Tough Enough - Matt Hunter + John Baird

Some of today’s most successful companies are also infamous for their domineering leaders and intense working environments but you don’t have to compromise yourself or your people to drive your team to greatness.

In Tough Enough, leadership coaches John Baird and Matt Hunter draw upon decades of coaching top CEOs, elite founders and ambitious leaders to argue that building a high-performing team requires a new form of toughness—not based on bullying and bravado, but rather pushing for exceptional results in a way that is firm, fair, and respectful.

With real-world stories, timeless principles, and scientific insight, Baird and Hunter break down seven specific habits that define the strongest, most effective leaders (including the big names you know and some others you should), from living your manifesto to harnessing emotional thunder. They set the record straight on when to prioritize understanding and compassion, when it’s time to be direct—and, most importantly, how to do both at the same time.

If you’re ready to build the next generation of great organizations and move beyond “nice” leadership, Tough Enough is your playbook for what it truly takes to win.

Tough Enough is for ambitious leaders who are too tough and need to keep their edge while respecting others and those who are not tough enough and need to raise standards, embrace difficult conversations, and hold the line. The Toughness Spectrum represents the continuum between extreme toughness, which prioritizes the mission above all else, and extreme comfort, which prioritizes how people feel. Generally speaking, performance rises as toughness rises. Each of us has a natural baseline on the spectrum where we spend most of our time. Toughness is situational, not static. We can adjust our position depending on the stakes, the audience, and how safe we feel. The Toughness Spectrum is a calibration tool, clarifying what it means to be Tough Enough and how intensely to approach each habit. There are distinct zones along the Toughness Spectrum, which can be seen as different operating modes for leaders.

In the Hardcore Zone, the mission comes first, ahead of personal comfort, family, health, or even basic empathy. The work matters more than anyone’s feelings about it, and chaos and broken relationships are accepted as collateral damage. In this zone, compassion is largely absent. Leaders in the Hardcore Zone can expect the strongest business result of any zone, but at the cost of reputational damage, cultural debt, negative press, neglected relationships, resentment, and a shameful journey.

John Baird is widely regarded as one of Silicon Valley’s premier executive coaches and is the cofounder of Velocity Coaching. He has over thirty years of experience coaching top executives at companies like Apple, Nike, Doordash and Masterclass to name a few. John is particularly proud of his over two decades of work at Apple, starting with coaching the early iPhone team leaders. He is the coauthor of The Wall Street Journal bestseller, Leading with Heart: Five Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results. John serves as Faculty-in-Residence at the Lucas College and Graduate School of Business at San Jose State University. He lives in San Jose, California.

Matt Hunter is an executive leadership coach and author. He has two decades of experience founding, leading, and coaching companies, most notably cofounding Turnstyle (acquired by Yelp) and serving as president and US CEO of Founders Pledge, a community of entrepreneurs that has pledged over $12.9 billion to charity, with more than $1.7 billion already deployed. Today, he coaches founders and CEOs of high-growth companies backed by firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and NEA, with a combined market value in the tens of billions. He is expanding his work to include public companies and elite sports teams. He lives with his growing family in Boulder, Colorado.