Leadership Lessons for enduring business and personal success from renowned motivational speaker, consultant, and CEO of Addison Leadership Group, John A. Addison. Addison, the former Co-CEO of Primerica (America's largest financial services company), shares an impactful bonus chapter to his best-selling flagship book. Real Leadership shares personal history with insights along the way from Addison, who is a masterful storyteller.
Too many organizations today play follow the leader: the commander articulates a “vision” and people uncritically go along with it. But this type of leadership—what Dean Williams calls "counterfeit leadership"—generates an unhealthy dependence on an authority figure and relies on dominance, control, and group seduction to get things done. By hampering people's ability to anticipate and react to changing circumstances, it creates a self-limiting cycle. And if the leader's vision is flawed, the entire organization suffers. The true task of a leader, Williams argues, is to get people to face the reality of any situation themselves and develop strategies to deal with problems or take advantage of opportunities. Real leaders don't dictate; they help people face their challenges and make adjustments in their values, habits, practices, and priorities to ensure the enterprise is given its best chance to succeed. Williams details how to apply this new approach to the challenges every organization or community faces. Throughout, he demonstrates the practical application of real leadership in the real world through examples from his own experiences working with organizations as diverse as the government of Singapore, Aetna Life and Casualty, and the nomadic Penan tribe in Borneo, as well as historical examples and the insights gleaned from his many interviews with presidents, prime ministers, and business leaders. At a time when so many “visionary” leaders have led their organizations to disaster, Real Leadership offers a needed, proven alternative.
This text explains why values-based spiritual leadership that coalesces employees into a harmonious group is the only way to successfully manage increasingly diverse workers in the 21st century. A person's values are the most powerful factor defining his or her actions; everyone has a value system or a spiritual component that triggers their behavior. Our personal values are a more powerful force upon individual action than corporate policy, procedures, tradition or peer pressure. Since the work environment is where the typical worker will spend the most time—more than at home with family, with friends, or at church—it is reasonable that workers will have spiritual demands as well as economic needs from their work lives. Unfortunately, this is a task managers are not prepared to meet. Real Leadership: How Spiritual Values Give Leadership Meaning argues that values-based—i.e., spiritual—leadership is the only way to do leadership in today's globalized, multi-differentiated world. The author traces the development of real leadership through five generations of theory, then builds a strong case for the values leadership strategy because of its ability to unify workers... and because it allows them to find personal meaning in the workplace task at hand.
A powerful call-to-action for gender equity that offers 10 key lessons for women aspiring to a leadership role—be it in politics, business, law, or their local community. Featuring words of wisdom from female leaders like Hillary Clinton and Theresa May, this empowering study reads like a You Are a Badass volume on world leadership. Women make up fewer than 10% of national leaders worldwide. Behind this eye-opening statistic lies a pattern of unequal access to power. Through conversations with some of the world’s most powerful and interesting women—including Jacinda Ardern, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Christine Lagarde, Michelle Bachelet, and Theresa May—Women and Leadership explores gender bias and asks why there aren’t more women in leadership roles. Speaking honestly and freely, these women talk about having their ideas stolen by male colleagues, what it’s like to be called fat or a slut in the media, and what things they wish they had done differently. The stories they tell reveal vividly how gender and sexism affect perceptions of women as leaders. Using current research as a starting point, Julia Gillard and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala—both political leaders in their own countries—analyze the lived experiences of these women leaders. The result is a rare insight into life as a leader and a powerful call to arms for women everywhere.
"These are the questions at the heart of the stories in The Wounded Leader. In these stories leaders struggle to make sense of their wounding experiences. We meet a principal who felt undermined by a contentious staff, another whose early mistakes ignited rumors and discontent, a leader who felt shunned when she took a position at a failing school, and a superintendent at odds with the school board."--Jacket.
The economy uncertain, education in decline, cities under siege, crime and poverty spiraling upward, international relations roiling: we look to leaders for solutions, and when they don’t deliver, we simply add their failure to our list of woes. In doing do, we do them and ourselves a grave disservice. We are indeed facing an unprecedented crisis of leadership, Ronald Heifetz avows, but it stems as much from our demands and expectations as from any leader’s inability to meet them. His book gets at both of these problems, offering a practical approach to leadership for those who lead as well as those who look to them for answers. Fitting the theory and practice of leadership to our extraordinary times, the book promotes a new social contract, a revitalization of our civic life just when we most need it. Drawing on a dozen years of research among managers, officers, and politicians in the public realm and the private sector, among the nonprofits, and in teaching, Heifetz presents clear, concrete prescriptions for anyone who needs to take the lead in almost any situation, under almost any organizational conditions, no matter who is in charge, His strategy applies not only to people at the top but also to those who must lead without authority—activists as well as presidents, managers as well as workers on the front line.
