Good Authority book cover

Published 2016

Good Authority

How to Become the Leader Your Team Is Waiting For

Good Authority argued that professional growth and personal growth were never two separate projects — that the person who shows up at work and the person who shows up everywhere else are the same person, and pretending otherwise is why so much management advice quietly fails.

That was a minority position in 2016. Ten years later, with the machines absorbing the output and judgment left as the job, it reads less like a philosophy and more like a warning that arrived early.

The book introduces The Accountability Dial, a five-stage framework for holding people accountable with compassion. Not the watered-down kind. The kind that actually develops people.

“Required reading for anyone who wants to do more than merely manage people. Good Authority is a modern classic.”
— Seth Godin

What You’ll Learn

The Accountability Dial

Five stages from Mention to Limit. A system for developing people, not punishing them.

Leadership as Personal Growth

Why the gap between who you are and who you lead is the most expensive gap in business.

The Art of Honest Conversations

How to say the hard thing in a way that builds trust instead of destroying it.

From Manager to Developer of People

The shift from controlling outcomes to growing capabilities.

Featured In

Harvard Business Review

“Do You Understand What Accountability Really Means?”

Read on HBR