Most Leadership Skills are Learned

I just started more regularly listening to the K@W Podcasts, nicely done, easily accessed today, for example they are readily available by voice command from Alexa and Google systems.   .....

Most leadership Skills are Learned

Former Aetna CEO Ron Williams draws on years of management experience to offer leadership advice in his new book.

As a longtime business executive, Ron Williams is often asked for advice on management issues. He likes to keep his answers clear and simple. One of his favorite mantras is, “Don’t get stuck in paralysis by analysis.” He also tells young people not to map every step of their careers because, like him, they never know where they may end up. Williams grew up in Chicago’s South Side, where he used to wash cars, and became one of the few African-Americans to lead a Fortune 500 company, serving as chairman and chief executive officer of Aetna. He’s on the board at American Express, Boeing and Johnson & Johnson, and also runs his consultancy, RW2 Enterprises. Williams shares his life lessons and experiences in a new book, Learning to Lead: The Journey to Leading Yourself, Leading Others, and Leading an Organization. He joined the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on Sirius XM to talk about why the best leaders keep an open mind and never stop learning from the people around them. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page).

An edited transcript of the conversation follows:

Knowledge@Wharton: I read that part of the reason why you wrote this book was because you have often been asked to talk about your upbringing and career, going from Chicago to CEO. ... "