Against the Grain!: Be the Leader Only You Can Be
Leadership isn't about having all the answers. It's not about being polished or looking like the smartest person in the room. It isn't about being a clone or treating the people above you like they're more important than the people around you.
Leadership is hard.
I wrote this book because I've seen too many leaders lead for the wrong reasons. I've seen too many people chase leadership for the wrong reasons-status, control, recognition.
And I've seen too many forget something fundamental: leadership exists to serve the organization, not to serve themselves.
It takes courage and authenticity to be who you are-not what you think others think a leader should be.
Leadership takes the courage to be yourself as a leader. To lead for the people you're responsible for. To keep showing up because the work matters.
Against the Grain isn't a book about becoming the perfect leader. It isn't filled with corporate buzzwords, leadership formulas, or five-step programs promising to transform you overnight.
It's about the messy reality of leading people.
What do you do when someone on your team is struggling? How do you lead people who don't think or work the way you do? When should you say yes-and when should you say no? What happens when the pressure is on, the decision is difficult, and there isn't a good answer?
And perhaps most importantly: how do you become a leader without losing yourself in the process?
After more than thirty years leading teams through engineering, business, organizational change, difficult decisions, layoffs, failures, successes, and more than a few mistakes, Al Rivers has developed a decidedly unconventional view of leadership.
With a combination of hard-earned lessons, candid observations, humor, mistakes, and stories from a career spent leading real people through real challenges, Rivers explores the parts of leadership that rarely make it into leadership courses.
You'll learn about the Good Dog and the Lemonade Makers. You'll learn why hard decisions aren't fun to make-but must be made-and the danger of not making them. You'll discover why how you carry yourself with your team is every bit as important as how you carry yourself when you're facing outward.
You'll hear about the pros of letting balls drop and why learning to play the game of chicken at work is important.
This book says, "Been there. Experienced it."
You'll laugh. You'll wince.
These stories are real. They are his-and they come from others he has learned from along the way.
Some of this will challenge conventional wisdom. Some of it may make you uncomfortable. And some of it may sound familiar.
That's the point.
Against the Grain is for anyone who leads people-whether you've been doing it for thirty years, just got your first leadership role, or are still trying to figure out what kind of leader you want to be.
You don't need to become someone else to be a good leader.
You need the courage to be yourself-and to become the leader only you can be.
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