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Leadership Advice From How Great Leaders Think

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Here is some good advice from Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal, authors of the book, How Great Leaders Think:
Good thinking is the starting point for good leadership.
Leaders who can reframe—look at the same thing from multiple perspectives—think better. They create a lucid portrait of what’s going on around them and have a clearer vision of what’s needed to achieve desired results. Also, reframing involves shifting frames when circumstances change.
Leaders can see and do more when they know how to negotiate four key areas of the leadership terrain: structural, human resource, political, and symbolic.
Great structural leaders: Do their homework.Insist on clear goals.Rethink the relationship of structure, strategy, and environment.Focus on detail and implementation.Experiment. 
A designated leader is no guarantee that a team will be well led. An effective team requires leadership that aligns the group’s structure with the group’s tasks and circumstances. If the official leader doesn’…
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Decision-Making Tactics

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These eight decision-making tactics from David Lahey’s book, PredictingSuccess, are helpful to me and hopefully useful to you as well: Deep breathing, to clear your mind.Researching, to feel confident that you have all the information in front of you.Listing your options, in either verbal or written form, to keep the whole picture front of mind.Following through on the possible outcomes, complete with likely predictions and acknowledgement of whether they’re negative or positive (or design yourself a decision tree, that lays out every possible consequence visually).Testing your intuition, by imagining a committed decision and then gauging the corresponding feeling it inspires in your gut.Taking the time you need, so long as it doesn’t become an overly indulgent distraction.Evaluating your decision, an after-the-fact exercise that engages a conscious inventory of the lessons learned.Coming to terms with your pick, always cognizant of the reality that no decision is going to lead to a p…
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Book Highlights From The Collaboration Imperative

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Here are some of my favorite takeaways from the book, The CollaborationImperative, by Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese:
Across every organization lies hidden treasure just waiting to be discovered. It’s not hiding in a budget spreadsheet of a warehouse full of inventory. It lies within your people—their ideas, their experiences, their focus, their energy. The more you empower them to share their knowledge and skills, the more successful your organization will be. From ideas come innovation and new forms of productivity.
Transparent decision making requires that all stakeholders know the answers to these three questions: Who is making the decision? Who is accountable for the outcomes of the decision? What are the consequences—positive or negative—of that accountability?
The conceptual thinker brings ideas to the table and the analytical thinker brings details that ground those ideas in reality.
“If you are not genuinely pained by the risk involved in your strategic choices, it’s not much of a str…
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Fit At Last Book Author Insights

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The book, Fit at Last: Look and Feel Better Once and for All, co-authored by Ken Blanchard and Tim Kearin traces business author Blanchard's weight-loss journey with fitness expert Kearin, and how finally at the age of 73, Ken dropped over thirty pounds in the course of a single year.

In each chapter, Ken shares the personal ups and downs of his story, relating how anyone can use his Situational Leadership approach to determine their developmental level in each of the fitness areas outlined by Tim. From there, it can be decided what type of leadership someone needs to move to the next level.
Fit at Lastisn't strictly about fitness -- it's about commitment. Given the proper tools, anyone can move from a superficial interest in fitness to creating and maintaining long-term devotion to personal health
Tim shared more about the book with me: 
Tim Kearin
Question: What was the most rewarding thing for you as you helped Ken make his impressive transformation? Tim: While several th…
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The Mind Of The Leader

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“By understanding how their own mind works and training it for the most essential qualities, leaders can lead themselves effectively first, in order to better lead their people and tap into their human need for meaning, fulfillment and human connectedness,” explain Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter, authors of the book, The Mind Of The Leader.
Their book is based on extensive research, including assessments of more than 35,000 leaders and interviews with 250 C-level executives.
The authors found that three mental qualities are essential to becoming effective leaders. Leaders must be: Mindful – being present and attentive to their employees’ needs. Being focused versus distracted. Being aware versus being on autopilot.Selfless – to model cultures based on growth and learning instead of ego. Being selfless versus ego-centered. Being confident versus diffident.Compassionate – to show their employees they have their backs. Being kind versus indifferent. Being wise versus ignorant. 
The…
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The Traits Of An Extreme Team

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Extreme Teams is a fascinating book by Robert Bruce Shaw, where he takes you inside top companies and examines not just great teams (your more “conventional” teams), but extreme teams.

According to Shaw, extreme teams:

View work as a calling—even an obsession.Value members’ cultural fit and ability to collectively produce results.Pursue a limited set of vital priorities—less is more.Strive to create a culture that is at once both hard and soft – simultaneously tough in driving for measurable results on a few highly visible targets and supportive of individuals to create an environment of collaboration, trust, and loyalty.Value conflict among team members—recognizing the benefit of being uncomfortable. Companies with extreme teams will go to great lengths to ensure that their extreme teams are well equipped to address not only the challenges of today, but also the challenges of the future. The central questions to ask, therefore, are:
What is it your team will be accomplishing six months…
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Leaders: How To Make Extraordinary Things Happen In Organizations

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There is good reason why, The Leadership Challenge, book is now in its sixth addition. It expertly teaches you what to do as a leader to mobilize others to want to get extraordinary things done in your organization.
Revised to address current challenges, this sixth edition marks thirty years since the book was first published.
Embedded in The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership are behaviors that can serve as the basis for becoming an exemplary leader. The authors, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, call these The Ten Commitments of Exemplary Leadership. Chapters in the book explain the conceptual principles that support each practice and prescribe specific recommendations on what you can do to make each practice and commitment your own.
The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership: Model the WayInspire a Shared VisionChallenge the ProcessEnable Others to ActEncourage the Heart 
Kouzes and Posner explain that leaders who use these five practices more frequently than their counterpa…
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