The Mind of the Leader: How to Lead Yourself, Your People, and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results

by Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter

Overview

Join the global movement that's making corporations more people-centric to achieve great results.

The world is facing a global leadership crisis. Seventy-seven percent of leaders think they do a good job of engaging their people, yet 88 percent of employees say their leaders don't engage enough. There is also a high level of suffering in the workplace: 35 percent of employees would forgo a pay raise to see their leaders fired.

This is an enormous waste of human talent--despite the fact that $46 billion is spent each year on leadership development.

Based on extensive research, including assessments of more than 35,000 leaders and interviews with 250 C-level executives, The Mind of the Leader concludes that organizations and leaders aren't meeting employees' basic human needs of finding meaning, purpose, connection, and genuine happiness in their work.

But more than a description of the problem, The Mind of the Leader offers a radical, yet practical, solution. To solve the leadership crisis, organizations need to put people at the center of their strategy. They need to develop managers and executives who lead with three core mental qualities: mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion.

Using real-world inspirational examples from Marriott, Accenture, McKinsey & Company, LinkedIn, and many more, The Mind of the Leader shows how this new kind of leadership turns conventional leadership thinking upside down. It represents a radical redefinition of what it takes to be an effective leader--and a practical, hard-nosed solution to every organization's engagement and execution problems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781633693425
Publisher:	Harvard Business Review Press
Publication date:	03/13/2018
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	143,053
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Rasmus Hougaard is the Founder and Managing Director of Potential Project, the global leading provider of leadership and organizational effectiveness solutions based on training the mind. Rasmus has practiced and taught mindfulness for more than two decades. Jacqueline Carter is an International Partner and North American Director for Potential Project. She has over twenty years of experience working with organizations around the globe to enhance effectiveness and improve performance. Together, they are the authors of One Second Ahead: Enhance Your Performance at Work with Mindfulness.

Table of Contents

Foreword vii

Introduction 1

1 The MSC Leader 7

Part 1 Understand and Lead Yourself

2 Understand Yourself 25

3 Mindfully Lead Yourself 45

4 Selfless Self-Leadership 63

5 Lead Yourself with Compassion 79

Part 2 Understand and Lead Your People

6 Understand Your People 101

7 Mindful Leadership 115

8 Selfless Leadership 127

9 Compassionate Leadership 143

Part 3 Understand and Lead Your Organization

10 Understand Your Organization 161

11 Lead of a Mindful Organization 171

12 Lead for a Selfless Organization 185

13 Lead for a Compassionate Organization 195

Afterword: Leadership for a Hard Future 205

Appendix A The Mind of the Leader App 209

Appendix B Practices for Training Compassion 211

Notes 215

Index 225

Acknowledgments 235

About the Authors 237

Author Team 239

Editorial Reviews

"An excellent how-to with exercises and coaching on presence, awareness, and focus." -- Associations Now

"lays out succinctly and in clear language a three-part approach to leadership…Books like this should be required reading in business schools everywhere." -- Mindful magazine

Advance Praise for The Mind of the Leader:

Dominic Barton, Global Managing Partner, McKinsey & Company--
"The Mind of the Leader has captured some of the essentials of leadership in the twenty-first century: being mindful, selfless, and compassionate. With these, we are better able to engage our people and we bring more value to our clients."

Kathleen Hogan, Chief People Officer, Microsoft--
"A forward and practical guide for companies wanting to evolve their leadership capabilities to engage both the minds and the hearts of today's workforce."

Francine Katsoudas, SVP and Chief People Officer, Cisco--
"How leaders communicate, engage, and show up to their teams has never been more important. Creating a world-class team and environment where people can do their best work is the number-one job of a leader, and more than ever leaders are being asked to elevate team performance through innovative leadership. The Mind of the Leader shares important insights and perspectives and lays a path for how you make this happen."

Loren I. Shuster, Chief People Officer, the LEGO Group--
"The Mind of the Leader goes beyond the hyperbole associated with mindfulness today and provides real-world examples from leading executives that can not only provide inspiration to the reader but outline a path toward the cultivation of such critical leadership qualities as selflessness and compassion. Creating the context for others to find meaning, purpose, and a sense of connectedness has become the hallmark of a productive and engaged organization."

Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO, Thrive Global--
"In The Mind of the Leader, Hougaard and Carter draw on years of research to show that the traditional, top-down style of leadership doesn't work anymore. The successful leaders of the future will be human-centered, focused as much on growth and the bottom line as on creating a flourishing and sustainable culture. This book is a manual of success for leaders in any industry."

From the Publisher

03/01/2018
A Gallup engagement survey from 2016 found that 24 percent of respondents are actively disengaged from their work. The survey also noted that 82 percent see their leaders as uninspiring. In the same year, a McKinsey & Company study found that 86 percent of the 52,000 managers surveyed identified themselves as inspiring to their employees. Hougaard and Carter, coauthors of One Second Ahead, use this disconnect as a starting point to focus on how leaders can become better at engaging and encouraging their employees. Using more than a decade of research and training with managers from Fortune 500 companies, the authors have identified three foundational skills needed for an effective leader: mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion. Their book looks at how leaders need to demonstrate these skills and project them out to their organizations to combat the increasingly disenchanted corporate culture. Unlike their previous work, which was geared toward all employees, this title concentrates on how leaders can help develop mindfulness and compassion in the workplace. VERDICT While the idea of mindfulness at work is nothing new, the message that leaders must change the larger corporate culture to include selflessness and compassion is an important one in our current climate. Recommended.—John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston

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