Smart Leadership

Escape the mediocrity that ensnares so many in business and become a better, more effective leader. Have you ever wondered what it would take to be a better leader, or achieve your wildest dreams, or make a bigger difference in the world? The answer lies in the choices you make: about everything from how you spend your time to the way you view the world. Smart Leadership is the latest essential business title from internationally bestselling author of Win the Heart and Chess Not Checkers Mark Miller. In this book, he shares the four research-based “smart choices” the best leaders make to scale their influence and results. By teaching you how to Confront Reality, Grow Capacity, Fuel Curiosity, and Create Change, Miller will help you: Bring fresh eyes and fresh thinking to your leadership approach. Increase your confidence in your ability to make a difference. Lead at levels you never thought possible. Accelerate your learning curve so that all these benefits come faster and more naturally. With this guide, your leadership—and your life—will be transformed forever.

A proven approach for helping leaders and teams work together to achieve better decisions, greater commitment, and stronger results More than ever, effective leadership requires us to work as a team, but many leaders struggle to get the results they need. When stakes are high, you can't get great results by just changing what you do. You also need to change how you think. Organizational psychologist and leadership consultant Roger Schwarz applies his 30+ years of experience working with leadership teams to reveal how leaders can drastically improve results by changing their individual and team mindset. Provides practical guidance to help teams increase decision quality, decrease implementation time, foster innovation, get commitment, reduce costs and increase trust Outlines 5 core values leadership teams can adopt to exponentially improve results Author of The Skilled Facilitator and The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook Get the results you and your team need. Start by applying the practical wisdom of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams.

In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player. In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues. Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.

In many jobs people work their way up through a hierarchy, an experience that prepares them for managing a team. In some professions, such as law, finance, accountancy, academia, engineering, education and healthcare, individuals may find themselves managing a team of equals. This book uses 50 simple lessons to show the reader in concise, pithy prose how to manage a team of equals with intelligence and diplomacy. Each lesson features a short introduction and example from the authors' experience, showing you how skills can be acquired. These are then followed by 6-10 action points to implement immediately. Core leadership skills are reevaluated for the leader of a smart team. The book teaches you core skills such as decision making and delegating, but also soft skills such as delivering good and bad news to team members and how to realise more general aims such as building trust and growing your team. The authors also offer advice on how to look after yourself as a team leader, how to build resilience in tough situations, but also how to develop creativity and extend your skill base so that you are constantly learning.

Expert Help for the Special Challenges of Managing Other Leaders Whether you were born a leader or have had leadership thrust upon you, you’re in for a whole new set of challenges when managing other leaders. Think of the qualities that have brought you to a leadership role: your vision, confidence, and charisma, or perhaps your experience, unique skills, expertise, or network of powerful allies. Now remind yourself that other leaders share some or all of these qualities with you. The leaders you are called upon to lead may be other executives, highly educated experts, investors, board members, government officials, doctors, lawyers, or other professionals. The potential contributions of these elites to any organization are vital, but the likelihood of friction is also high if you don’t manage relationships carefully. In any case, they are people with significant resources -- and strong opinions. How do you leverage the assets of the talented and powerful while making sure that egos remain unbruised? Leading Leaders breaks the challenge down into the Seven Daily Tasks of Leadership, and shows you how to carry out each task when you have to manage other leaders. The seven tasks and the special challenges they entail in leading leaders are: 1. Direction How do you negotiate a vision for the organization that other leaders will buy into? 2. Integration How do you make stars a team? 3. Mediation How do you resolve conflicts over turf and power among other leaders so the organization can move forward? 4. Education How do you educate people who think they are already educated? 5. Motivation How do you move other leaders who already seem “to have everything” to do the right thing for the organization? 6. Representation How do you lead your organization’s outside constituents while still leading leaders inside? 7. Trust Creation How do you gain and keep other leaders’ trust, the vital capital that your own leadership depends on? Drawing on the author’s own leadership experience as well as his research in the corporate, political, academic, and professional worlds, Leading Leaders answers these questions with a clear set of effective rules for all managers to follow in successfully leading other leaders.

"A thought-provoking, accessible, and essential exploration of why some leaders (called "Diminishers") drain capability and intelligence from their teams while others (called "Multipliers") amplify it to produce better results"--Provided by publisher.

Smart Leadership provides a completely up to date overview of thecurrent thinking on leadership. It outlines the latest theories andprinciples you need to apply to be a successful leader and includestips and wisdom from the greatest business thinkers andwriters. Smart books are essential primers to the key issues facing businesspeople. They are practical and action-oriented, providing instantknowledge for ambitious and hungry professionals who want to make alasting impression throughout their career. Smart books aredesigned to give killer approaches to key business subjects, anddeliver sound principles in a style that is both informative andhas attitude. They are the prefect resource for time-starved,information-hungry business people everywhere!

Wherever they are in their career, this guide will give professionals a comprehensive understanding of the basic building blocks of effective leadership and management. For all professionals, knowledge of the key elements of high-quality leadership is vital, whether they are existing managers, taking on additional managerial responsibilities, or looking ahead to their career goals. This base of knowledge stretches from the individual - leading yourself - to the group, leading teams and even entire organizations. In tackling all these key aspects, the book equips individuals to progress in any area of leadership and management, from team-building to strategic planning. It also addresses the unique challenges of remote leadership that have arisen as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is an essential guide for anyone looking to thrive in a new era of modern leadership.