The Journey of Leadership

How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out

By: Dana Maor, Hans-Werner Kaas, Kurt Strovink, Ramesh Srinivasan

Narrated by: Roger Wayne

When the pressure is on, many of the world’s top CEOs turn to McKinsey & Company to reinvent themselves and their organizations. The Journey of Leadership brings the experience of one of the world’s most influential consulting firms right to your fingertips.

This book is the first-ever explanation of McKinsey’s step-by-step approach to transforming leaders both professionally and personally, including revealing lessons from its legendary CEO leadership program, The Bower Forum, which has counseled more than five hundred global CEOs over the past decade. It is a journey that helps leaders hone the psychological, emotional, and, ultimately, human attributes that result in success in today’s most demanding top job.

Packed with insightful and never-before-heard reflections from leaders, including Ed Bastian (CEO of Delta Air Lines), Makoto Uchida (CEO of Nissan Motor Corporation), Mark Fields (former CEO of Ford Motor Company), Reeta Roy (CEO of Mastercard Foundation), and Stéphane Bancel (CEO of Moderna), you will learn how to:

• Assess your personal leadership approach and style objectively.
• Discover your true mandate as a leader.
• Develop creative, actionable ways to reinvigorate both yourself and your organization.
• Create a personal commitment plan to inspire your team and cement your legacy.

The Journey of Leadership is an invaluable resource for anyone running or hoping to run an organization in today’s ever-more-complex world.

*This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF that contains charts from the book.

Critic reviews

“The Journey of Leadership pulls back the curtain and digs deeper, beyond business strategy, to identify what it really takes to succeed as a CEO in today’s world. Through teachings from some of the world’s most respected leaders, the authors have extracted key insights that can serve as guides for people-centered leadership.”
—Natarajan Chandrasekaran, executive chairman of Tata Sons


“In an era when business is rapidly evolving, The Journey of Leadership serves as a beacon for those seeking to lead with both heart and mind. Through compelling stories and insightful strategies, this book illuminates the path to bold and courageous leadership, while embracing failure as a catalyst for growth. It offers invaluable guidance for leaders navigating today’s complex business landscapes, encouraging empathy and a willingness to learn. A must read for anyone aspiring to lead with authenticity and make a lasting impact.”
—Barbara Martin Coppola, CEO of Decathlon Group


“The Journey of Leadership captures the essence of how to be and how to do. Leading from the inside out is the key enabler for our ‘Working Together’ Leadership and Management System, with its connected and collaborative culture of love by design, which creates value for all of the stakeholders and the greater good. Thank you for these insights!”
—Alan Mulally, former CEO of the Ford Motor Company and Boeing Commercial Airplanes


“The journey of leadership as a CEO unfolds in many different ways. At times it’s an uncharted path, at times it feels like a high-speed autobahn, but rarely does it ever become a leisurely cruise. No matter where the journey leads, this book serves as a hands-on ‘navigation system’ from experienced leaders who successfully traveled it.”
—Marc Bitzer, chairman and CEO of Whirlpool and chairman of United Way Worldwide


“Excellent leadership requires a clear attitude, self-awareness, and a desire to never stop learning in order to shape both the present and the future with all their complexities. Only then can leadership effectively serve the company, its customers and society. The Journey of Leadership is a pragmatic guide to managing such paradoxes, beginning with the timeless insight that to lead others well, you must first lead yourself. Readers interested in becoming a more human leader will take inspiration from CEOs in the book who have reinvented themselves through self-reflection.”
—Oliver Zipse, chairman of the board of management, BMW AG

average everything

If you have read any leadership books for the last 5-10 years, this book gives you the same as all other books. it is all about the biggest accomplishments to justify their theory. It is very much confirmaiton bias. If you are looking for genuine, normal things, you can use to improve your company and performance; this isn't really a book for you. You have already heard most of it.

Recycled leadership common sense

This book is nothing more than a marketing campaign for the McKinsey’s Bower Forum. I can’t count how many times the authors repeated the Bower Forum and success stories of CEOs who…guess what…attended the Bower Forum. Boring, old stuff we learned decades ago. If you like to hear success stories of others you may like the book. For me it was a waste of time and I quit it halfway.

Don't Buy

This book is not with the money or the time. Full
of mediocre vignettes some of which are recycled theoughnthe book. There is no solid underlying theory or framework, and it is a bit pretentious, and boring. I felt like McKinsey sold this book on their brand but delivered little more than organized client notes. I bought this book because of the brand name, but there are much better business books and leadership books.