Leaders today are often unconscious and unaware of how their learned fears, egos, and personality flaws adversely affect their effectiveness in dealing with others. Their followers are not engaged, not motivated, and not performing at their best. Leaders need to be authentic, manage from their hearts, be consistent with their beliefs, emanate trust and transparency, and allow their followers to be free to create, share, and excel at what they do best.In REAL Leadership: Waking to Wisdom, Susan Robertson takes readers on a journey from being unconscious and blithely going through the motions of leadership-driven by harmful habits-to an awakening of inner truth, resiliency, engagement, authenticity, and leadership wisdom-REAL leadership.Referencing research and 30 years' worth of experience in leadership consulting and organizational and cultural transformation, Robertson shows why leaders fail, why fear prevents leaders from really fulfilling their potential, and how they can recover through techniques of self-awareness and self-management. She also illustrates the impact leadership has on high- versus low-performing cultures. While there are many books out there on how to manage better, there are few, if any, that talk about changing from within. Robertson addresses the transformative process that helps leaders change their self-image, reframe their minds, awake spiritually, find inner truth and honesty, and achieve a level of transcendence-all critical elements of leadership wisdom.For individual leaders, teams, and organizations, REAL Leadership: Waking to Wisdom is a valuable tool for learning how to change the very nature of our inner being, become conscious, healthy, and well-adjusted, and bring positive energy to everything we do in life. Based on principles such as mutual respect and caring, Robertson's philosophy is a welcome change in management doctrine. It's management for better organizational accomplishment as well as for the greater good of the individual and, by extension, society in general.
Too many people assume the timeless principles of true leadership—of helping others achieve their full potential—don’t apply Monday through Friday during work hours or in any circumstance where a paycheck is involved. In GREATER THAN YOURSELF, Steve Farber proves them wrong: in this powerful and inspiring story, Farber shows that the goal of a genuine leader is to help others—teammates, employees, and colleagues—become more capable, confident, and accomplished than they are themselves. Through the actions of a forward-thinking and extraordinarily successful CEO, Farber reveals the three keys to achieving this: Expand Yourself, Give Yourself, and Replicate Yourself. This new edition includes a special afterword by UCSD’s Dr Alan Daly and Neville Billimoria featuring the social science behind the concept of Greater Than Yourself. Filled with actionable principles and innovative ideas, GREATER THAN YOURSELF is perhaps the most powerful message today’s business leaders can learn.
LEARN FROM 30 WORLD-CLASS LEADERS Real Leadership is the ultimate leadership conference in a single fascinating volume, with brand-new insights from an elite group of leaders as they dialogue, debate, and even disagree about the most important things every successful leader needs to know. George Barna and coauthor Bill Dallas invite you to imagine yourself backstage at a conference featuring 30 world-class leaders. As you join them in the greenroom, you’ll be privy to their provocative conversations on subjects including: — defining what makes someone a leader — knowing how to identify, communicate, and get commitment to vision — touchstones for leading effectively: what to look for and how to measure performance — earning and maintaining people’s trust — developing character traits that honor God, serve people, and empower self — establishing and retaining the moral authority to lead — knowing how power is derived and how to use it appropriately Listen in. Learn from the best. The way you view leadership will never be the same.
Real Leadership Real Change is a call to action on behalf of young people everywhere. In spite of the pace of change in our lives, little has changed in the way we educate our children. It is time to redefine the purpose of public education and take the bold actions necessary to make a difference. Real Change will happen when Real Leaders address organizational culture and design while building trust and respect among all stakeholders. This book gives practical examples and challenges that will put you on the path to being the Real Leader you need to be. You will read the story of a Canadian school community that received the Order of Excellence from The National Quality Institute, as a result of their focused quest for making a difference. While serving a rainbow of faiths, cultures, and socio-economic groups, the school achieved extraordinary results through the efforts of everyone in the school community. Students, staff, and parents worked together in an atmosphere of mutual respect and shared responsibility to maximize student learning. Learning encompassed academic, social and emotional growth, with real successes in student gain scores and character development alike. Real Leaders made Real Change....
