Chapter 4
Redefining Success on Your Own Terms
Success doesn't require cruelty or destroying others. Within The Promises of Giants framework, "winning" means fully achieving goals of noble intent-or at least goals that don't harm others. It's a big-picture commitment to vivid, long-term objectives with clear metrics for success.
First, reject the myth that "nice guys finish last." This flawed syllogism assumes successful people are unpleasant, underachievers are nice, therefore being difficult somehow enhances performance. In reality, nice people without plans, skills, or leadership finish last-but so do difficult people lacking these qualities. Moreover, unpleasant leaders struggle to maintain effective teams.
Success doesn't require cruelty. This needs to be a mantra. Critical feedback can be painful without being cruel. If feedback is cruel, that's a choice-either thoughtlessness in preparation or malicious intent.
Create your own definition of success rather than chasing someone else's. We all have varying levels of privilege, advantage, and limitations-physical, psychological, emotional, geographic, sociopolitical, and economic-making like-for-like comparisons useless. Don't tie your assessment to someone else's mast.
Develop a clear, vivid vision of your success. Like science fiction authors who create "future histories" so compelling they seem to have visited the future, you must create an irresistible picture of your destination to drive you forward when discipline falters and exhaustion sets in.
Accept that success requires compromise. Amaechi learned this lesson when his team built an expensive, pedagogically sound digital learning platform that no one wanted. They preferred something less ambitious and more compliance-based. Now he understands that introducing an imperfect but sound intervention as part of a strategic approach can achieve results, even if those early steps aren't ideal.
Remember that success isn't a zero-sum game. While some resources and opportunities are finite, you've been conditioned to see success as necessarily coming at others' expense by those who benefit from pitting aspirants against each other.
Finally, recognize that success hinges on minutiae, not pivotal moments. Too often, people overlook seemingly inconsequential acts, as if coasting until called upon for some Herculean task. Enduring success is built upon equalizing attention, focus, and effort across everything you do.
Chapter 5
The Courage to Be Both Bold and Vulnerable
How much time have you lost to procrastination, anxiety, and unfounded fears? Like Amaechi's childhood experience with a terrifying playground slide that turned out to be exhilarating once he finally tried it, we often waste precious time hesitating before challenges that could bring joy.
Boldness and vulnerability might seem like strange partners, but together they moderate and heighten each other's impact. Boldness without vulnerability is reckless, pursuing admirable but fanciful goals; vulnerability without boldness is meek, lowering ambition to only what feels safe. Together, they create a transformative middle path that allows for audacious ambition with pragmatic planning.
Amaechi demonstrated this principle when pursuing his NBA dreams. In his yearbook, he boldly declared plans to play in the NBA, win a championship, and become wealthy-seemingly preposterous for someone from the UK with minimal playing time. Publishing this bold ambition created necessary vulnerability and impetus. Sharing goals intentionally connects you with potential allies who can help when your resolve falters.
With his mother's help, he designed a detailed plan for his bold NBA goal. Working backward from his destination, he knew he needed to be drafted from a Division I NCAA school, which required a scholarship he hadn't yet earned. In pre-internet 1988, he wrote thousands of letters to American high schools: "Dear Coach. My name is John Amaechi. I am 17 years old, 6' 9", British, and Black. I am looking for a place to begin pursuing my dream of playing basketball in the NBA."
After sending 3,000 letters expecting a flood of responses, only three trickled in: one polite rejection, one xenophobic dismissal, and finally, Coach Ed Heintschel from St. John's Jesuit in Toledo, who became a lifelong ally and brought him to America.
Amaechi benefited immensely from repeatedly, openly stating his mission in clear terms. Each time he declined socializing to hit the gym, explaining it was necessary for his NBA dream, he was pledging allegiance to his cause. While many laughed, he found supportive friends who challenged him to deliver on his promises.
Being bold and vulnerable can be as simple as a public statement of intent: "This is what I plan to do. I may not know exactly how yet, but it's important, so I'll do whatever it takes." Research shows that sharing specific, objective goals publicly increases accountability and the likelihood of achievement.
