This review is an excerpt of Michael Pellechia's monthly BookPage business and finance book round-up.
How to Think Like a CEO
By D.A. Benton
Warner, $23.95
ISBN 044651800X
The 22 traits you need to lead
Review by Michael Pellecchia
Like her previous book, Lions Don't Need to Roar, Debra Benton's latest is sophisticated and contains a lot of specific advice from well-researched interviews with "near-perfect" CEOs. She boils it all down into 22 vital traits that, if you have them, make you CEO material no matter what level you are at today. You need to be: secure in self, in control of attitudes, tenacious, continuously improving, honest and ethical, original, publicly modest, aware of style, gutsy, a little wild, humorous, a tad theatrical, detail oriented, straightforward, nice, inquisitive, competitive, flexible, good storyteller, good at your job, and willing to lead, fight for your people, and admit mistakes.
It's not enough just to have these traits, you have to know it. You have to ascend to new levels with each trait, every day. The mountain-climbing metaphor so common in management books today is actually appropriate in this case.
Michael Pellecchia writes about business and finance books for this publication. He can be reached at michael_pellecchia@bookpage.com.
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