Top Highlights

• Stakeholders judge their leaders' effectiveness on both explicit and implicit expectations, even if these expectations are unrealistic or not understood.
• Leaders succeed or fail depending on whether or not they clarify role expectations and keep their promises.
• All leaders can accelerate their progress toward effectiveness by asking, learning, and then managing expectations, thus allowing the clarified expectations to become the bar by which they are measured.
• great leaders create great cultures regardless of the dominant culture in the organization.
• four universal promises of leadership: 1) Set the right direction and create meaningful work; 2) Engage all stakeholders and hold them accountable for performance; 3) Ensure that processes and systems facilitate focus and execution; and 4) Lead effectively—maintain relationships of trust to achieve and sustain desired results