Nothing to Fear: Lessons in Leadership Forward: Roosevelt on Leadership

Author: Alan Axelrod
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Publication Date: 2003-05-12
Features: In business and in life, these principles, among others, directly affect who we are and the way in which we conduct ourselves publicly and privately. Simply, they are both guidelines for and predictors of success, as they were for the man who was arguably the greatest American leader of the twentieth century—Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In Nothing to Fear, the bestselling author of Elizabeth I, CEO, and Patton on Leadership, Alan Axelrod, examines the unparalleled leadership qualities of FDR, a man who would come to exemplify the kind of decency, bravery, and relentless courage it took to lift America out of the Great Depression and steer it through the darkest days of World War II, even as he battled a debilitating illness on the public stage. The leadership of FDR transformed the most perilous years of the twentieth century into what many Americans regarded as their finest hour. Axelrod distills Franklin Delano Roosevelt's life and career into fourteen themes containing a wealth of practical lessons for successful leadership in the boardroom and beyond: Purpose and Principle, Hard Fact and Responsibility; Credibility; Making Contact; Refusing Defeat; Plain Speech and Good Talk; Preparation and Risk; Change; Motivation; Making Everyone Count; Self-Interest and Self-Sacrifice; Confidence and Courage; Knowledge and Self-Knowledge; and Progress and Prediction. In the kind of clear, elegant language for which he has come to be known, Axelrod provides a vehicle for learning, understanding, and putting into practice what was that made FDR one of history's greatest leaders—and managers. Nothing to Fear is packed with eminently quotable and supremely practical maxims.