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Sydney Finkelstein

Tuck School of Business Professor; Author,Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent

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Biography

Professor Finkelstein has published over 25 books and 90 articles, with several bestsellers, including Why Smart Executives Fail. The Wall Street Journal called it “a marvel – a jargon-free business book based on serious research that offers genuine insights with clarity and sometimes even wit.” SUPERBOSSES: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent was published in 2016 and also went on to become a bestseller and one of Amazon’s top books of the year. The result of a ten-year research project, Superbosses profiles leaders as diverse as Julian Robertson, Alice Waters, and Lorne Michaels who all have one thing in common – they helped spawn some of the best talent in their industries. The book describes what they did and how they did it, offering teachable lessons for leaders of any organization. His most recent book is The Superbosses Playbook, offering a toolkit of practical exercises and activities to enable any manager to become a superboss leader. Professor Finkelstein is a consultant and speaker to senior executives around the globe, as well as an executive coach, focusing on leadership, talent development, corporate governance, learning from mistakes, and strategies for growth. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Management and listed on the “Thinkers 50”, the world's most prestigious ranking of leadership gurus. He has been featured in the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Business Week, the London Times, Toronto Globe and Mail, Inc, Fast Company, and CNBC, is a columnist for the BBC, and the host of his new podcast, "The Sydcast."

Speech Topics

  • SUPERBOSSES: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent

    Larry Ellison. Lorne Michaels. Ralph Lauren. Robert Noyce. George Lucas. Miles Davis. And a dozen others. Business leaders and creative icons with tremendous track records who all have something else in common: they helped develop the best talent in their industries, who in turn helped them become the legendary successes they are today. Based on ten years of research and hundreds of interviews, Superbosses describes what these exceptional leaders did, and how they did it. In his keynote, Sydney will describe the “superboss playbook”, the key management practices that separate the best bosses from the merely good ones, and the pathway to becoming a better leader yourself. LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls it “a leadership guide for the Networked Age,” while Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE, says “Superbosses gives leaders a playbook to bring out the best in their people."

  • Managing Talent

  • Why Companies Should Hire Teams, Not Individuals

  • HR Like You Never Saw It Before

  • The Best Leaders are Teachers

  • Why Smart Executives Fail - And What to Do About It

    One of the most remarkable findings from Why Smart Executives Fail is that the underlying reasons for failure in many business breakdowns. In this speech, Sydney identifies four destructive syndromes, and outlines a series of steps companies can take to avoid them.

  • The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful People

    Is it possible to pinpoint just what makes smart, previously successful people, go wrong? The answer is yes! Again and again, whether CEOs, senior executives, or mid-level managers, the same bad habits keep appearing in failing companies. In this speech, Sydney demonstrates how such apparently beneficial habits are actually destructive when left unchecked, and offers an alternative view of leadership that has applicability up and down the management hierarchy.

Videos

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