The CEO Test
Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders
Lavin Exclusive Speaker
Despite all the effort over the past several decades to understand what it takes to be an effective leader, the challenges of leadership remain enormously difficult and elusive—particularly as the speed of disruption quickens. But ADAM BRYANT, a veteran New York Times editor and columnist who is now a managing director at the executive mentoring firm Merryck & Co., is uniquely qualified to help us navigate leadership’s toughest challenges. Having interviewed more than 600 CEOs, Bryant offers razor-sharp distillations on leadership from the world’s best innovators.
Adam Bryant is the creator of the widely read “Corner Office” series in The New York Times, where he interviewed hundreds of C-Suite executives about everything from how they build their teams, to how they create a sense of mission and stay motivated. In his latest book, The CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders, (Harvard Business Review, March 2021) Bryant teams up with Kevin Sharer—the former CEO of biotech giant Amgen, and a sought-after mentor to CEOs worldwide—to write an intensely practical guide to leadership. Combining the breadth and depth of their experience, Bryant and Sharer focus on the seven key challenges that determine why leaders succeed or fail: from handling a crisis, to mastering conflicting demands, to creating a culture that is genuine and meaningful. The CEO Test simplifies the complex and sprawling field of leadership to create a shared language of what truly matters for leaders at all levels, and provide a clear roadmap for succeeding in these critical challenges.
As a speaker, Bryant shares the key themes and patterns that emerge from his books and his interviews in The Times and on LinkedIn, where more than 150,000 subscribers follow his series, and shares those themes through memorable stories, compelling quotes, and instantly useful tools that all managers can put to work with their own teams. Bryant, a veteran presenter, earns consistently glowing reviews from audiences, who often say they found his talks profoundly valuable and illuminating.
Bryant’s first book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, was an instant New York Times bestseller, drawing on insights from CEOS to identify the qualities that help explain why certain executives were promoted over others. In his second book Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, Bryant collected the wisdom of hundreds of business leaders to identify the secrets to a high-performing corporate culture.
In addition to his consulting with Merryck & Co., Bryant is the Senior Adviser to the Reuben Mark Initiative for Organizational Character and Leadership at Columbia University. He also writes a monthly column on leadership for Strategy+Business Magazine.