Leadership Lessons with the Beatles: Actionable Tips and Tools for Becoming Better at Leading

Leadership has gone through many changes in the last couple of decades. We have realized that outstanding leadership is not about being authoritarian and exercising control. It is not only about the intelligence quotient (IQ) but also about emotional intelligence. To be an exceptional leader, you need several essential skills, all of which you can learn. The skills are nuanced with emotional intelligence, which you can gain. This book is unique: the author weaves leadership ideas with the song titles of The Beatles, making this book fun, playful, thoughtful, and valuable. Each chapter is organized with the key message on a leadership attribute prompted by a Beatles’ song title, tips on becoming better on the topic, a practice suggestion, questions to ask yourself to think about the message, and resources for more reading. The author begins each chapter with how and why she chose the song and includes fun facts. It’s an engaging book that blends the words of perhaps the greatest rock band ever--The Beatles--with the basic principles for becoming a better leader.

Dr. Shantha Mohan is a mentor and Executive in Resident at Carnegie Mellon University Integrated innovation Institute’s iLab. She co-founded Retail Solutions Inc. (RSi), a leader in retail data analytics and ran its global product development organization. Her prior experiences include technical and educational consulting, and running worldwide product development for Consilium a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) company (acquired by Applied Materials). She graduated a PhD in Operations Management from the Tepper School of Management, Carnegie Mellon University, and her undergraduate degree is in Electronics & Communication is from the College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG), India. She is passionate about equality, diversity, and sustainability. She is the author of Roots and Wings: Inspiring Stories of Indian Women in Engineering and a Distinguished Alumnus of CEG. She serves on the board of CEG alumni, North America (CEGAANA) and is instrumental in the creation of Ask a CEGian student mentorship program and the CEG Betterment program. She is a co-author for the forthcoming book by Routledge/Productivity Press, Demystifying AI for the Enterprise: Building Tomorrow’s Self-Driving Organization.