The Leadership Gap

What Gets Between You and Your Greatness

By: Lolly Daskal

Narrated by: Lolly Daskal, Marshall Goldsmith

Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

Inc. magazine's most popular writer, executive coach Lolly Daskal, explains how anyone can recognize and leverage the leadership gaps that stand in the way of greatness.

When successful people begin to feel uncertain or challenged at work, the one thing they want to know most is why things are going wrong after they have gone right for so long.

In The Leadership Gap, Lolly Daskal reveals the consequences highly driven, overachieving leaders face when they continue to rely on a skill set that has always worked for them, even when it is no longer effective. Over decades of advising and inspiring the most prominent chief executives in the world, Daskal has discerned that leaders fall into one of seven categories - The Rebel, The Explorer, The Truth Teller, The Hero, The Inventor, The Navigator, and The Knight - and have risen to their positions relying on a specific set of values and traits. However, all leaders reach a point when their effectiveness is compromised by the gap hidden in those traits - intuition becomes manipulation, for instance, or integrity becomes corruption.

Based on a mix of modern philosophy, science, and her own vast well of business experience, Daskal offers a breakthrough perspective on leadership - a new system for rethinking everything you know to reveal the path to becoming the kind of leader you truly want to be.

In The Leadership Gap, Lolly Daskal not only confirms her stature as an exceptional business mind but also reveals the insights and observations of one of our most important leadership experts - a businesswoman known for providing trusted advice, actionable solutions, and provocative ideas to the world's top executives.

©2017 Lolly Daskal (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Our weaknesses live in the shadows of our strengths, and this book does more than help us spot them - it shows us how to overcome them. Lolly Daskal takes us into the trenches of her executive coaching practice, carefully unpacking the self-awareness gaps that hold leaders back and lighting the path to expanding our comfort zones." (Adam Grant, author of Originals and Give and Take)

"I’ve seen talented leaders unwittingly make the biggest mistakes of their careers simply because they don’t understand the complexities and pitfalls of their own strengths. The Leadership Gap offers terrific insight and valuable wisdom for high achievers who want to understand the tendencies that stand between them and meaningful success." (Sydney Finkelstein, author of Superbosses and Why Smart Executives Fail)

"Great leaders understand who they are as leaders and what motivates them to do the things they do. If you want to become one of them, read Lolly Daskal’s deeply insightful book. It has invaluable advice for leaders who want to propel themselves to the next level. It’s essential reading for those who want to be great." (Heidi Grant Halvorson, author of No One Understands You and What to Do About It) 

Male pronouns

It would have been easy to alternate pronouns instead of using only he and him...not good enough to offer a statement in the beginning that we should assume he/him means everyone...not good enough.

Excellent discussion on great leadership

Lolly's work is fascinating look at what makes great leaders and their faults - all written and read in a rational and easy to access method that anyone can identify with. This isn't just a great resource for identifying your own leadership gap and developing your self, but great concepts for identifying and drawing out leaders in your teams. I listened to this book then immediately started over again. Will be recommending this book to others.

Well done

Any additional comments?

The author makes the obvious understandable by drawing on real life examples about how to handle humans.
It is clear that the same skills it takes to build are not those it takes to maintain an organization. That was the real revelation to me.

Blah, blah, blah

Nothing new here, much is common sense, ideas repeated. I was just wishing the book to end, waste of time.

It was ok

I love Lolly's posts but this seemed redundant. I still enjoyed it. Thanks Lolly.
Charlie

What is your gap?

I read many books about leadership but this one was more thorough and practical.

Painful

Caveat emptor with my review is that I’m skeptical of what I’ll call Pop Business books and rarely read them. Most are just full of ex post facto vacuous non-analysis whose wisdom could be digested in 5 minutes or a couple of pages. But I’ve every once in a while encountered a Pop Business book that offered original thoughts and useful insights. For some reason, I thought this book would be one of those. It wasn’t remotely close.

I loved it

It was great to learn about the different leadership types and learning what issues they face

Great Book

A must read for all leaders. Leaders have a responsibility to be their best for their people. This book will help you on that journey.

Great Insights

Lolly has a great command of coaching and the experience to back it up. I enjoyed her focus on both the right way to use certain strengths and her ability to get to the heart of the weakness of each as well. I have listened twice, outlined the paper copy and will use this for years to come.

Excellent

An extremely interesting book dissecting the qualities that make a good leader and offering advice on how you can achieve this. Great use of examples.

Great leadership book

This is one of the best leadership books I have listened to. The author / narrator describes a variety of types of leader in a way that makes it easy to identify yourself.

She uses real life examples of clients she has worked with to show the strengths of each leadership type and also to highlight their gaps.

Very useful book in that it helps to identify specific gaps that you may have as a leader and how to address these. Very different from many other leadership / management books as they tend to only give generic advice on how to be a good leader rather than looking at the mix of positive and negatives traits that most leadership types are made up of.

Best leadership book I've read

Loved it, insightful and thought provoking. Made me cringe, It is hard to look inside sometime...

great book

I feel that this book is going to be a classic. having now listened to the book 3 times though to completion, I have picked up something new each time. this book will help you to understand the different personality types and character traits that are required to become a great leader. The biggest this I took from this book is that I need to delegate more.