What Exceptional Executives Need To Know

Written by five leading executive coaches, Becoming an Exceptional Executive Coach is the answer to any businesses’ need for more individualized development resources. Drawing on their varied backgrounds, the authors show you that coaching is about more than simply learning a set of skills. Rather, it’s a whole-person activity--one in which coaches connect to and serve clients in unique and personal ways to help them grow in work and in life. You’ll learn how to draw on your professional experience, knowledge of organizationally relevant topics, strong helping skills, coaching-specific competencies, and most important, your ability to use your own intuition to become a more effective leadership coach. You will examine the crucial content areas that drive their work such as: engagement goal setting needs assessment data gathering feedback development planning With case studies that bring the material to life in each chapter and a plethora of additional charts, development plans, and contracts, Becoming an Exceptional Executive Coach continues the discussion of the role of coaching in organizational contexts and equips you to develop your own winning strategies that will advance their careers--and the careers of countless others.

Rising to Power is a time tested, wisdom-packed guide for executives desiring to be exceptional leaders as they navigate their ascent to the highest levels of their organization. Nearly two-thirds of all leaders entering executive roles lack sufficient understanding of what is required and are unprepared for what they will face, which explains why 50 percent of them fail within the first eighteen months. For decades we have known that failure rates among transitioning executives are too high, causing exorbitant costs, damaged organizations, and stalled careers. Still, little has changed in the way organizations prepare leaders to assume executive positions. Three-fourths of new executives say their organization did not adequately prepare them for the executive office. It doesn’t have to be this way. If you are an executive—or you’re aspiring to be one—and considering how you will navigate the ascent in your organization, Rising to Power will serve you like no other resource can. Odds are high you have watched a promising executive fail on their way up. Like many, you scratched your head, wondering, “Why didn’t they see that coming?” Now you’re hoping not to be the next one that falls. Rising to Power will guide you on a predictable journey of ascent, through the transitional moments and issues most common in executive failure. It will bolster your confidence, open your eyes, deepen your insight, and if you let it, reveal your own proclivities for failure that you may not even recognize. Based on a ten-year longitudinal study, Rising to Power offers a profoundly new way of looking at an executive’s rise in an organization, and offers an approach to significantly increase your odds of success.

The Coachable Leader speaks to executives who are serious and willing to reflect upon, refine, and possibly reconstitute their leadership practices. If you want to be one of those people, it's imperative that you remain coachable so you can gain insights on how to encourage positive behaviors and avoid executive actions that sabotage mutual success. Use this book to seize your opportunity to become an exceptional leader. Through its clearly outlined chapters, complete with real-life business examples and comprehensive graphics, you'll learn how to balance the seven fundamentals for effective leadership development: - collaborative convincement, - emotional strength, - integrative ethics, - provident power, - interactive influence, - team forbearance, - systems discernment. With these foundational concepts, you'll discover how to initiate a more cooperative and collaborative approach to leadership. As you seek to become a coachable leader, you'll develop skills, techniques, and tools to inspire and accomplish tangible, bottomline results. Achieve a more balanced approach to reaching your goals with The Coachable Leader