For leaders, vulnerability means throwing out your "cool card"-that protection against appearing foolish or flawed. The stoic, emotionless leader is an ill-conceived ideal. If you seem superhuman, people can't relate to you and become reluctant followers. Strong leaders acknowledge their nervousness during disruption, practicing what Amaechi calls "emotional pre-recognition"-anticipating how situations affect others' emotions.
Chapter 6
Confronting Our Hidden Biases
Recent years have sensitized many to inequity in unprecedented ways. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 created a tidal wave of emotions and anti-racism demonstrations in over 60 countries worldwide. To solve our collective challenges, we must collaborate with people vastly different from ourselves, requiring effective methods to combat bias.
Amaechi rejects the concept of "unconscious bias" training as fundamentally flawed. Using the analogy of treating a broken foot with Air Jordan sneakers, he demonstrates how these trainings provide the appearance of caring without addressing actual behaviors resulting from bias. The problem in most workplaces isn't recognizing bias but addressing the behaviors stemming from them.
Everyone harbors bias. It's not something to be excessively guilty about, but it requires vigilant management. Similarly, privilege isn't about being rich or blessed with comfort-it's about distinct advantages secured by being born into certain identities, often manifesting as the absence of impediments others face.
In research across three continents with 10,000 respondents, Amaechi's team found a telling pattern: people consistently attribute positive associations to marginalized groups when speaking for themselves, but negative stereotypes when describing what "others" think. This raises the question: if everyone claims positive associations while believing others hold negative views, who are these "others"? The ease with which people generate these negative lists in 90 seconds suggests these associations already exist in their minds.
Amaechi has experienced firsthand how bias manifests in behavior. At industry functions he's welcomed, but outside-without the lanyard-people's reactions change dramatically. His appearance as a "massive Black guy" triggers fight-or-flight responses and threat assessments.
What matters isn't just the existence of bias but what people do with it. The unconscious bias narrative problematically links thoughts directly to actions, suggesting we can't control our responses. This disregards our everyday ability to filter thoughts before acting.
To combat bias, approach each person with benign ignorance and enthusiastic inquisitiveness-like watching a desert sunset anew each evening, expecting to discover something remarkable if you pay attention. Use pragmatic self-assessment to reflect on your filters and biases around interactions with different people, and replay these interactions to learn why they went well or poorly.
Chapter 7
Rejecting Excuses and Embracing Necessary Discomfort
Excuses are easy to find or create. Whether it's avoiding writing a book to enjoy sunshine, watch a familiar movie, or escape tedious preparation work, we can easily justify not doing what needs to be done. But necessary work gets done without excuses.
The workplace is plagued by the "cult of busy"-where our worth is tied to appearing overwhelmed. Common excuses like "I'm super busy," "I'm but a cog in the wheel," or "it's always been done this way" may be true but aren't immovable barriers and shouldn't be statements of leaders. True leaders reject excuses at every turn, even at personal cost.
The most prevalent excuse is lack of time. We've collectively determined that being busy indicates high performance, making it standard workplace conversation. Imagine the strange looks if you admitted to having a balanced workload and adequate sleep! This busy-ness norm may stem from Victorian workhouse ethics or utilization cultures where every moment must be accounted for.
The demands of good leadership aren't about more time, but time better spent. Consider how to be more focused, energized, and effective with the time you have. Success in any field isn't just about talent but the ability to endure mundanity-the planning, practice, and repetition that makes performance look effortless.
The power of focused time and attention can transform situations and people. Amaechi's mother, a GP in 1970s Stockport, demonstrated this during house visits to palliative care patients. In homes heavy with grief, she would enter living rooms where families waited with trembling hands and bone china teacups rattling against saucers. With unwavering confidence, she would make eye contact with each person, listen to their fears, and then calmly assure them: "You can do this. You're going to do this." She would assign specific tasks to each family member for the coming week. Almost immediately, the air would lighten, hands would steady, and families would repeat her instructions verbatim, newly empowered despite their circumstances.
