Leading With Wisdom

In Leading With Wisdom, Jann Freed takes the several years she spent interviewing more than 100 respected leaders, and distills their advice into eight practices that underpin leaders who connect and inspire others to achieve high performance. She takes the words of heavyweights such as Warren Bennis, Peter Senge, Stephen Covey, Marshall Goldsmith, Peter Block, and Margaret Wheatley, and presents their insights on what works and what doesn’t. Each chapter concludes with a practical application section that details ways to integrate the concepts into workshops and personal development. Use the workshop and personal development suggestions to apply the eight practices into your daily life. Learn from the words and personal stories of highly respected leaders. Integrate the best of yourself and your life into your daily tasks and roles. This book is for anyone in a position of influence in an organization, or those who train these individuals. It’s also for those who feel they are drowning in information, but starving for wisdom about what behaviors nurture people, organizations, and communities at large. Discussing her research process with these experts, Jann says, "When I asked about leadership—they told me about life." This book helps leaders integrate the best of themselves and their lives into the tasks and roles of leaders.

A practical guide for leading others with wisdom, integrity, and humanity This book argues that great leadership requires wisdom. Rather than a formulaic managerial approach to leadership, Lead with Wisdom presents the case for leadership based on our shared humanity and the stories that unite us. What emerges is a model of leadership based on learning to read key patterns of human experience: the way language shapes our reality, how we form new meaning through conversation, how relationships determine influence and how we deal with uncertainty. It presents readers with the tools and illustrated examples to implement the four arts of leading wisely: how to draw out and create a new story in the organization, how to find and leverage the brilliance of people, how to speak with promise to restore meaning and hope, and how to show grace in dealing with the most demanding people and circumstances. Offers a leadership approach rooted in our shared humanity and the stories which unite and define us Ideal for corporate leaders, middle managers, administrators, and anyone else with management responsibilities Written by a popular speaker on leadership and the author of Arts of the Wise Leader, with personal CEO experience and a PhD in the history of ideas Structured as one key idea per page or double page spread with funky line drawings supporting the concepts and skills For anyone who wants to lead with wisdom, integrity, and humanity, Lead with Wisdom offers a welcome alternative to traditionally robotic and formulaic leadership strategies.

Reading this book won't make Christian leadership easy. But it will make it easier. The strategies and principles here won't remove all frustration from Christian leadership.But they will make it less frustrating. This book won't solve every problem. But it will help you solve a whole bunch of unnecessary problems that you really don't need to face.- Craig Hamilton, Author.- Back cover.

King Solomon transformed the tiny tribal nation of Israel into an economic and military superpower. His brilliance as an international financier made Israel the wealthiest nation of the ancient world. And he did it with integrity. Solomon left us twenty-eight profound leadership strategies--as valid today as when the proverbs were written. The same extraordinary wisdom that transformed Solomon's world can revolutionize every aspect of leadership--from assembling a cohesive team to managing a crisis--for any CEO, manager, pastor, coach, military strategist, or government leader. Pat Williams, senior vice president of the Orlando Magic, uses time-honored principles, real-life stories, and compelling takeaways to apply Solomon's ancient insights to the high-speed world in which we live today.

A practical guide for leading others with wisdom, integrity, and humanity This book argues that great leadership requires wisdom. Rather than a formulaic managerial approach to leadership, Lead with Wisdom presents the case for leadership based on our shared humanity and the stories that unite us. What emerges is a model of leadership based on learning to read key patterns of human experience: the way language shapes our reality, how we form new meaning through conversation, how relationships determine influence and how we deal with uncertainty. It presents readers with the tools and illustrated examples to implement the four arts of leading wisely: how to draw out and create a new story in the organization, how to find and leverage the brilliance of people, how to speak with promise to restore meaning and hope, and how to show grace in dealing with the most demanding people and circumstances. Offers a leadership approach rooted in our shared humanity and the stories which unite and define us Ideal for corporate leaders, middle managers, administrators, and anyone else with management responsibilities Written by a popular speaker on leadership and the author of Arts of the Wise Leader, with personal CEO experience and a PhD in the history of ideas Structured as one key idea per page or double page spread with funky line drawings supporting the concepts and skills For anyone who wants to lead with wisdom, integrity, and humanity, Lead with Wisdom offers a welcome alternative to traditionally robotic and formulaic leadership strategies.

