Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time

Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Stanford business school professor and author of Power, examines why the leadership industry has failed despite billions of dollars invested in books, training, and talks. Despite this enormous enterprise, organizations worldwide experience high employee disengagement, frequent leader turnover, career derailment, and ineffective leadership development. Pfeffer challenges widely promoted leadership prescriptions—such as being honest, authentic, modest, truthful, and trustworthy—by showing how these common recommendations often fail in practice. Using social science research and evidence, he replaces popular leadership myths with a more scientific understanding of what actually works. The book offers practical strategies for managing careers and workplaces based on facts rather than conventional wisdom. It addresses the political dynamics of organizational life and provides readers with clear-eyed guidance for navigating workplace reality and improving management practices.