The Big Idea
Managing a company need not be complicated, and being a CEO should be conceptually simple. True, business leaders face difficult problems and challenges, but they eventually get the results they want. Complications arise when CEOs refuse or fail to focus on the source of the problem. They are distracted by side-issues and get confused because they succumb to one or more of the five temptations that face every business leader.

The author uses a fable to expose the inherent human temptations that create barriers to successful leadership. CEOs, at one time or another, fail to overcome the temptations which are deceptively simple since they are considered human nature. The book sweeps away the confusions that prevent managers from achieving their goal ? guiding them away from the pitfalls of the five temptations.

About the Author
Patrick Lencioni - Patrick Lencioni is the founder and president of The Table Group, Inc., a specialized management-consulting firm focused on organizational health. Since establishing the firm in 1997, Lencioni has become one of the nations leading experts on executive team development.

While coaching and consulting to hundreds of CEOs and executives, Lencioni began to observe fundamental behavioral patterns among his clients that later formed the basis of his original theories on leadership. Lencioni penned his first best-selling book, The Five Temptations of a CEO (1998), positioning him as a leader in the trend of business fiction. Two years later in the fall of 2000, he completed his second leadership fable, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. His highly anticipated book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, was added to the Lencioni Leadership Collection in the spring of 2002. And his latest page-turning fable, Death by Meeting, was released February 2004.

In addition to his books, Lencionis leadership theories have appeared in a variety of publications, most notably Harvard Business Review, which featured Pats original theory on corporate values (July 2002). Other publications include Drucker Foundations Leader to Leader, California CEO, Executive Excellence, Association Management, Human Resource Executive and The San Jose Mercury News.