Jeff Eggers
Managing Partner and Co-Founder of philanthropic venture fund, accelerating human performance technologies for high-risk public servants. Executive coach and leadership development consultant. Co-author of national best-selling book "Leaders: Myth and Reality".
Jeff was formerly a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, with six years of White House experience, principally in foreign policy, counterterrorism, South Asia, and the war in Afghanistan.
He retired from the US Navy in 2013, after serving over 20 years as a combat veteran Navy SEAL. Jeff’s operational tours included several SEAL Teams, commander of the Special Operations Task Unit in western Iraq, and Operations Officer and Mission Commander for the U.S. Navy’s undersea special operations command.
Jeff is a senior fellow at New America, where he explores the behavioral science of policy decision-making. He is also a member of the NationSwell Council, a forum for advancing innovative solutions to America’s most pressing challenges, and he serves on the board of a non-profit that cares for and assists the families of veterans killed in action.
Jeff received a Master of Arts from Oxford University and a Bachelor of Science from the United States Naval Academy.
Philosopher's Notes on Jeff Eggers's Books
Leaders
by General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal, Jeff Eggers and Jason Mangone
I got this book after I saw General Stanley McChrystal’s blurb on the back of Ryan Holiday’s Lives of the Stoics. I read it in one 8.8-hour Deep Work-filled day. It’s fantastic. McChrystal uses Plutarch and his profiles of some of history’s most prominent figures as his inspiration and focuses on thirteen leaders in six pairs plus one standing alone. Almost all leadership books are prescriptive in nature. This book is not. Rather than make us believe that there’s a nice, simple recipe for leadership, McChrystal, Eggers and Mangone present us with the “myths” of leadership and the MUCH MESSIER “realities” of leadership. After the profiles of the thirteen leaders, the authors present the three myths of leadership and their new definition of leadership. We end the book with the sober recognition of just how complex, dynamic and context-specific good leadership is. It’s a challenging, important book that’s difficult to distill into a nice and tidy and practical 6-page Note but I’m excited to share some of my favorite Ideas as we all continue to step up into our own idiosyncratic expressions of Heroic leadership. So... Let’s get to work!