The main thesis of this book is that the most wise and powerful make an effort to seek out advice and don't act like they know it all, while the least powerful people take the opposite approach. Listen Up: Seek Enough Advice, So One Day You'll Be Giving It, was inspired by a quote from Harper Lee when she said, "many receive advice, but few profit from it" and by another quote from David Brooks in his New York Times best-selling book, The Road to Character, when he said, "humility is the awareness that there's a lot you don't know and that a lot of what you think you know is distorted or wrong."
Like previous books Fellows has written, he uses biblical scripture such as The Book of Proverbs, popular music such as Alanis Morissette, Major Lazer, Phillip Phillips, and Bill Withers, movies such as "Tin Cup" and "Happy Gilmore," classic novels such as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Fellows also highlights the ability to listen that his mentor, tech CEO Bill McDermott, has shown throughout his career at Xerox, SAP, and currently at ServiceNow.
Here's not only an original quote from the book, but what you can expect from the book if you end up purchasing a copy:
"Truly being open to guidance doesn't mean that you don't know the answer, it means you are humble enough to admit that there's a possibility, as slight as it could be, that you don't know the answer. Having that type of mentality is the only way to grow, because you only grow when you are tested, and you in order to pass a test, you must listen."
