Amy Jen Su (MBA 1997) wrote her new book, The Leader You Want to Be, in part because she realized she wasn’t always the leader she wanted to be. As the managing partner and cofounder of Paravis Partners, Su strived to bring her best self to the executive coaching firm every day but found the pressures of modern business were a constant challenge. “There’s a velocity and ferocity that is increasingly difficult,” she says. “More and more people are feeling like they’re not in the driver’s seat anymore.” Based on lessons learned through nearly 20 years of coaching and laced with edicts from the Eastern philosophy she grew up with in an Asian American family, Su’s book is designed to give professionals the tools they need to navigate the frenetic pace and ever-expanding portfolio familiar to any executive.

Courtesy Amy Jen Su

Courtesy Amy Jen Su

What trends in the business world are creating new pressures on leaders?

Organizational life in general has gotten more complicated. Work has become increasingly global. It’s just not as easy to walk down the hall and talk to a colleague. And technology disruption has really changed industries and driven new competition. The folks I’ve worked with describe that external environment as always tugging on them.

How did you develop the advice in the book?

The five principles of the book—purpose, process, people, presence, and peace—came out of taking a big step back and looking at all the different leaders I’ve worked with and the common denominators in terms of successful leadership. My greatest hope with these five principles is that they address the whole person so that someone who reads the book will say, “Wow, I now have a holistic framework to think about being more effective and driving my performance, and also to really think about what drives my satisfaction and my own inner joy.”

What do you do in the moments when you realize you aren’t living up to your own leadership ideals?

Sometimes I feel my impatience rising, or I hear myself starting to use a horrible tone with somebody on my team—that’s when it’s time for me to take a deep breath and literally step away from the situation. And a lot of times I grab a sheet of paper so I can jot down what’s agitating me at that moment, and the one thing I need to address so that I can get back on my A-game.

But the process of writing the book made it challenging for you to be a good leader.

It was such an irony. When I was writing about what I call the “pitfalls of doing,” which can prevent you from being the leader you want to be, I realized I had fallen into all of the pitfalls myself—I’ll just do more, I’ll just do it now, I’ll just do it myself, and I’ll just do it later. I still need to catch myself, every day.

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