In today's technology-dominated world, undivided attention is increasingly valuable. Your attention is a weapon-its absence wounds others. Even brief moments-thanking a presenter after a meeting, checking in with a colleague-can be powerful because you are powerful. Denying your influence is just another excuse to avoid the responsibility and discomfort that comes with wielding it properly.
Too many people escape responsibility by pretending they have no power, avoiding the discomfort that comes with influence. But even your casual glance or facial expression impacts others-especially if you're in a leadership position. The "it's only little ol' me" excuse doesn't justify checking your phone during conversations or skimming emails during meetings.
Chapter 8
Sustaining Leadership Through Self-Care
My brain functions better with movement. Though I enjoy Yin Yoga but hate lifting weights (even when I was a professional athlete), I maintain this regimen because the combination of strength work and stretching enhances my cognitive function and leadership capabilities.
This self-directed promise benefits you immediately while ensuring the sustainability of your internal resources. Your attention, patience, and energy will be taxed as you pursue goals and support others. Plus, modeling responsible self-care sets a positive example.
In our era of unprecedented change-from geopolitical crises to global pandemics-we face extraordinary physical and psychological demands. Remember: "You can't pour from an empty cup." Leading through disruption while maintaining personal wellbeing will differentiate you from others. Your mindset and habits impact not only yourself but everyone around you.
Your mindset may be the greatest determinant of success, explaining much of the variance between people with similar IQs and experience. Mindfulness-the ability to focus entirely on the present moment-is essential, not just trendy. Without it, the world becomes a confusing cacophony.
A healthy mindset allows objective filtering of what's real versus imagined, useful versus useless. Pay attention to your inner narrator: Is it overly critical? Unhelpful? Apply the Effective Feedback Model to challenge these narratives. Develop "control orientation"-identifying what you can control and avoiding fixation on what you can't.
Assess whether you have a fixed or growth mindset. A growth mindset liberates you from demands of perfection, invites vulnerability, encourages flexibility, and helps you integrate learnings from both success and failure. Importantly, apply this growth mindset to others too-you cannot win alone and must believe in your team's potential for effective delegation.
Beyond having a growth mindset, you must actually engage in learning. Despite long hours and endless to-do lists, devoting time to reading, developing talents, and experimenting with new skills-work-related or not-will make you more content, tranquil, and well-rounded.
When time is short and pressure high, dietary decisions default to convenience rather than nourishment. Prioritizing proper nutrition requires discipline and planning. Never skip breakfast-coffee alone doesn't count. Drink plenty of water-dehydration measurably lowers IQ and affects brain function after just four hours without water. Never use your schedule as an excuse for poor eating habits, especially publicly. Saying you "haven't eaten all day" isn't a badge of honor-it sets a terrible example suggesting leadership requires sacrificing personal health.
The evidence for movement benefiting body and mind is overwhelming. Even a brisk 30-minute daily walk improves heart and lung fitness, reduces anxiety, and elevates mood and energy. Whether you're walking an extra stop during your commute, taking a community bike for a weekend spin, or joining a Zumba class, you're strengthening your body while creating mental space for relaxation and breakthrough "eureka" moments.
As important as doing something is doing nothing! Too many high performers spend their lives "buried in the red line"-unsustainable long-term. Finding moments to pause throughout your day is crucial. A momentary change in pace, posture, or pursuit operates like a gear change, allowing increased pace after the lull.
Chapter 9
Reflecting Potential in Others
The previous promises focused inward on self-relationships, but these next promises extend outward to those we directly impact. True giants don't need formal authority to influence others-their power comes from how they treat and perceive people.
Charles Cooley's "looking-glass self" concept suggests our identity forms partly through how we imagine others see us. This gives you tremendous influence: you can either distort people's self-perception like a funhouse mirror or accurately reflect their capabilities and potential. Your interactions can damage self-regard or unlock previously untapped confidence and performance.
As a child, Amaechi believed himself beautiful, intelligent and special because he saw those qualities reflected in his mother's adoring gaze. She looked at him with pride that confirmed he was smart-"her clever boy" capable of amazing things. This self-assurance lasted until secondary school at age 11, where new classmates and teachers reflected something entirely different.
