The Power Of Thoughtful Leadership

Follow the path to holistic and mindful leadership, and unlock your skills as a conscious leader.

As leaders-leaders of organizations, business units, teams, and/or families -we are all being called upon to do more, with less, quicker. We are often in overwhelm, constantly running on a leadership treadmill to simply stay in place and keep pace with demands. Thoughtful Leadership is an answer to this frenzy. It is a chance to invest the time to think through how you're leading and what you're doing before you actually do it, in order to be more effective. A chance to sit still, be present, reflect, think beyond your own needs and wants, focus on the big picture and get out of the weeds, look in the hard places, quiet the voices in your head, follow your gut and intuition...and lead - equipped to show up as your best self and achieve the greatest results. We counsel our clients to pause and think - to be still - before they take an action, even if only for a few moments. This pause allows them the opportunity to become proactive rather than reactive, and to attain the outcomes they truly seek for themselves, their businesses, and their lives. With The Power of Thoughtful Leadership you can take this pause and this time for yourself, and move closer towards realizing your goals and dreams. The Power of Thoughtful Leadership offers 101 thoughtful minutes that will help you align your work and life with your vision for your future.

Like most buzzwords, thought leadership is an often misused and misunderstood term. But what is it really? And why do many of the world's leading companies invest serious money and smart people into this mysterious practice, building dedicated business units to create it? It sounds like business jargon, but this ill-defined term captures a key practice that has been used for many years to create success for individuals, charities and vast companies. Drawing on over 30 years of experience engaging with thought leadership, Laurie Young provides an extensive examination of its history, its purpose, its future, and how you can make thought leadership work for you. Packed with ground-breaking case studies from global organisations such as IBM, Deloitte, Allen & Overy, Fairtrade, Philips and Unilever; and with over 50 unique interviews with some of the world's acknowledged business leaders, Thought Leadership can help anyone involved in the business decision-making process to gain alignment across their company regarding the challenges they face. Thought Leadership can come from any source in business - unique insight, research, executives, customer engagement, product managers, and expert professionals -. We all have knowledge, experience and a point of view. Laurie Young's accessible look at this fascinating and vital business practice is your first step to making thought leadership work for you and your organisation.

Thought leaders advance the marketplace of ideas by proposing actionable, commercially relevant, research-backed, new points of view. They engage in and showcase innovative thinking as opposed to churning out product-focused, brand-centric white papers, or "curated" content that mimics others' ideas. But while individual thought leaders are in plentiful supply (at least, those who self-identify as such), many organizations struggle to establish their thought leadership approach. If you recognize the importance of differentiating yourself to clients by offering compelling points of view that are intriguing, innovative, inspiring-and wholly relevant to them-this book is for you. Authors Dr. Liz Alexander and Craig Badings, who have more than 50 years of consulting experience between them, have devised a series of questions that will provoke you to consider all the elements necessary to execute a successful organizational thought leadership campaign. The authors have done the preliminary thinking for you so that your organization can better leverage your value in your industry. This book takes a different approach to many who see thought leadership as part of a short-term product marketing, advertising, or PR strategy. It will ensure that you embed thought leadership across the entire organization and centralize it as part of your client-centric culture. Many organizations are squandering time, money, and effort on initiatives that do not move the needle in terms of establishing a differentiated brand identity, deep trust, and loyal followership. Arm yourself with this small yet immensely powerful book and that will no longer be something you have to worry about. #THOUGHT LEADERSHIP tweet is part of the THiNKaha series whose slim, easy-to-read-and-absorb books contain 140 thought-provoking and actionable quotes (tweets/ahas).

In today's 'more for less' culture, the expectations of project management and delivery are no longer limited to budgets, schedules and quality. For projects to make an impact and have lasting value, the project manager must be able to strategize, innovate, motivate, empower and collaborate - in other words, project managers must learn how to lead. The Power of Project Leadership helps you transform into an effective project leader by shifting your managerial mindset into one of inspiration, motivation and influence. The book describes what good project leadership looks like and explains how to make the transition using concrete tools and strategies. With underlying theories to help the reader understand how teams and individuals are motivated, it ensures that project managers lead with vision, continuously improve and innovate, work with intent, empower the team, get closer to stakeholders, remain authentic and establish a solid foundation for their projects. The book has a practical and engaging approach and draws on over 25 interviews with leading experts who have made the transition from project managers to project leaders. These experts come from a variety of sectors and companies; including Expedia, British Gas, Standard Bank, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, Liquid Planner, and the UK Government.

