THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOSS

Pineda offers a new vision for the priorities of leaders in the business world.

In his nonfiction debut, the author asserts that the traditional top-down, carrot-and-stick leadership model is clearly broken. “To be sure, pyramids and palaces and profits have come from different versions of the ‘I’m the boss’ model, but these have come at an enormous price,” he writes. “Ultimately, the transactional leadership model is doomed to failure.” To supplant this rigid hierarchical model, Pineda proposes a far more empathetic structure based on four main principles: vulnerability, communication, trust, and mission. Per the author, leaders serving and uplifting their team members are the key to a better, more enlightened corporate culture. The author writes with bright clarity and a good deal of energy, although much of his text reads like it was penned half a century ago—or maybe several centuries ago. When Pineda writes that the mission of business should be to lead with empathy and humble service that ultimately improves the world, many readers will likely wonder if he’s been living on a different planet for the last 10 years, which have seen the corporate landscape dominated by rapacious, psychopathic oligarchs. Pineda paints an undeniably attractive portrait of his version of leadership, which is consistently people-centered—not only because it’s ‘the right thing to do,’ but also because, in his view, it increases the chances of success. “When you and your people are narrowly focused on what’s ahead, you will wobble and fall more often than not,” he writes. “But when you know your people and help them see around the corner—beyond the transactional—then it’s game on, and the big race can be won.” Readers will naturally like that vision, no matter how realistic they find it.

A starry-eyed but genuinely passionate philosophy of people-oriented business practice.