Many business executives are increasingly becoming workaholic human-doings, longing to be full and integrated human-beings. They aspire to live with integrity, where their thoughts, values, words and deeds are in harmony. The problem is that they don't know how to do so in a business world that is increasingly characterised by complexity, turbulence and greed. Leading with Wisdom provides food for thought for people dealing with these challenges. It contains stories and reflections of 31 inspiring and compassionate business leaders who care about what is truly important in life and who integrate this awareness and sensitivity into their leadership. Leaders who search for meaning, purpose and fulfilment both in the external world of business and in the internal world of consciousness and conscience. Leaders whose leadership is a natural expression of their hearts, minds and souls. In other words, leaders who lead from a spiritual basis. Such perspectives on leadership are not yet mainstream. Greed, prestige and power appear to still be prime motivating forces for leaders of the world's larger corporations. In spite of 25 years of globalisation, poverty is still devastatingly ubiquitous in many parts of the world. In striking contrast, the compensation packages of top leaders in business, particularly in the West, have skyrocketed, reaching levels that would have been considered impossible only a decade ago. What is clearly needed is a change in the mind-set, values and principles of our leaders, as well as of those who finance our enterprises, and of those who teach and mentor our future leaders. At the very minimum, what is needed is an expansion of the concept of 'success' so that it transcends the prevailing myopic focus on short-term financial gains. It can be argued that this rampant greed is gradually being tamed, not just by laws, but also by social and ethical norms. In the last two decades there has been an amazing and uplifting focus on such perspectives as business ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability. But when leaders are questioned as to why they and their organisations should promote this new and expanded sensitivity to corporate responsibility, their 'default' answer typically is that it is profitable – an efficacious means to promote classical business ends of increasing earnings and share prices. But how and why should such an expanded concept of leadership develop? What should provide the motivation for our leaders to find their way in an increasingly complex business world by using a compass that points not only to a pot of gold, but also to a path to deeper meaning and purpose in business? This book does not provide answers in the form of proposals as to new rules or laws or moral injunctions. Rather it provides a collage of perspectives in the form of stories of highly respected and successful executives who have integrated their spiritual search into their leadership so as to be "whole" people – leaders whose thoughts, words and deeds are in harmony with their most fundamental truths and longings, both at work and in their private lives. These stories tell of an emerging culture where business becomes a primary domain for both individual and organisational spiritual growth Leading with Wisdom: Spiritual-Based Leadership in Business portrays an emerging global culture. This ground-breaking book offers the experiences and perspectives of 31 top executives from 15 countries in 6 continents. It is based on extensive personal interviews. These are business people who express from first-hand experience what it is like to lead a business from a spiritual basis. They tell amazing, down-to-earth, real-life stories about how spirituality and rationality can go hand in hand in leadership and life. Their words of wisdom demonstrate that executives who lead from a spiritual basis can achieve success, recognition, peace of mind and happiness, while at the same time serving the needs of all those affected by their leadership. Written in an engaging style, where the special "voice" of each leader is heard, this book will be profoundly valuable to business leaders at every level and for all people who want to lead with integrity from a spiritual basis.

A fresh and timely approach to nurturing wise, resilient, and flexible leadership in a world of growing complexity Leaders tend to obstinately stick to the leadership style that brought them most success in the past, usually one of two extreme styles: functional leadership that focuses on operational excellence or smart leadership that focuses on growth. When a leader's focus is too functional, the organization becomes introverted and can focus too much on bottom-line profitability while missing out on top-line growth opportunities. But when leaders focus too much on smart leadership, the organization may experience quick growth but lose its effectiveness quickly. From Smart to Wise offers a new approach that balances the two styles to achieve a form of wise leadership that is both functional and smart. Drawing on inspiring real-life stories of historical and contemporary wise leaders such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and even Mahatma Gandhi, the authors identify six characteristics of wise leaders and offer a practical framework to help readers develop their own style of wise leadership. A timely and innovative approach to leadership Written by noted speakers who conduct dozens of keynote speeches and workshops, training thousands of people annually

"Management guide that uses Rudyard Kipling's poem "If--" to define leadership qualities. Uses great leaders of the past as examples of these leadership principals"--Provided by publisher.