You aspire to lead with greater impact. The problem is you're busy executing on today's demands. You know you have to carve out time from your "day job" to build your leadership skills, but it’s easy to let immediate problems and old mindsets get in the way.

Herminia Ibarra—one of the world's foremost experts on leadership—shows how individuals at all levels can step up to leadership by making small but crucial changes in their jobs, their networks, and themselves. In Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, Ibarra offers advice to:

• Redefine your job in order to make more strategic contributions
• Diversify your network so that you connect to, and learn from, a wider range of stakeholders
• Become more playful with your self-concept, allowing your familiar—and possibly outdated—leadership style to evolve

Ibarra turns the usual leadership advice—generate insight about yourself through reflection and analysis of your strengths and weaknesses—on its head by arguing that you must first act and experiment your way into trying new things. The valuable external perspective you gain from direct experiences and experimentation—which Ibarra calls outsight—provides new and critical information on what kind of work is important to you, how you should invest your time, why and which relationships matter, and, ultimately, who you want to become.

Updated with new examples and self-assessments, this book gives you the tools to start acting like a leader and advancing your career to the next level.