Adapt or Fail: Zelensky’s Leadership Secrets

Simon Shuster shares 5 key insights from The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky.

Who is Volodymyr Zelensky? You may know him as the wartime president of Ukraine, a familiar presence on the news with his trademark fatigues. But prior to Russia's 2022 invasion of his country, Zelensky was a rather unpopular president, and before that he was an actor and comedian. So how was such an unlikely figure able to rise to the occasion and draw international support for his young nation? And what can the rest of us his learn from his leadership? That story is told in the new book The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky by Simon Shuster. Simon is a senior correspondent for Time magazine and has covered Russia and Ukraine for the last 17 years. His book was recently banned in Russia, but you can read or listen to 5 key insights from it below.

The 5 Key Insights:

1. To survive, be ready to change.

2. Courage is contagious.

3. Fear is also contagious.

4. Never try to lead alone.

5. Your screen is a battleground.

1. To survive, be ready to change.

One of Zelensky’s gifts really showed in the opening hours of the invasion. When we talked about that moment, Zelensky remembered giving himself a pep talk as though he were about to go on stage. “They’re watching,” he told himself. “You need to act the way a head of state must act.” At that point, his experience as a statesman and a politician added up to less than three years. But Zelensky was adaptable. He was trained not to lose his nerve under the glare of a massive audience. And he realized at that moment that his audience was much of the world, all of Ukraine, everyone he knew or was ever likely to meet.