We’re Gonna Need Cake

Celebrating Authentic Leadership in a Messy World

By: Valerie Garcia

Narrated by: Valerie Garcia

Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

Bring your humanity to work to become a better leader.

Life is messy. You know it and your employees know it. But the unspoken rules of professionalism dictate that we don’t talk about it. However, what if trying to keep your real, messy life compartmentalized from your work life isn’t doing you any favors? What if, instead, the opposite is true?

We’re Gonna Need Cake, speaker and coach Valerie Garcia draws on her research, along with lessons she’s learned over decades working with brands around the globe, to demonstrate how bringing your whole self to work strengthens your leadership and propels your career forward.

Guided by The Authenticity Map, Garcia provides you with a blueprint to navigate the messiness of life and learn how to bring real emotions into the workplace in a productive way. With exercises in each chapter to help bring the concepts into personalized focus, you will finish with a better understanding of everything from failure and fear to compassion and confidence and how it all contributes to finding joy at work.

Written with honesty and humor, this guide is for the modern-day leader who wants the tools to create healthier workplaces, happier customers, and better teams.

©2024 Valerie Garcia (P)2024 Valerie Garcia

A wonderful book for leaders & aspiring leaders!

I love Valerie’s wit & storytelling. Even better, we get to hear it all in her own voice! The examples & experiences she shares are so heartbreakingly real & relatable. It just came out today & I already binge listened to the whole thing; I know I’ll be re-reading & re-listening to it over again. Her sections on feedback, boundaries, & coming to peace with the fact that not everyone will love/get you are sections that particularly resonated for me. I love how she not only discussed her own issues & mess but also modeled how to improve while still being yourself. A truly excellent read!

The one leadership book you need to authentically find joy amongst the messiness of work!

Friends, I sincerely encourage you to run, not walk to buy Valerie Garcia's new book 'We're Gonna Need Cake'!

I've been fortunate to hear Valerie speak before, and to have personal conversations with her over the years at various conferences, etc. so I knew that she could tell a story in a magical way. But this book was so timely for me. It's about authentic leadership. it's about bringing your whole messy authentic self to your job. It's about breaking the mold of all of the advice we've been given over the years about what you can't do authentically, if you're in leadership or at work in general. It's about finding joy in your work, even when it is messy!

Now I love books, but I'm particularly a fan of audiobooks because I'm in cars, planes, trains etc all the time for biz travel, and not always able to have a book in my hands. Personally, I'm really glad that I downloaded Valerie's audiobook because she is a gifted storyteller, not just in the way she writes, but in the way she speaks. It's a real gift to hear her sharing in her own words.

I had only just started to listen, and even from her introduction section of the book I was laughing and snorting and crying and relating, and I can't wait to consume all of the rest of this book probably entirely today and go back to it 1 million times.

There are millions of books on business leadership out there, I promise you there is not one book like this one and you need it !