One of The Globe & Mail's Top 10 Business books of the Year! Rethink Everything You Know About Leadership Strengths "A must-read for anyone wanting to positively stand out in an organization or for leaders wanting to raise the overall performance of the organization." -- Cindy Brinkley, Vice President, Global Human Resources, General Motors "Zenger Folkman's findings related to companion behaviors is exciting. It enhances what's been presented in prior books and makes extraordinary leadership seem like an achievable goal. I would recommend this book to anyone committed to the journey." -- Pam Mabry, Director, Human Resources, The Boeing Company "The authors take the groundbreaking concept of driving leadership effectiveness by building our strengths to a whole new level of practical implementation, providing us with a brilliantly clear road map. I have found this body of work to be absolutely invaluable . . . I cannot imagine a person in a leadership role today who would not find value from reading this book cover to cover." -- Loren M. Starr, Senior Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer, Invesco Ltd. How to Be Exceptional is a milestone in the emerging business case for evidence-based management. Building on two decades of earlier research, the authors brilliantly lay out a simple, concrete, scientifically validated model for achieving consistently superior business results through leadership. . . . Its magic is its simplicity, pragmatism, and focus." -- Eric Severson, Senior Vice President, Talent, Gap Inc. "How to Be Exceptional is the best book on professional development I have read in decades. It reinforces the emerging wisdom that the path to greatness is really about building profound strengths, rather than through relentlessly focusing on one’s weaknesses. This is a great road map for any leader seeking to optimize their growth and impact." -- Michael A. Peel, Yale University, Vice President, Human Resources and Administration

The measure of the executive, Peter Drucker reminds us, is the ability to 'get the right things done'. Usually this involves doing what other people have overlooked, as well as avoiding what is unproductive. He identifies five talents as essential to effectiveness, and these can be learned; in fact, they must be learned just as scales must be mastered by every piano student regardless of his natural gifts. Intelligence, imagination and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that convert these into results. One of the talents is the management of time. Another is choosing what to contribute to the particular organization. A third is knowing where and how to apply your strength to best effect. Fourth is setting up the right priorities. And all of them must be knitted together by effective decision-making. How these can be developed forms the main body of the book. The author ranges widely through the annals of business and government to demonstrate the distinctive skill of the executive. He turns familiar experience upside down to see it in new perspective. The book is full of surprises, with its fresh insights into old and seemingly trite situations.

This book helps build Exceptional Executive Teams. Executive leadership teams using the teaching in this book perform at an elite level. Building Exceptional Executive Teams. Exceptional denotes individuals or teams performing and accomplishing at an exceptionally high level. Exceptional Executive Teams make better happen every day℠. Every organization deserves an exceptional executive team. Exceptional is a way of life, a journey, not a destination. The pursuit of exceptional status is a virtue. Exceptional performance and accomplishments include meeting or exceeding and continually raising the bar by increasing goals, key performance indicators (KPIs), and expectations. Elites "Make better happen every day℠." They establish a healthy environment with a strong and positive culture in which all individuals enjoy vibrant and rewarding lives. exceptionalexecutiveteams.com Hearts, Minds, and Lives Executive Leaders must be fully vested in others with their hearts, minds, and lives to inspire them. Leaders must continually build their thoughts, attitudes, and motives with genuine care about and concern for others. Done well, this cascades throughout the organization. It inspires and transforms lives. Accomplishments of growth, performance, and value are significant for individuals personally and their organizations. What leaders accomplish in the hearts, minds, and lives of individuals will last. What gets accomplished with the organization's numbers is also very important, but the specifics are often forgotten. We need robust numbers to support the thriving lives of all the hearts and minds. What happens in hearts, minds, and lives is never forgotten. Lives and numbers work very well together. Peace and exceptional performance are much easier to accomplish when there is structure, encouragement, collaboration, inspiration, respect, and sincere concern for others. Executive leaders of organizations are responsible for building an environment in which individuals live vibrant and rewarding lives. To help this movement along, I have devoted years to building the system presented in this book. I wish I had been taught this and lived accordingly earlier in my life. I would have contributed much more positively to others lives. For me, the information in this book is a form of turning away from old ways, and a description of how I am going forward. "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." ─Thomas Jefferson

In his sixty-five-year consulting career, Peter F. Drucker, widely regarded as the father of modern management, identified eight practices that can make any executive effective. Leadership is not about charisma or extroversion. It’s about these practices: Effective executives ask, “What needs to be done?” They also ask, “What is right for the enterprise?” They develop action plans. They take responsibility for decisions. They take responsibility for communicating. They focus on opportunities rather than problems. They run productive meetings. And they think and say “we” rather than “I.” Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.