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A revolutionary approach to leadership training and development that enacts a practical, actionable system that identifies and builds the strengths needed to be successful at work.
One of The Globe & Mail's Top 10 Business books of the Year! Rethink Everything You Know About Leadership Strengths "A must-read for anyone wanting to positively stand out in an organization or for leaders wanting to raise the overall performance of the organization." -- Cindy Brinkley, Vice President, Global Human Resources, General Motors "Zenger Folkman's findings related to companion behaviors is exciting. It enhances what's been presented in prior books and makes extraordinary leadership seem like an achievable goal. I would recommend this book to anyone committed to the journey." -- Pam Mabry, Director, Human Resources, The Boeing Company "The authors take the groundbreaking concept of driving leadership effectiveness by building our strengths to a whole new level of practical implementation, providing us with a brilliantly clear road map. I have found this body of work to be absolutely invaluable . . . I cannot imagine a person in a leadership role today who would not find value from reading this book cover to cover." -- Loren M. Starr, Senior Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer, Invesco Ltd. How to Be Exceptional is a milestone in the emerging business case for evidence-based management. Building on two decades of earlier research, the authors brilliantly lay out a simple, concrete, scientifically validated model for achieving consistently superior business results through leadership. . . . Its magic is its simplicity, pragmatism, and focus." -- Eric Severson, Senior Vice President, Talent, Gap Inc. "How to Be Exceptional is the best book on professional development I have read in decades. It reinforces the emerging wisdom that the path to greatness is really about building profound strengths, rather than through relentlessly focusing on one’s weaknesses. This is a great road map for any leader seeking to optimize their growth and impact." -- Michael A. Peel, Yale University, Vice President, Human Resources and Administration
In their bestselling work The ExtraordinaryLeader, performance thought leaders JohnZenger and Joseph Folkman revealed the 16key competencies that separate the top 10percent of leaders from the rest. Since thatbook’s publication, they and coauthor ScottEdinger discovered, through an extensivestudy conducted over four years, that leaderswho possessed the ability to inspire and motivateoutperformed all others. The authors found that the impact of inspiringand motivating others is consistent acrossdifferent kinds of organizations and withindifferent cultures. The Inspiring Leader revealsthe authors’ newest proprietary research onhow top leaders inspire teams to greatness.It discusses the behaviors exhibited by themost successful leaders and includes adviceon how to implement them. Drawing fromstatistically significant data and objective empiricalevidence, the book shows how to: Establish a clear vision and direction Use the power of emotions Create stretch goals for your team Foster innovation and risk taking Encourage teamwork and collaboration Champion change, and much more Zenger, Folkman, and Edinger lay out thestrategies and concepts used by the world’sgreatest leaders to motivate their teams. WithThe Inspiring Leader as your guide, you willlearn how to put those strategies to work inyour own business.
This effective guide shows you how to identify and develop the strengths of both yourself and your people, and ensure that talent is spotted and nurtured at every step. Strengths-Focused Leadership is the only step-by-step practical guide on the market to identifying and enhancing people’s innate strengths - which leads to higher levels of energy, job satisfaction and engagement. Rather than relying on online assessment tools, this book shows you how to discover your strengths yourself and how to use this process to assist others. The authors have used their executive coaching backgrounds to build a practical model for using and applying the strengths focus. The MORE model focuses on 4 key elements: Myself – how do I identify and develop my own strengths and overcome my weaknesses? Others – how do I help my people do the same? Regular conversations – how do I ensure that ‘strengths thinking’ becomes part of business as usual? Employee processes – how do I apply a strengths focus to recruitment, induction and performance? Broken into 3 chapters on each element, the Model teaches you how to use the strengths focus to tackle key business challenges – collaboration, change and strategy.
Learn to flourish as a leader so that a mindset of growth, optimism, and positivity spreads to your employees and shows up in the customer experience. In the world of work, the single greatest asset of successful individuals, teams, and organizations is their mindset—what happens in between their ears. It’s not the corporate strategy, the sales compensation plan, or the market segments they’re pursuing. It is what each leader, team member, and employee chooses to focus on, believe, and create for themselves and others. 7 Principles of Transformational Leadership presents the fundamental concepts whose implementation will result in dramatic revenue, performance, and relationship growth. Specifically, leaders will learn to: Live their professional and personal lives with unbridled purpose and passion. Execute strategic priorities more effectively and with accelerated results. Retain the brightest and best talent. Have employees, key stakeholders, and managers enthusiastically follow them. Be exemplars of innovation, growth, and positive mindsets. Cascade excellence throughout their organizations. You may have employees with all the talent in the world, but you’ll never achieve remarkable results until you change your employees’ mindset. 7 Principles of Transformational Leadership will help you convert your human potential into accelerated business results.
Discover your unique edge. Each of us has our own set of strengths, abilities and skills that allow us to shine and deliver exceptional results. These are our underlying qualities that energise us and we are great at (or have potential to become great at). But how do you understand and build upon your strengths and how do you inspire others to do the same? Optimize Your Strengths provides a proven strengths-based approach to achieving peak performance for you and your team. You'll discover your core strengths and learn how to use these to bring out the best in yourself and inspire passion, innovation and engagement in those you lead. Using the Stretch Leadership Model, leadership and organisational development experts, James Brook and Paul Brewerton, show you how to lead beyond boundaries and develop positive habits that drive you to continuously improve and take advantage of new opportunities. Through a fictional narrative that brings the subject to life; follow the journey of Joe (a leader facing both personal and professional crises), as you learn to: Discover, analyse and grow you and your team's natural strengths and abilities in pursuit of a compelling vision Develop an energising and powerful leadership approach based on strengths, solutions and possibilities Use a Stretch Toolbox of six step-by-step models to uncover your leadership edge and grow into an inspiring leader Get hands-on experience working through chapter exercises on an accompanying website Take real action to continually enhance your strengths and improve your weaknesses
The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?
Key themes in the book are: 1. The need to revaluate how people contribute and create value in today's economy – it is about knowledge, innovation and relationships today rather than executive potential tomorrow. 2. Challenging the conventional wisdom that talent refers to a 'special few' rather than the 'vital many'. Perhaps we don't have enough because we keep looking in the wrong places and doing the wrong things? 3. Conditions facing organizations are tough and competitive and markets are turbulent. To withstand this, we need to build talented organizations and talented individuals. 4. Interdependence between people within and across organizations is critical. The way that each individual relies on each other and how talent is realised through social and team ties makes a decisive, defining difference. 5. Individuals control when and who their potential is shared with. The idea that an organization can manage talent and potential is an outdated conceit. 6. The nature of work itself matters hugely. The extent to which it is stimulating and engaging – and how people can make the connection with what they do and the wider difference it makes – is vital. 7. The way talent is generated is affected by the whole 'ecology' of an organization – its sense of purpose, rituals, the behaviour of its leaders, how it hires and how it fires people all influence the way talent is generated.
