Get the world off your shoulders.

• Author: George, Bill
• Position: Brief article

Book it: Best bets for board reading

From a roundup of new books, leadership insights on fundraising, battling fear of failure, coping with 'blurry lines,' avoiding embarrassment ... and some wisdom from the Bard.

From 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis by Bill George. Copyright 2009 by the author. Published by Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint (www.josseybass.com).

DO YOU EVER FEEL like Atlas--that you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders? That the whole organization is depending upon you and you're not sure you can pull it off? And if you don't, everything you have built for years will collapse overnight?

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I've had that precise feeling many times in my career, especially as CEO of Medtronic. Frequently I felt that resolving serious problems depended on my ability to lead the organization. If I made the wrong judgment, I feared the whole place might come tumbling down, and I would be responsible for the company's demise. No doubt my free-floating anxieties were overstated, but most of us have a fear-of-failure...