He encountered three common reactions: abject terror (despite being just a child in a school uniform), mockery behind his back, and most devastatingly, people speaking to him slowly as if he were intellectually stunted. When a rugby coach dismissed him with "If he's not going to play rugby, what use is he?", he began to doubt his mother's perception of him.
After reading "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame," he asked his mother if he was a monster, recognizing the parallels between Quasimodo's treatment and his own. Though she assured him he wasn't, he began to believe she might be lying. He adapted by walking tall, looking above crowds, and pixelating people below his sightline-avoiding connection to protect himself from degradation. This withdrawal is what happens when exclusion prevents you from seeing positive reflections of yourself.
Robert Rosenthal's famous studies with elementary school principal Lenore Jacobson demonstrated how expectations shape performance. Teachers were told certain randomly selected students were intellectual "bloomers" poised for significant gains. Eight months later, these students showed greater improvement than their peers, especially in first and second grades.
This "Pygmalion effect" showed that teacher expectations created self-fulfilling prophecies. Beyond test scores, teachers described these supposed "bloomers" more favorably-as more interesting, curious, and happy with better chances for long-term success. Even when non-experimental students made similar intellectual gains, teachers often described them as less well-adjusted with more behavioral problems. The key difference was simply the teachers' expectations and how they were reflected back to students.
Chapter 10
Seeing People Beyond Their Job Descriptions
When we reduce people to their job functions, we miss their full humanity and potential. This dehumanization happens everywhere-from cruise ships where stewards press themselves against walls to avoid passengers to corporate environments where workers are treated as interchangeable parts. Organizations bemoan the "war for talent" while overlooking capable individuals right under their noses, trapped in rigid role definitions that prevent mobility and growth.
On a cruise ship after giving a keynote, Amaechi received an early morning visit from a steward bringing tea. He had watched Amaechi's speech on the cabin TVs and took a risk approaching him. "We're invisible on this boat," he confided. "When passengers go by, we press ourselves into the wall so we don't get in their way. When managers go by, we press ourselves into the wall so they don't think we're doing something wrong."
He described being treated like "vending machines"-people flip instructions at them like coins, then impatiently wait for results. Despite the risk to his job, this steward demonstrated leadership by seeking out conversation and showing remarkable insight about the organization's dynamics. His actions revealed someone capable of far more than his role allowed.
Organizations increasingly seek automation and AI to make their technology more human-like while simultaneously making their people feel more like robots. The problem is that "vending machines" don't innovate or adapt-they simply deliver what's expected when the right buttons are pressed.
The dehumanization begins with our language-"employees," "talent," or "human resources"-terms that strip away humanity and impose uniformity. This commodification worsens through rigid processes, ineffective performance reviews, and inflexible utilization targets. When we reduce people to less than fully human, even by a fraction, what we consider reasonable treatment changes dramatically for the worse.
The 2017 United Airlines incident exemplifies workplace dehumanization-when a paying customer was forcibly dragged from an overbooked flight to accommodate airline employees. CEO Oscar Munoz's defense of "re-accommodating customers" cost the company $770 million in market value. This wasn't an aberration but the predictable outcome of a culture that treats passengers like excess baggage.
Corporate structures are evolving from triangles to flat-bottomed rhombuses as automation and AI eliminate entry-level positions. This creates a critical problem: with fewer people developing foundational skills at the base, we're promoting workers to middle management without the necessary emotional intelligence to lead others effectively. These managers lack the competencies for motivating, empathizing with, and extracting the best from their teams-accelerating workplace dehumanization when we need the opposite.
Chapter 11
Creating Environments People Never Want to Leave
Reflecting on his Orlando Magic experience, Amaechi discovered an intangible quality of high-performing teams-creating an environment people never want to leave. Despite being offered more money and championship opportunities with the Lakers in 2000, he stayed with Orlando because he recognized how rare it was to find a true team in every meaningful sense. The difference between teams and groups becomes evident in how they handle success and failure. On true teams, success is publicly shared (players pointing to teammates who contributed to a basket) while failure brings shared accountability rather than blame.
