Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up

by Jerry Colonna

The worst are the high achievers, the folks who made it through school by quickly figuring out what it took to get an A and then delivering whatever the teacher wanted. Figure out the rules, they’d learned, and succeed. And when they’re given the task of leading and they can’t figure out the rules, the vomit-inducing panic takes over.

The toughest aspect of being a leader—hell, of being an adult—is meeting the world as it is and not as we wish it to be.

But in all cases, allowing yourself to be eaten by the demon that remains—acknowledging how you have contributed to the problem without descending into pointless self-flagellation—turns up the heat beneath the crucible. Without heat, there is no alchemy.