take every opportunity to grow as a leader.
• The teams you organize help determine your legacy.
• Strong leaders take risks to achieve personal and professional growth.
• Success depends on multitalented groups, not soloists.
• Your actions, not your title, make you a leader.
• Leaders are change agents.
• Leaders must be decisive and empathetic to survive crises.
• Leaders know their blind spots.
• Leaders look ahead strategically.

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 Recommendation
Best-selling author, speaker, investment banker – and sometime gospel singer – Carla A. Harris, former
chair of the National Women’s Business Council, insists that today’s constant changes demand superior
leaders. She details the vital skills they need. These include the foresight and courage to take calculated risks,
and the ability to develop and sustain productive partnerships. Harris explains that leaders must adjust,
adapt and keep going, while embracing the knowledge that uncertainty is the new certainty.

Summary

Corporate leaders once ruled via fear and threats.

In decades past, many CEOs controlled employees through fear. They threatened any employees who didn’t
toe the line and follow orders with demotions and job loss. They quickly demoted or fired anyone who
showed independence or spoke up too often. These CEOs were not innovative. They did not focus on
customers.Their time has passed.

“Both the pandemic and the social unrest have created air cover for leaders who want to
transform or pivot their cultures without the typically associated risk of retribution.”

Today, top executives understand the value of pleasing customers, of innovating, and of offering superior
service at the lowest possible prices. Executives of truly effective companies will go to great lengths to please
their customers.

Many employees who worked from home during the COVID pandemic are
examining their job options.

The COVID-19 pandemic created disruptive change in business. A couple of years of doing their jobs from
home gave many workers time to consider their careers, priorities and life goals. Often, they decided they
wanted to live without the pressure of working in the confines of cubicles. They sought other jobs, or became
self-employed entrepreneurs.

Firms must become more attractive to retain employees.

Now companies must figure out how to retain top talent, particularly managers who lead teams. They must
develop ways to recruit promising new employees. To compete, they may have to make their compensation
programs more generous. Employees who work for quality managers are more reluctant to leave their jobs,
so firms must pay such managers well. These leaders motivate and inspire their teams. Their employees feel
less desire to leave, and have far fewer reasons to do so than workers who choose to go elsewhere.

“You will need to learn about things such as how budgets are created, how resources are
allocated, who makes resource allocation decisions, who the organization’s other strong
performers are and who the stakeholders are.”

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 These leaders are authentic, energetic, and tough-minded risk-takers and visionaries. Their employees
admire and trust them. And these leaders know how to leverage the assets of their business relationships.

You can demonstrate quality leadership by following 10 principles.

Strong corporate leadership is not transactional or accidental. High-quality leaders follow these 10 precepts.

Meet the needs of your staff and customers.

Aspiring leaders successfully handle assignments from their superiors. They make sure the employees who
work under their direction have the resources, experiences and opportunities they need to handle their
tasks.

“Your ability to take advantage of leadership opportunities is a critical step on the

journey to becoming a leader.”

Additionally, these young leaders do their part to take care of the company’s customers. They heed the
interests of the firm’s core stakeholders and other essential constituencies. Up-and-coming managers
recognize that as they monitor their teams, executives keep a close eye on them as potential candidates for
future, higher leadership roles.

Take every opportunity to grow as a leader.

If you are a promising young leader, your company should provide leadership development programs,
offering opportunities to help you build your skills and advance in your career. Doing well in these
programs and seizing these opportunities expand your future prospects.

“When being groomed for a top role, you will be asked to take on interim positions that
will prepare you to lead, manage or motivate people.”

As you grow as a leader, answer these important questions: How do you want others to perceive you as a
leader? How should you change your behavior to show your readiness for leadership? What must you do
to succeed with your current leadership opportunities? What do your superiors expect of you? How do you
want the people on your team to describe you? What must you accomplish within a reasonable time – say,
the next three years?

Collaborate with the people on your team, and encourage their best efforts to inspire their loyalty and
appreciation. These consistent actions show that you respect them, and that you recognize their capabilities
and talents. How they feel about you will prove a dominant factor in your company retaining them.

The teams you organize help determine your legacy.

Who you are, how you carry yourself and what you accomplish shape your leadership legacy. The people you
lead define it. Recruiting and hiring the best and most appropriate people are essential to your legacy as a
leader. Hiring mistakes harm your career, your legacy and your company.

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 “When the opportunity to lead presents itself, it’s too late to start to prepare. Whether it’s
taking leadership classes, [or] taking on stretch assignments or projects…do what you
need to be ready when the door opens.”

The ability to recruit, interview and hire quality people is an art, not a science. Rely on the expertise of
people who can counsel you about whom to hire and whom to avoid. If you must fill a position that requires
a high level of technical expertise, talk to professionals in your organization who possess that knowledge.
Heed their advice about what to look for in job applicants.

Strong leaders take risks to achieve personal and professional growth.  

The best corporate leaders don’t fear risk. They know they’ll never succeed if they’re afraid to take a chance.
However, they gamble intelligently, with solid information, to cut risk as much as possible.

“Taking the risk, even when it doesn’t work out the way you wanted, always brings you
the gift of experience, and experience is extremely valuable.”

