Leadership Lessons from Google, Procter & Gamble, and a Rock-n-Roll Legend

Great leaders learn from their failures, no matter where they happen. Below you’ll learn what some great leaders learned from losing a wrestling match, getting booed off stage, a discrimination lawsuit, an unflattering article in Business Week, a one-night stand, and a bar fight.

Today’s post is by Paul Smith, thoughtLEADERS principal and bestselling author of Lead With a Story and  Sell With a Story.

Here’s an easy way to learn some new leadership skills – in easy-to-digest podcasts you can listen to at your convenience.

These podcasts are based on interviews with 100 executives, leaders, authors, and experts at dozens of companies around the world. Each episode brings you an important leadership lesson through a single compelling story.

These next six podcast episodes include my favorite guests from the past six months, including Google President, Kirk Perry, and bestselling authors Todd Henry, Mike Figliuolo, and Jathan Janove.

Google President Kirk Perry’s 3 Lessons from Losing a Fight

Kirk shares a very personal story about a loss on a high school wrestling mat that has both haunted and blessed him ever since.

Bestselling author Todd Henry on Lessons from One of the Worst Failures in Music History

Getting a chance to be an opening act for one of the hottest bands of the time seemed like a blessing at the time… until he got booed off stage.

8 Brilliant Counter-intuitive Steps to Getting to Yes

Guest Mike Figliuolo, author and expert on making effective recommendations, shares his brilliant but not-so-obvious way to get to yes.

The WORST Advice About How to Be Seen as a Leader

Awful advice about how to conduct yourself in a meeting, and a better alternative you and your peers will be much happier with.

HR Manager Nightmares: Discrimination Lawsuits, One-night Stands, and Bar Fights

My guest is organizational consultant and author Jathan Janove who shares three fascinating stories from his new book, Hard-Won Wisdom: True Stories from the Management Trenches.

Business Week on Bounty: A Case Study in Turning Bad Headlines into an Agent of Change

A great example of what to do when you and your company end up making the headlines for all the wrong reasons. A case study on Bounty Paper Towels.

So there you go… six great leadership stories in a few minutes apiece. If you want more stories like these, you can subscribe on iTunes, or click here to sign up for a weekly newsletter delivery to your inbox. If you’re interested in becoming a better storyteller yourself, check out our Influencing through Storytelling course and our Storytelling for Salespeople course where we can come into your organization and help you build this powerful, critical skill.

Paul Smith is a former director and 20-year veteran of the Procter & Gamble Company, and one of the world’s leading experts on business storytelling. He’s the bestselling author of three books on harnessing the power of storytelling for some of the most important work we do as humans: Lead with a Story, Parenting with a Story, and Sell with a Story. Paul is also the primary architect of a thoughtLEADERS course on Influencing through Storytelling and Storytelling for Salespeople.

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