But Amaechi is a giant in another, more significant sense. After retiring from professional basketball, he became a psychologist. He wanted to explore and share two life-changing abilities that he’d discovered on his journey to success – both on and off the basketball court: the first was that he had the power to tap into his own potential. In fact, everyone does. No matter who you are, what you do, or where you sit in your workplace’s organizational chart, you’re like Amaechi: a giant. Whether you realize it or not. The book is extremely well written. Mr. Amaechi shares lots of examples from his work, his workshops and his own life. He bares his soul and ask that the reader do the same. John Amaechi well understands the responsibilities and potential that come with being a giant. The Promises of Giants is the product of a lifetime spent observing and studying effective leadership - from accompanying his mother's visits to her dying patients to competing at the highest levels of professional sport, through two decades of management consulting with multinational corporations. These experiences have shown that everyone has the ability to act decisively to influence the world in a positive way. Everyone is a giant to someone. The 2021 Porchlight Leadership & Strategy book of the year is The Promises of Giantsby John Amaechi. The Promises of Giants is a challenge to anyone who aspires to make a difference in their environment. Over fourteen promises, it seamlessly intertwines personal anecdotes and workplace and social observation with the latest research, to provide practical, proven tips and strategies to empower you to maximize your own potential and inspire others. It is not a self-help book. It is a how-to guide for winning, rooted in the belief that the most unlikely of people, in the most improbable of circumstances, can become extraordinary.

None of the promises are just about you—even that first group. Those promises are directed to you, yes. But leadership is never about the needs or desires of the leader or the external pressures that influence that leader. Leadership is not about the leader at all, in fact. It’s about the people that leaders elevate and inspire and those that they leave bloodied on the dance floor. You can’t be a “conditional” giant. It would be brilliant if you could, because being a giant has obvious advantages. The appearance of having power alone feels pretty great for most people. The fact that this appearance is often accompanied by higher salaries, prestigious titles, and increased resources? All the better.Join John Amaechi OBE as he shares insights from his new leadership book ‘The Promises of Giants’ on what it takes to develop as a leader in an increasingly complex and challenging world. John takes us through his own experiences as a ‘giant’ and brings this to play in a thought provoking and stimulating call for leaders to step up to the responsibility of their roles.

Technical labor is usually predictable and well defined and the focus of our daily efforts. It encompasses the nuts and bolts of what it takes to “get the job done.” Basic skills, knowledge, and cognitive capabilities can be acquired through technical labor alone, as well as a fundamental awareness around processes and procedures, business strategy, and human resource management.The Promises of Giants is, as its title suggests, a collection of promises. Some are made to the people you work with most intimately, and others are made to your workplace as a whole. But we start with the promises that you make to yourself alone. But what we are seeing in many organizations is a change in the shape of its workforce. What once was a triangle (▲) is now something of a flat-bottomed rhombus (⬟). The modern world has nibbled away at the base; information processing and basic tasks no longer require contributions from members of the bottom layer. Robotics, artificial intelligence, automation, offshoring, descriptive and predictive analytics—they’ve all taken a bite and, as a result, fewer actual humans are needed in that bottom layer. Amaechi is a towering force for good with a rare ability to defuse the most pungent provocations. -- James O'Brien, broadcaster & writer THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL BOOKS EVER WRITTEN ABOUT LEADERSHIP. Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of THINK AGAIN and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

This is how it works on high-performing teams, where the job description is only the start of what one is permitted to be. […] The following excerpt comes from Chapter 8, the eighth promise, "I Promise to See You as an Individual and Not as a Job Description." The book is a mixture of his own personal life story and lessons for how to live a better life. He credits much of his success to his mom. His mom was a family practice doctor. Early in life, she taught him, “It’s blind spots and self-sabotage that derail most people in pursuit of the extraordinary. Not the competition.” Again, it is fascinating to watch this ironic evolution in the modern working world—the development of artificial intelligence and the creation of generic, almost cookie-cutter-like workforces. We are mining data at an unprecedented rate and creating ever smarter algorithms in an effort to mimic human intelligence. And meanwhile we are operating with policies, procedures, language, an approach to people, and fixed mindsets around inclusion and human capability that transform people into predictable, indistinguishable, and ultimately disposable automatons. We are living in a time in which our brightest minds are trying to create human-like machines while making people themselves more machine-like. But wait—it gets worse!Firstly, when you’re a giant, you commit to a journey of deep, thorough, and continually developing self-knowledge. Being armed with this knowledge puts you in a position to develop strategies that will help you achieve your goals. John's ability to identify and communicate the qualities of effective leadership is remarkable. After reading The Promises of Giants, your view of the world will most definitely improve. -- JJ Abrams, Director, Producer & Scriptwriter, CEO of Bad Robot It may be easier to work with machines, but the words that will define organizational success in the future are transformation, innovation, disruption, and resilience. These are human words, intrinsically tied to properties that only humans can manifest, at least for now. And organizations that are serious about winning appreciate that every moment an employee feels less human, they are less and less able, not to mention willing, to demonstrate those qualities that are so important. Leadership is a promise to support people not only through the inherent demands of work but also through the unique challenges that we put forward to stretch and develop them. Whether they meet those demands and challenges is not determined by output alone. As leaders, we promise to assess effort, process, diligence, and the individual’s willingness to learn, adapt, and grow into a true colleague and, in time, a fellow custodian of the culture. If you want to transform those environments to support success, you need to make some promises – to yourself and to others. These blinks will guide you through seven of those promises, so that you can actively support yourself in reaching your full potential, while helping others do the same.