Leading Under Pressure

"This well-researched book is a must read for all those interested in preventing crises, or, at the very least, mitigating them."---Ian Mitroff, Marshall Goldsmith School of Management, Alliant University, CA --Book Jacket.

Most business leaders can take only so much pressure before their performance slides. Yet some CEOs deliver their greatest successes when times get toughest—when customers’ preferences are shifting away from a company’s products, when new regulations are shrinking profit margins, when political unrest is destroying supply lines. In Better Under Pressure, Justin Menkes reveals the common traits that make these leaders successful. Drawing on in-depth interviews with sixty CEOs from an array of industries and performance data from two hundred other leaders, Menkes shows that great executives strive relentlessly to maximize their own potential—as well as stoke their people’s innate thirst for their own triumphs. To do so, they draw on a set of three essential and rare attributes: • Realistic optimism: They recognize the risks threatening their organization’s survival—and their own failings—while remaining confident in their ability to have an impact. • Subservience to purpose: They dedicate themselves to pursuing a noble cause and win their team’s commitment to that cause. • Finding order in chaos: They find clarity amid the many variables affecting their business by culling data and forming the conclusions that matter most to the company. The good news: these three capabilities can be learned. Drawing on a broad range of examples from real companies—including Avon, Yum Brands, Southwest, Procter & Gamble, and Ryerson Steel, to name just a few—Menkes demonstrates how each psychological attribute manifests itself in real life and enables top performance under extreme duress. He also shows you how to develop and deploy those attributes—so you can transform yourself into a leader who only shines brighter as the pressure intensifies. Deeply personal, brimming with compelling stories from real-life CEOs, and packed with powerful insights, tools, and practices, this book is a potent resource for aspiring, emerging, and seasoned business leaders alike.

Composed: The Heart and Science of Leading Under Pressure is a roadmap for standing firmly in who we are while staying connected to those who matter most to us-especially when high pressure moments come. It doesn't matter whether you are a CEO, parent, manager, or student, none of us are immune to the possibility of losing it when the pressure is on. For some people, public speaking is a fear. Maybe conflict makes you uncomfortable. For others, simply being responsible for the experience or learning of others causes you anxiety. Even for seasoned leaders who face pressure every day, showing up their best can be tough. Whether pressure makes us feel incompetent and unworthy, or mean and reactive, the impact of losing our composure is significant.Our capacity to compose ourselves when the pressure is highest, to lead strong, and to lead with care in the most difficult situations of conflict and anxiety may have the single greatest impact on our families, our teams, our organizations, and the world that surrounds us. The stakes are too high for us, and for those we love, to wait any longer.Composed: The Heart and Science of Leading Under Pressure, is based on our research on the developmental journey of thousands of leaders who have taken the Leading Under Pressure Inventory. This inventory is one of eight whole leader development tools in the WiLD Toolkit. To access the Leading Under Pressure Inventory or the entire suite of tools for yourself, your small group, team, organization, or coaching practice, visit www.wildtoolkit.com.

Nobody performs better under pressure. Regardless of the task, pressure ruthlessly diminishes our judgment, decision-making, attention, dexterity, and performance in every professional and personal arena. In Performing Under Pressure, Drs. Hendrie Weisinger and J.P. Pawliw-Fry introduce us to the concept of pressure management, offering empirically tested short term and long term solutions to help us overcome the debilitating effects of pressure. Performing Under Pressure tackles the greatest obstacle to personal success, whether in a sales presentation, at home, on the golf course, interviewing for a job, or performing onstage at Carnegie Hall. Despite sports mythology, no one "rises to the occasion" under pressure and does better than they do in practice. The reality is pressure makes us do worse, and sometimes leads us to fail utterly. But there are things we can do to diminish its effects on our performance. Performing Under Pressure draws on research from over 12,000 people, and features the latest research from neuroscience and from the frontline experiences of Fortune 500 employees and managers, Navy SEALS, Olympic and other elite athletes, and others. It offers 22 specific strategies each of us can use to reduce pressure in our personal and professional lives and allow us to better excel in whatever we do. Whether you’re a corporate manager, a basketball player, or a student preparing for the SAT, Performing Under Pressure will help you to do your best when it matters most.

The transformative mind-model for performing under stress and making pressure your advantage Used by the planet’s top performers

Be energized, but not overwhelmed What’s the most pressure you’ve ever been under? How did you react? What helped? What didn’t? Over the past five years, Dane Jensen has asked these questions of thousands of high performers—from Olympic gold medalists to Navy SEALs, politicians, executives and busy parents. What has emerged from these conversations is that while everyone’s experiences under pressure are unique, pressure follows patterns and develops in predictable ways. If we can recognize the patterns, we can improve our ability to sidestep the biological traps that can sabotage us—and use the energy that accompanies pressure to thrive. The Power of Pressure combines the insights gathered from Jensen’s work with the latest research in biology and neuroscience to help you understand and use the “pressure equation” of importance, uncertainty and volume escape the traps of pressure with effective tools and tactics be ambidextrous so that you can handle pressure both in peak pressure moments and over the long haul reduce tension, sleep better and have more energy so that you can meet challenges head-on recognize pressure moments so that you can prepare for when you will likely the feel the heat leverage strategies so that you can give everything you’ve got when it’s most important And more! How we navigate our highest-pressure moments has a huge impact on the overall trajectory of our lives, both in terms of how successful we are and how much we enjoy the journey along the way.

"This well-researched book is a must read for all those interested in preventing crises, or, at the very least, mitigating them."---Ian Mitroff, Marshall Goldsmith School of Management, Alliant University, CA --Book Jacket.

Divided into three sections, this volume firstly seeks to explore social contexts of educational leadership. The second section explores the experiences of educational leaders in various contexts, while the third section of this volume looks at the consequences, unintended and otherwise, of the neoliberal commodification of education.