“True North” by Bill George and Peter Sims is a book about leading through one’s values. Across ten insightful chapters, the authors introduce and explain the concept of “True North”, a representation of an individual’s values or principles portrayed as an internal compass guiding them through their leadership journey. The authors argue that great leaders are those who are true to themselves and their values, rather than conforming to societal pressures or organisational expectations. Through interviewing over 125 business leaders, the pair explore various topics such as developing self-awareness, building meaningful relationships and leading with integrity. They include anecdotes from a handful of the interviewed leaders, and even details some leaders’ stories, providing context for their success, such as the stories of Wendy Kopp and Anne Mulcahy. A special example of this is Howard Shultz: at the time he would have been interviewed by the authors, he was the CEO of the largest restaurant chain in the world by number of locations. His story is portrayed brilliantly and harbours its own unique lesson in that all aspects of your journey – no matter how distasteful you may find them – are critical in shaping your character, which in turn shapes your form of authentic leadership.

Unfortunately, it is an untenable expectation that George and Sims could recount all their interviewees’ stories this way. However, the fact that such a small proportion of stories were portrayed to that degree feels like cherry-picking by the authors, as they condense the remaining wisdom from their interviewees into “other leaders also…” type-sentences that are simply inadequate in my opinion. Furthermore, it’s difficult to dispel the notion that the authors may have omitted necessary context from the leaders’ divulged wisdom and instead tailored the remaining information to suit their proclaimed ideal definition of an authentic leader, ascribing the leaders’ success to values that all too conveniently fit the novel’s overarching narrative. It’s not my intent to level any accusatory denigration; after all, tailoring a narrative is the purpose of such a book; but for readers who are eager to understand the context the leaders’ success, it feels somewhat disingenuous. So, while each leader’s individual story would be an interesting read to draw lessons from, I’m of the opinion that an inadvertent consequence of interviewing so many leaders with brilliant stories to tell is that majority of those stories are not authentically expressed within the book.

The pair make some invaluable points as regards discovering, practicing, and maintaining one’s core values and principles, and developing into an authentic leader; and they support these points well with select narrations of prominent leaders’ stories. But this comes at the expense of effectively utilizing their expansive library of collected wisdom to diversify the context to which their points can be applied.

I would recommend any aspiring leader give the book a thorough read-through with a pen and paper at the ready, as there are some wonderful lessons to be learned here. But I hesitate to recommend it in any other capacity.

Trevor Hannington

Rating: 2 So so

Bill George does a great job in this book, of explaining why it is important to link your own personal experiences to your leadership style. The book focuses on rationalising and examining what sets aside outstanding leaders from any other kind of leader. The author ,through interviews with a variety of leaders from the CEO of The Gap to Oprah Winfrey manages to draw a common thread that makes these leaders exceptional. My favourite thing about this book is that it does not just talk about how effective leaders are self-aware but goes on to explain how to become more self-aware. The book also focuses on the importance of a team oriented approach to goal setting amongst leaders. It became evident to me just how important skills such as empathy and approachability can go a long way to driving performance both for yourself but for a team as well. Despite its brilliant writing, I believe that Bill could have used a more diverse range of leaders to better tackle various kinds of experiences faced by a more varied group of people. I would have loved to hear about experiences from a CEO in China or South Africa for instance. Still a great book nevertheless.

Wise Musinguzi

Rating: 5 Recommend