Small Acts Of Leadership

In business today, there is no offline and there is no downtime. Professionals are both exhausted and depleted. Being constantly tethered to our work through technology makes us overwhelmed and shortsighted, and deprives us of time for meaningful reflection or thoughtful connection to our professional communities, and often even to our own families. For us to thrive-not simply survive-in this accelerating economy, we need to adopt small, intentional behaviors and practice them each day. From simply taking care of our rest and exercise to building our self-confidence and embracing challenges, author Shawn Hunter's latest book Small Acts of Leadership will guide you through a series of incremental steps you can take to build a stronger version of yourself and make a broader impact in the world. Weaving in personal life stories and meaningful interviews with business leaders around the world, Hunter presents the reader with twelve critical competencies that are consistently present in the daily behaviors of today's most successful leaders.

A new edition of the bestseller that has helped aspiring leaders worldwide advance their careers and step up to larger leadership roles. You aspire to lead with greater impact. The problem is you're busy executing on today's demands. You know you have to carve out time from your "day job" to build your leadership skills, but it’s easy to let immediate problems and old mindsets get in the way. Herminia Ibarra—one of the world's foremost experts on leadership—shows how individuals at all levels can step up to leadership by making small but crucial changes in their jobs, their networks, and themselves. In Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, Ibarra offers advice to: Redefine your job in order to make more strategic contributions Diversify your network so that you connect to, and learn from, a wider range of stakeholders Become more playful with your self-concept, allowing your familiar—and possibly outdated—leadership style to evolve Ibarra turns the usual leadership advice—generate insight about yourself through reflection and analysis of your strengths and weaknesses—on its head by arguing that you must first act and experiment your way into trying new things. The valuable external perspective you gain from direct experiences and experimentation—which Ibarra calls outsight—provides new and critical information on what kind of work is important to you, how you should invest your time, why and which relationships matter, and, ultimately, who you want to become. Updated with new examples and self-assessments, this book gives you the tools to start acting like a leader and advancing your career to the next level.

The New York Times bestseller by the acclaimed, bestselling author of Start With Why and Together is Better. Now with an expanded chapter and appendix on leading millennials, based on Simon Sinek's viral video "Millenials in the workplace" (150+ million views). Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home feeling fulfilled. This is not a crazy, idealized notion. Today, in many successful organizations, great leaders create environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things. In his work with organizations around the world, Simon Sinek noticed that some teams trust each other so deeply that they would literally put their lives on the line for each other. Other teams, no matter what incentives are offered, are doomed to infighting, fragmentation and failure. Why? The answer became clear during a conversation with a Marine Corps general. "Officers eat last," he said. Sinek watched as the most junior Marines ate first while the most senior Marines took their place at the back of the line. What's symbolic in the chow hall is deadly serious on the battlefield: Great leaders sacrifice their own comfort--even their own survival--for the good of those in their care. Too many workplaces are driven by cynicism, paranoia, and self-interest. But the best ones foster trust and cooperation because their leaders build what Sinek calls a "Circle of Safety" that separates the security inside the team from the challenges outside. Sinek illustrates his ideas with fascinating true stories that range from the military to big business, from government to investment banking.

Many people think leadership is a higher calling that resides exclusively with a select few who practice and preach big, complex leadership philosophies. But as this practical book reveals, what’s most important for leadership is principled consistency. Time and again, small things done well build trust and respect within a team. Using stories from his time at Netscape, Apple, and Slack, Michael Lopp presents a series of small but compelling practices to help you build leadership skills. You’ll learn how to create teams that are highly productive, highly respected, and highly trusted. Lopp has been speaking and writing about this topic for over a decade and now maintains a Slack leadership channel with over 13,000 members. The essays in this book examine the practical skills Lopp learned from exceptional leaders—as a manager at Netscape, a senior manager and director at Apple, and an executive at Slack. You’ll learn how to apply these lessons to your own experience.

A down-to-earth, behind-the scenes account that goes beyond the usual self-improvement book to put a human face on the role of leadership in our lives

Widely acknowledged as the world's foremost authority on leadership, the author provides a collection of his acclaimed "Harvard Business Review" articles.

Using his own story, the international bestselling author shows readers how 3 changes in mindset can help them shape their future. Synchronicity is an inspirational guide to developing the most essential leadership capacity for our time: how we can collectively shape our future. Through the telling of his life story, Jaworski posits that a real leader sets the stage on which “predictable miracles,” seemingly synchronistic in nature, can—and do—occur. He shows that this capacity has more to do with our being—our total orientation of character and consciousness—than with what we do. Leadership, he explains, is about creating—day by day—a domain in which human beings continually deepen their understanding of reality and are able to participate in shaping the future. He describes three basic shifts of mind required if we are to create and discover an unfolding future—shifts in how we see the world, how we understand relationships, and how we make commitments—and offers a new definition of leadership that applies to all types of leaders. “A deeply personal and moving narrative that opens up new vistas on compassion, commitment, and connectedness—and hence on leadership.” —James MacGregor Burns, Pulitzer Prize–winning presidential biographer and Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government, Emeritus, Williams College “An insightful, profound, and readable contribution to understanding the personal side of leadership.” —Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, and author of SuperCorp “An unusually thoughtful exploration of the “inner” aspects of leadership, particularly in the business arena.... Eschewing easy answers and ten-point plans to success, presenting the insights he has garnered from forward-looking thinkers including David Bohm and Rupert Sheldrake, Jaworski offers a searching and wise brief that deserves to be read in boardrooms everywhere.” —Publishers Weekly

Positive leaders are able to dramatically expand their people’s—and their own—capacity for excellence. And they accomplish this without enormous expenditures or huge heroic gestures. Here leading scholars—including Adam Grant, author of the bestselling Give and Take; positive organizational scholarship movement cofounders Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn; and thirteen more—describe how this is being done at companies such as Wells Fargo, Ford, Kelly Services, Burt’s Bees, Connecticut’s Griffin Hospital, the Michigan-based Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, and many others. They show that, like the butterfly in Brazil whose flapping wings create a typhoon in Texas, you can create profound positive change in your organization through simple actions and attitude shifts.