Filling Big Shoes

When it comes to leadership, Sander A. Flaum has written the book. Literally. Big Shoes: How Successful Leaders Grow into New Roles is a how-to manual for young business leaders who want stellar careers on their own terms.

Flaum, adjunct professor of management systems at Fordham's Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA), and founding chair of the Fordham Leadership Forum, says he wrote the book especially for business people fresh out of school, and indeed leads the book with "You're Hired. Now What?"

The book's relentless focus is how to get to the top, how to stay at the top, and how to manage your life while you're there:

Our research has shown ... superleaders fit a particular profile. They are younger. They understand the agony of sleepless nights and 24/7 weeks. They realize their performance can slip when they are family-deprived and relatively friendless. They’re quick to sense when their spouses are reaching the boiling point or when their kids need to come first.
(Read an excerpt from the book: Is There Life at the Top? Or Just Work?)

Flaum is the CEO of Flaum Partners, a pharmaceutical and biotech consulting firm. Prior to launching his own firm, Flaum was chairman and CEO of Robert A. Becker, Euro RSCG, where he led a global team of marketing and advertising strategists who managed six $2 billion-plus healthcare brands.

The Fordham Leadership Forum will host its inaugural lecture in January with E. Gerald Corrigan, managing director at Goldman Sachs and co-chair of the firmwide risk management committee. Corrigan, former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will lead a discussion with Fordham students and faculty, and the public, on "Leadership: Making the Right Things Happen."