Touchpoint Leadership & Creating Collaborative Energy

Touchpoint Leadership is founded on the belief that relationships are the primary unit of value in organizations and that for enterprises to be healthy, effective and immensely rewarding leaders need to put relationships at the heart of everything they do.

Touchpoint Leadership is also the title of the new book by executive consultant Dr. Hilary Lines and leadership consultant Dr. Jacqui Scholes-Rhodes.

According to the authors, to develop Touchpoint Leadership, a leader needs to focus on three developmental domains:

Personal
Interpersonal
Organizational

More specifically, to succeed in Touchpoint Leadership, a leader must:

Bring his/her full self to interactions with others by developing self-awareness, a clear moral compass and deep reflection.
Attend to what happens at the moment of connection with others, connecting to ignite energy and co-creation.
Take a systemic view of the connections that need to be made to build collective value, in order to engender learning and collaboration across the enterprise as a whole.

Drawing on a diverse array of case studies from their coaching work, the authors demonstrate how successful leaders focus on personal, interpersonal, and organizational domains, illustrating concepts like power and trust and partnership through stories of their clients.

Their book also provides a developmental framework through which individuals can scrutinize their own leadership, inject it with new life and meaning and release the energy and creativity necessary for collective learning and growth.

Finally, the book stresses the importance of connecting with the group of managers and leaders who sit below the most senior levels of management. And, how these middle managers can be a critical source of collective power and influence. For these reasons, the authors recommend leaders ask four fundamental questions:

When you look across your middle leadership population, which relationships seem to have a tremendous impact on their energy and performance?
How much do you draw on these managers and professionals for insights into how the business is going and what is important for the future?
What can you learn about the quality of the touchpoints between teams and departments and what might you do to create connections for better performance?
How might you help create relationships that help liberate the talent and difference that sits at the middle of the organization?

Dr. Hilary Lines is an executive coach with Praesta, a worldwide leader in executive coaching. She is also a senior consultant with the Teleos Leadership Institute in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Lines is also a team coach, a facilitator and trusted advisor in organizational change, as well as an innovator in leadership development across the globe.

Dr. Jacqui Scholes-Rhodes is a leadership consultant, systemic coach and inquiry facilitator with Touchpoint Leaders. She is also an executive coach with Praesta, and she has worked in large corporate environments where she has led and facilitated large scale transformation across sectors.

Thanks to the book publisher, KoganPage, for sending me an advance copy of the book.

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