No matter how talented individual performers may be, a well-led optimized team will consistently outperform them-and enjoy doing so. The sheer joy of being part of a genuine team rather than just a collection of elite individuals creates an environment people never want to leave. When combining all the elements discussed throughout the book-inclusion, trust, psychological safety, attentiveness-and adding joyfulness, the result becomes a potent, addictive mix that people recognize as precious and rare.
Amaechi's first taste of true belonging came accidentally as a teenager in Stockport. A stranger stopped him on the street and said, "You would be great at basketball"-not that he should play, but that he could be great. This reflection of potential rather than monstrosity led him to a local gym where, despite his complete lack of skill, other kids fought over having him on their team. Even when he missed his first shot by six feet, they encouraged him. This feeling of acceptance and support-seeing potential reflected back at me instead of fear or ridicule-lit a spark that eventually led him to the NBA.
The power of inclusion can inspire even the most unlikely achievements. When surrounded by people who make us feel valuable and bolster our spirit, we'll perform tedious work to high standards. In environments where we're authentically connected to people who nurture and challenge us-where we enjoy autonomy yet never feel alone-no work is too boring.
People want to be led. They want the heat shield and safe harbor that a giant's shadow affords. There's something transcendent about being around those who recognize our full value, who build familiarity, who drive us while genuinely caring for our welfare. We never want to leave such people and will work better and harder for them than for those who view us as mere conveniences.
The future of work will bring massive changes-fewer centralized office towers, more contingent workers, digital nomads, and remote collaboration. But where people choose to work will increasingly depend on how they feel: How does this particular manager and constellation of colleagues make me feel? As we become more physically distanced, interpersonal skills become more valuable. Creating connection requires greater intentionality when people are scattered across countries and time zones. Despite technological advancement, the future of work will remain fundamentally human.
Chapter 12
Hoover the Landing: The Power of Consistency
As we conclude, Amaechi urges us to commit fully to the promises outlined in his book-commit to consistency in behavior and congruence between words and deeds. There are no breaks for giants. His mother exemplified the labor and responsibility of authentic, transformational leadership. She understood the extraordinary impact ordinary people could make.
His mother was remarkably consistent. She demanded congruence between words and actions-not just from herself but from her children too. Once when Amaechi was 13, he stayed up late just to hug her after not seeing her for days. When she arrived, he embraced her enthusiastically, professing his love. Instead of reciprocating, she looked past him to their chore schedule and asked, "Did you Hoover the landing?" When he admitted he hadn't, she gently stopped his next hug saying, "Son, if you love me, you'd Hoover the landing." Her point was clear-love isn't just expressed through words but through actions and commitments kept.
Making good on promises requires disciplined consistency. People need confidence that everyone operates on a level playing field with clear standards. When values are violated without consequence, it signals they only apply when convenient. As Jon Stewart said, "If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values. They're hobbies."
While struggling at the bottom of the Orlando Magic depth chart, Amaechi put in extra practice at a public gym. There he met two brothers, Chris and Eric, who should have been in school. Though focused on improving his game, he remembered his mother's expectations and invited them to play. Over weeks, he learned they were essentially alone in the world. As his career improved, he gave them his complimentary game tickets, and eventually brought them to England for his basketball camp. When Chris broke his ankle there, he asked if Amaechi would "take care of them." He ultimately adopted both boys. Years later when he asked why they "chose him," they revealed it wasn't his NBA status or money-it was simply that he remembered their names on their second meeting. This small gesture of recognition changed all their lives forever.
The world is filled with unique, wonderful people with untapped potential. By keeping these promises, you can positively shape how people view themselves, make them feel connected, and unleash their talent. Though you're not the intended beneficiary, honoring these promises leads to unimaginable rewards-they transformed a "fat, shy, queer, half-geek, half-nerd boy" into an NBA starter, organizational psychologist, and grandfather of five. Promise to be an ally and advocate, a true colleague and authentic leader who brings out the best in others. And keep these promises unconditionally and persistently-that is both the duty and honor of being a giant.
