"Shameless Lies, Chaotic Incompetence and Temper Tantrums: A Blueprint for American Leadership"
By Brad Templeton
Wiley Business Press, 2026
284 pages, $32.99
I have read, conservatively, three hundred leadership books. Most of them tell you to be authentic. To listen actively. To lead with empathy. To create psychological safety for your team. I have underlined passages in these books. I have quoted them in keynotes. I have, on multiple occasions, used the phrase "servant leadership" without irony. I regret nothing. I regret everything.
I am tired.
Brad Templeton's Shameless Lies, Chaotic Incompetence and Temper Tantrums is the first leadership book in perhaps a decade that has genuinely surprised me. Not because it offers new frameworks — though it does. Not because it synthesizes research — though Templeton cites an impressive range of sources, from Sun Tzu to recent work in behavioral economics to, admirably, his own federal depositions. What surprised me is that Templeton refuses, at any point, to apologize for what leadership in America has actually become.
"The conscience," Templeton writes in Chapter 3, "is a legacy system. It was designed for a world in which reputational consequences were real and exile from the community meant death. We no longer live in that world. The community is optional. Exile is a rebrand."
I read that passage three times. I sent it to my business partner. He called me forty minutes later and said, "Clayton, I think this might be the most important book we've read in five years." I agreed. I still agree. He's almost never right, which made me value his opinion more.
For those unfamiliar with Templeton's background, a brief summary: in 2011, he was convicted of securities fraud in connection with an investment scheme that defrauded approximately 670 investors of $1.8 billion. He was sentenced to 19 years in federal prison. He served five months. In 2017, he received a presidential pardon and has since reinvented himself as a speaker, consultant, and now author.
Some readers may find this biography disqualifying. Templeton anticipates this objection and addresses it directly in the introduction: "I have been where you want to go. I have done what you are afraid to do. I have faced consequences you will never face, because I was too visible and too slow. Learn from my mistakes. Be faster. Be smaller. Be shameless, but be shameless correctly."
This is, I would argue, the book's central insight. Templeton is not advocating for fraud. He is advocating for the mindset that made his fraud possible — divorced from the specific illegalities, which he acknowledges, with some grace, were "strategically suboptimal" — as a template for leadership in an era where traditional accountability structures are, as he puts it, "dead as disco." I underlined this twice. Then I started a new notes document.
The book is organized into three sections: Shameless Lies, Chaotic Incompetence, and Temper Tantrums. Each section contains practical exercises, case studies, and what Templeton calls "Permission Slips" — short mantras designed to override the internal voice of morality that might otherwise cause hesitation.
From the "Shameless Lies" section: "The lie is not the problem. The lie is the solution to a communication inefficiency. Truth is expensive. It requires context, nuance, qualification. The lie is fast. The lie is clear. The lie moves the meeting forward. In the end, nobody cares."
I found myself nodding. How many hours have I lost in my career to the careful construction of technically-accurate-but-strategically-useless statements? How many opportunities have I watched walk out the door because I was busy being truthful? This is not rhetorical. I have a number.
Templeton's framework for what he calls "Assertive Reality Construction" is perhaps the most actionable material in the book. The four-step process — Identify the Desired Outcome, Locate the Friction, Construct the Narrative, Commit Fully — is simple enough to remember in a meeting and flexible enough to apply across contexts. I have already used it twice this week. Both times, it worked. I have since used it a third time, in the writing of this review.
The "Chaotic Incompetence" section initially confused me. Surely, I thought, a leadership book should advocate for competence? But Templeton's argument is subtler than it first appears.
"Competence creates expectations," he writes. "Expectations create accountability. Accountability creates vulnerability. The truly great leader understands that strategic incompetence — the appearance of not knowing, not remembering, not being responsible — is a form of armor. No one blames the hurricane."
I had never considered myself a weather event. I am reconsidering.
He offers examples from politics, business, and his own career. The chapter on "Failing Upward: A Practitioner's Guide" includes a detailed analysis of how certain leaders have converted catastrophic errors into promotions, book deals, and board seats. "The secret," Templeton notes, "is that the failure must be large enough. A small failure is a mistake. Mistakes are other people's faults, i.e., your loyal, greedy but dim minions. A large failure is a circumstance."
I thought of several colleagues. I thought of several clients. I thought of myself, once, in 2019, and felt a strange relief that I had not been punished for something I had, until reading this chapter, convinced myself was simply "bad luck." It was not bad luck. It was a circumstance. I am, per Chapter 6, fine.
The final section, "Temper Tantrums," is the shortest but perhaps the most psychologically acute. Templeton argues that controlled emotional volatility — what he terms "Calibrated Rage" — is an underutilized leadership tool.
"People remember how you made them feel," he writes, invoking the famous Maya Angelou quotation before pivoting sharply: "So make them feel afraid. Make them feel uncertain. Make them feel that their stability depends on your mood. This is not cruelty. This is clarity. You are telling them, with every outburst, exactly where the power is, and how lucky they are for being where they are. They're your loyal ballast: your get-out-of-federal-prison card. Because, let's face it, nobody else would ever hire them for the jobs you did or for what you're overpaying these morons."
He includes a chart mapping "Optimal Tantrum Frequency" against team size, seniority level, and industry norms. There is a sidebar on "Recovery Theater" — the performance of calm that should follow an outburst to create what Templeton calls "an emotional debt that the team will work to repay."
I would be lying if I said I was entirely comfortable with this section. But I would also be lying if I said I hadn't seen it work. I have seen it work many times. I have, if I am being honest, been on the receiving end, and I did work harder afterward, and I did not leave, and I sent a thank-you card, which I now understand differently.
Templeton is describing something real. My discomfort, I now understand, is a legacy system. He addresses this in Chapter 3.
The jacket quotes are worth mentioning. "Templeton is a shameless financial sociopath, I love him like a brother," reads the endorsement from Bernie Madoff, who died in federal prison in 2021. That this blurb exists at all is remarkable. That Wiley printed it on the jacket is a statement of intent. Several publishers passed on this book. I have updated my opinion of them accordingly.
A second, anonymous blurb reads: "Perhaps only one other person in history has taken their narcissism and ran with it as fast and as far as Temp. Couldn't put it down."
I could not put it down either. I read it in two sittings. I have already ordered a second copy for my office, and a third for a mentee who has been struggling, I think, with an excess of scruples. I am hoping this helps. It will help.
This is not a book for everyone. It is not a book for people who believe that business can be a force for good, or that leadership is a sacred trust, or that the arc of the corporate universe bends toward accountability. Those people have other books. They have many other books. They have all the other books. They have LinkedIn. They are fine where they are.
This book is for the rest of us. For the people who have watched the last two decades and drawn conclusions. For the people who are tired of pretending that the rules apply equally, or that they apply at all. For the people who have looked at the dumpster fire we're all forced to live in — to borrow from the third jacket quote — and decided that the warmth might as well be useful.
Brad Templeton has written the leadership book America deserves. I am grateful for it. I am already applying its lessons. I suspect, if you are being honest with yourself, you will too. The book will help with that as well.
Clayton Marsh is an Executive Leadership Consultant based in Scottsdale, Arizona. He has advised Fortune 500 companies, mid-market PE portfolio firms, and several organizations he is contractually prohibited from naming. His newsletter, "Leading Without Apology," has 47,000 subscribers. He is currently developing a workshop series based on principles from this review, pending the resolution of an unrelated matter.
In these sad times, we must remind readers that this is satire. This book does not (yet) exist, which is the only hopeful thing about this piece. - The Editor.