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The more you manage your employees, the more dependent they become-and the tougher your life becomes. It's the key paradox of management-and Powerful Leadership helps you cut right through it. This book distills seven powerful leadership principles into a natural, efficient, complete approach to unleashing your employees' potential - and your own. These principles simplify your life, reduce your stress, and transform management into an opportunity for unprecedented personal growth.
Powerful Leadership: Free People to Take the Lead
Powerful Leadership: How to Unleash the Potential in Others
Preface.
Acknowledgments.
Proclamation on Leadership.
1. Houston, We Have a Problem!
Out-of-Sync Systems. Living in a Quandary. Managers Have Huge Blind Spots. An Old View Restated. Teams: the Panacea? A New View Restated. Yes, Houston, We Do Have a Problem. Houston, We Have a Solution.
Let Them Take the Lead. Avoid Sheep Dog Management. Freedom First. I Hate This Place. I Love Working Here. What Comes Next?
What Is Creativity? Does Creativity Lead to More Fun at Work? Helping Others Find Joy in Their Work. It's Okay to Laugh at Work! Jump Out of the Box; Pop a Cork. How Does a Leader Support Creativity, Innovation, and Fun? Everyone Has a Million-Dollar Idea. Three Alternatives for Identifying Innovations. Stimulating Creativity in the Workplace. Buying a Hotel in 15 Minutes! Rules 23 and 24. Toyota's Approach to Creativity. Two Magical Questions. Left Brain, Right Brain, Broccoli Brain. Test Your Creativity. Improving Overall Organizational Creativity. Fostering a Creative Climate. Using Creativity in Business Processes. Five Great Creativity Suggestions. Unlocking Your Own Creativity. One Final Word about Creative Thinking. A Look Ahead.
A Cohort. User-Friendly Managers. Treating Others as Cohorts Is Natural. The Customer Is Cohort. How to Manage Your Boss. I Don't Want to Be Your Parent Anymore. If You Push Hard, They Will Push Back. A Cohort Walks Around and Inquires. A Less Complex Form of Leading People. Cohort Leadership. How to Build Cohorts in Organizations. Cohort Relationships Are Adult to Adult. From Boss to Cohort. A Look Ahead.
Why Master the 4E's of Involvement? The Meaning of Performance. E 1 = Envisioning. E 2 = Enabling. E 3 = Energizing. E 4 = Ensuring Results. Integrating the Four E's of Involvement. Why Inviting People to Be Involved Is Important. A Look Ahead.
The Process of Redirection. From Redirecting to Applause in Four Easy Steps. Reality Therapy. Avoid Undermining Employees and Cohorts. Confrontational Anticipation Scares the Heck Out of People. Praising Is Good, but Applauding Is Better. What Is the Most Powerful Workplace Motivator? End the Everyday Put-down. A Look Ahead.
What Are Best Policies? Where Do Ethical Standards and Guidelines Come From? Require Everyone to Violate the Principle. Why Have Explicit Ethical Principles? Manipulation Is Unethical. What Ethical Principles Should be Included in Your Code? Testing Your Decisions. Ethics and the Peaceful Mind. Does Ethical Behavior Pay? Take the Highest Road. An Ethical Bill of Rights. A Look Ahead.
Getting Hit at Work. Can You Survive? Six Strategies for Staying on the Peaceful Path. Are You on the Peaceful Path? A Look Ahead.
How Are You Doing as a Powerful Leader? How to Change. A Short Planning Exercise. What Do You Really Need to Change? Using Mental Practice and Idealization. Encouraging Change in Others. Fast Forward to the Basics.
Powerful Leadership embodies a new paradigm of leadership that respects and unleashes the potential of people. This is anything but a Pollyanna approach to a serious issue in organizations around the world. The development of more powerful leadership has been and continues to be one of the most concrete goals of society. In fact, having powerful leaders is a must for the survival of companies, institutions, governments, and even countries. Leadership development is a global issue.
This book identifies seven essential changes that elevate leadership and unleashes the latent potential of people in organizations. Leading people in new and invigorating ways must be the paramount objective in fulfilling the vision of the new economy.
We do not intend to survey all the literature on leadership or incorporate all of the current perspectives on leadership in this book. We have, however, included references and insights derived from the extant literature that supplements our perspective in a special section at the end of the book. Please study through those insights for additional ways of thinking about powerful leadership principles. The speeches in Appendix A are primarily examples of the thinking of contemporary individuals who have succeeded in leadership positions, and they deserve your careful reading.
We have avoided putting traditional reference symbols in the body of the book, such as names with dates in parentheses, but we have included publication data in the section on references. We have included some sayings and observations between paragraphs to provide further insights and to occasionally provide humorous interludes. In some cases the sayings are part of the folklore of the American culture and do not have specific authors.
This book was written to be read by individuals who serve in leadership positions at all levels in the organization, from chief executives to supervisors, as well as by leaders in the community who serve as administrators and board members of volunteer groups and organizations. Government leaders, business leaders, religious leaders, community leaders, educational leaders, and leaders in sports and entertainment will all find a new way to work with their cohorts if they follow the essentials described in this book.
Although the chapters of this book tend to follow in a logical sequence, the basic themes appear in every chapter. Themes like free people to take the lead, enable them to contribute more to the organization, help them grow and develop as well as enjoy their work, and keep yourself strong enough to withstand some of the frustrations and anxieties that come as you serve in leadership roles can be found in variations throughout the book.
The content overlaps in certain ways, resulting in positive repetition of the ideas right when you need the reinforcement. Though each chapter can be studied separately and will assist you in making some improvements in the way you lead, the full impact of these seven essential changes occurs when all of the topics are implemented simultaneously. Consider how difficult it is to encourage trust, risk taking, creativity, and innovation when you appear cool and aloof to workers. An awful clash occurs when you try to free people to take the lead but come down on them with criticism and fail to applaud their accomplishments. Occasional standing ovations thrill even the most staid workers and support them in making changes to improve the workplace or work process.
Leaders who free their cohorts to look at processes and systems more innovatively increase the effectiveness of their quality improvement programs. At the same time, working with fewer restrictions, cohorts implement quality improvement efforts more smoothly. When the structure of a work system is changed to introduce teams, cohorts will work more collaboratively and energetically.
Tensions in all parts of the world seek to undermine our confidence in leaders. Misdeeds and deliberate attacks on both our workplaces and our sensitivities shake the confidence we feel in anyoneUs ability to lead. This should encourage all of us to examine the mindsets that we bring into leadership positions. We know that much can be done to develop, improve, advance, and make progress in the way in which we lead. The seven changes proposed in this book restore trust, unleash the power of workers, and uncomplicate the lives of leaders.