The best corporate leaders don’t fear risk because they believe in themselves. They are confident in their
abilities to analyze, think strategically, figure things out and fix problems as they arise. These leaders trust
their data and their ability to interpret data accurately, so they judiciously take educated, smart risks.

Success depends on multitalented groups, not soloists.

It used to be that the primary path for business success was for companies to work alone to develop and
introduce sector-dominating, proprietary products or services. That kind of innovative success enables
companies to set their own prices.

“It’s nearly impossible today for companies to go it completely alone.”

Bold innovation by cutting-edge firms that work alone remains one manifestation of success. However,
many of today’s most creative companies also want to form partnerships to achieve innovation. The reason
is simple: Financial issues and other pressures make it difficult for most companies to carry out timely
innovation entirely by themselves. Working closely with other firms allows companies to share innovation
costs and benefit from their partners’ special competencies. Partnerships in your sector may protect you and
your partner competitively. Many leaders distinguish themselves not only by their solo feats and individual
skills, but by their ability to organize and employ talented teams.

Your actions, not your title, make you a leader.

Quality leadership is not accidental. The best leaders are purposeful in all they say and do. Their actions are
intentional – often, even predictable.

“No matter what you do for a living, you have to be intentional about showing up as a
leader every day. Leadership is an active state of being.”

Such intentionality requires eight qualities:

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 1 . Practice authenticity – Your integrity motivates others.
2 . Be trustworthy – You can’t lead others if they don’t trust you.
3 . Maintain clarity – Specify your goals and the paths to reach them, to avoid confusion among your
team members.
4 . Develop leaders – Find and nurture up-and-coming leaders who will operate from your playbook.
5 . Celebrate diversity – Assemble a diverse, effective mix of talented people.
6 . Celebrate new ideas – Let your team know they can fail and learn from their mistakes without fear of
repercussions.
7 . Be inclusive – Ask everyone’s opinion on meaningful issues.
8 . Speak up and speak out – Share your knowledge and expertise.

Leaders are change agents.

Transformational times call for transformational leaders, farsighted change agents who can help reshape
their companies for the future. Such change efforts can affect an organization’s culture, platforms, supply
and distribution systems, recruitment and hiring processes, and its public profile.

“Inclusion is not about taking away from one group to give to another. Expanding the
team to include people with diverse perspectives, backgrounds, ways of thinking and
problem-solving skills is the key to creativity and market-leading innovation.”

The game-changing, work-from-home dynamic that emerged during the pandemic calls on transformational
leaders to establish efficient work arrangements that suit a majority of their employees. Before, flexibility
and instantaneous action didn’t matter that much. But they have assumed a new priority today. In these
rapidly evolving times, modern leaders must be genuine change agents who are “thoughtful, transparent,
tenacious and transcendent.”

Leaders must be decisive and empathetic to survive crises.

The pandemic created a crisis for businesses around the globe. It killed more than four million people
and had a negative impact on more than 225 million – including, of course, employees of corporations
worldwide.

“If you are sitting in a leadership seat today, you must transform your company’s
culture, technological platform, supply chain, distribution system, recruiting process,
corporate voice, and now, thanks to…the COVID-19 pandemic…you will have to
transform how and where your people work.”

Leaders must prepare to handle crises, from stock market drops to natural disasters, and even unthinkable
tragedies such as the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Capable leaders must be ready to take over,
maintain calm, and help and reassure their employees to provide stability in hard times.

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 Leaders know their blind spots.

Business leaders aren’t perfect. People have deficiencies, and in certain areas they need to know more and do
better. No matter who they are, or what prestigious role they occupy, human beings have deficits and blind
spots. People don’t know what they don’t know, but as a leader you must ask: What you could do better, and
in which areas do you need to learn more?

“It takes courage to try and fail, especially in highly technical environments where
professionals are driven by facts and data and the black and white of an issue, and fear
the retribution of being wrong.”

Your blind spots can interfere with and even cripple your ability to lead effectively. They could cost you
your job, unless you identify and learn to overcome them. Be alert to the four most common blind spots of
leadership:

1 . An inability to exploit talent – Many business leaders can spot and hire good talent, but just as many
don’t know how to recruit talented people or make the most of their abilities once they’re on board.
2 . An inability to make tough, timely personnel moves – Too many leaders keep ineffective staffers
on their teams too long.
3 . An inability to create viable succession plans – Many leaders fail to prepare successors on their
teams or in their firms, so no one is ready to replace them when they move to new opportunities.
4 . An inability to innovate – Too many leaders can’t imagine doing anything differently than what
they’ve always done, despite the opportunities the future holds.

Leaders look ahead strategically.

Leaders can see a better future. They have a sense of what should and could be, as well as what is.Old-
time business leaders focused on having oversight, and on monitoring their employees for obedience and
compliance. Enlightened, modern leaders focus on insight, not oversight.

“Leaders typically must get comfortable and confident making decisions with incomplete
and imprecise information and without having clear visibility on the myriad potential
outcomes.”

This means being able to envision how, with the proper training and development, they can groom people on
their teams to move into more responsible positions down the road. Insightful leaders create strategies and
plans for delivering results, now and in the future.

About the Author

Former chair of the National Women’s Business Council Carla A. Harris was named among Black
Enterprise’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business.

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 Did you like this summary?
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