Looks Good on Paper?: Using In-Depth Personality Assessment to Predict Leadership Performance (Columbia Business School Publishing) - Hardcover

Pratch, Leslie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231168365 ISBN 13: 9780231168366

Publisher: Columbia Business School Publishing, 2014

Synopsis

Leslie S. Pratch is a practicing psychologist who focuses on assessing and coaching executives who occupy or are candidates for top positions in business organizations. In this book, she shares insights from more than twenty years of executive evaluations and offers an empirical method of identifying executives who will be effective within organizations―and to flag those who will ultimately fail―by evaluating hidden aspects of personality and character.

Pratch compares candidates with impressive careers and tries to determine which are likely to act with consistently high integrity and exhibit sound, timely judgment when faced with unanticipated business problems. Central to effective leadership is a psychological quality called "active coping," which Pratch defines and explores by referencing case studies, historical figures, and her own scholarly work. This book speaks not only to those in hiring positions and their advisors but also more widely to leaders and anyone who wishes to learn more about their own character and the abilities of those around them. Pratch offers knowledge, asks questions, and challenges common perceptions, providing a practical tool for those in business and for the general reader.

About this title

About the Author

Leslie S. Pratch has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Northwestern University and an MBA in strategy and finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and has published a number of scholarly articles.

Review

In Looks Good on Paper?, Pratch applies years of field study to present an easily understandable model to predict long-term senior-management success. This book will not only help you effectively understand the quality of management teams but also help you improve your ability to choose leaders for your own company and possibly improve your leadership skills in the process. (John W. Rogers, Jr., chairman, CEO, and chief investment officer, Ariel Investments)

Pratch's insightful analysis and focus on sizing up the candidate's total personality will help anyone making a hiring decision identify people with integrity and the requisite coping skills to deal with the challenges of leadership. (E. David Coolidge III, vice chairman and former CEO, William Blair & Company)

Over many years advising on the selection of CEOs and other executives, Pratch has identified the underlying psychological characteristics of effective business leaders under different circumstances and developed a sophisticated methodology for determining whether a given individual would be likely or unlikely to be effective in particular circumstances. Yet her book is not just for boards of directors and wannabe CEOs. Readers are likely to come away with a better understanding of themselves. (Marvin Zonis, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago)

Looks Good on Paper? addresses that most vexing of hiring questions: can you get underneath someone's resume and figure out who will be an effective leader? Leslie Pratch's answer is yes, and this exploration of her methods is fascinating reading for businesspeople and laypeople alike. (Bethany McLean, coauthor, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron)

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia Business School Publishing
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0231168365
• ISBN 13: 9780231168366
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 248