"An essential guide to the engine that drives the early adoption of disruptive innovations." --Geoffrey Moore, Author, Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win HOW COMPANIES CAN VAULT AHEAD BY DEVELOPING, MARKETING, AND DELIVERING SUPERIOR EXPERTISE "Thought leadership" is now a core part of the business lexicon. Numerous corporate websites devote whole sections to it. Entire conferences are built around it (TED and the World Economic Forum as the most exclusive ones). It's at the center of sophisticated, high-ticket PR campaigns. Thousands of people are making careers of it. And companies from Fidelity Investments, Adobe and Cigna to PwC, Accenture and Spotify have people in charge of it. Interest in the field of thought leadership is white hot -- just like the buzz created by illustrious thought leaders when they bring groundbreaking ideas to market. So it's about time the topic of thought leadership itself got a substantive treatment. In Competing on Thought Leadership, Robert Buday boldly delivers it. He defines thought leadership concretely: as the acclaim that a firm or a person earns for developing, marketing and delivering superior expertise in solving complex customer problems. And he defines it broadly -- as a business strategy, not just a marketing strategy. Buday also brings to bear his client work and research since the 1980s in helping companies and individuals inside them become known worldwide as leading experts in their field, which in turn has increased their revenue and profit multifold. This book focuses on how businesses that sell services and products to other businesses can thrive on thought leadership. It takes the lessons learned at some of the best firms in the world at selling expertise - consulting, accounting, law, financial services and technology firms - and makes them practical for every B2B firm. Yet the principles of Competing on Thought Leadership apply to all organizations - for-profit and non-profit alike -- that must demonstrate superior expertise in solving complex problems. Consumer companies, charitable foundations and other organizations, too, can benefit greatly from adopting these best practices in thought leadership.

The how-to guide to becoming a go-to expert Within their fields, thought leaders are sources of inspiration and innovation. They have the gift of harnessing their expertise and their networks to make their innovative thoughts real and replicable, sparking sustainable change and even creating movements around their ideas. In Ready to Be a Thought Leader?, renowned executive talent agent Denise Brosseau shows readers how to develop and use that gift as she maps the path from successful executive, professional, or civic leader to respected thought leader. With the author's proven seven-step process—and starting from wherever they are in their careers—readers can set a course for maximum impact in their field. These guidelines, along with stories, tips, and success secrets from those who have successfully made the transition to high-profile thought leader, allow readers to create a long-term plan and start putting it into action today, even if they only have 15 minutes to spare. Offers a step-by-step process for becoming a recognized thought leader in your field Includes real-world examples from such high-profile thought leaders as Robin Chase, founder and former CEO of Zipcar; Chip Conley, author of PEAK and former CEO of JDV Hospitality; and more Written by Denise Brosseau, founder of Thought Leadership Lab, an executive talent agency that helps executives become thought leaders, who has worked with start-up CEOs and leaders from such firms as Apple, Genentech, Symantec, Morgan Stanley, Medtronic, KPMG, DLA Piper, and more Ready to Be a Thought Leader? offers essential reading for anyone ready to expand their influence, increase their professional success, have an impact far beyond a single organization and industry, and ultimately leave a legacy that matters.

Power comes from within and from without. How to tap its many sources.

Advisor of Leadership at Google and former vice president of leadership at LinkedIn claims that the biggest driver of motivation is the chance to serve a larger purpose beyond our careers and ourselves, rather than salary, benefits, bonuses, or other material incentives; companies that are able to successfully focus their people, their teams, and their culture around meaning outperform their competition. Fred Kofman's approach to leadership has little to do with the standard practices taught in business school and traditional books. Bringing together economics and business theory, communications and conflict resolution, family counseling and mindfulness mediation, Kofman argues in The Meaning Revolution that our most deep-seated, unspoken, and universal anxiety stems from our fear that our life is being wasted--that the end of life will overtake us when our song is still unsung. Material incentives--salary and benefits--account for perhaps 15 percent of employees' motivation at work. The other 85 percent is driven by a need to belong, a feeling that what we do day in and day out makes a difference, that how we spend our time on earth serves a larger purpose beyond just ourselves. Kofman claims that transcendental leaders, wherever they are in the hierarchy, are able to put aside their self-interests and help others to feel connected with others on a team or in an organization on a great mission and part of an ennobling purpose. He argues that every organization involved in work that is nonviolent and non addictive has what he calls an "immortality project" at its core. And the challenge for leaders is to identify and expand on that core, to inspire all stakeholders to take part.

The Insightful Leader is the secret formula for claiming your best leadership and using it to achieve unlimited success. Traditional leadership coaching asks leaders to substitute ineffective behaviors with alternatives, without addressing the underlying internal beliefs that reinforce the old behaviors. After months of successfully trying to change, a leader may suddenly face stressors at work—a looming deadline or a difficult negotiation—that trigger counterproductive behavior, resulting in guilt, shame, and frustration. The Insightful Leader first helps readers to recognize ineffective behaviors that may be connected to one or more of ten "superpowers," or overused strengths. Readers embark on a step-by-step process, identifying their superpowers and understanding the strengths of these superpowers as well as when their overuse may cause them to be perceived as egotistical or manipulative. Having deepened their understanding of their superpowers, leaders then use them as a catalyst to discover adversity they may have faced in their past. The book guides them to uncover survival beliefs held over from these experiences and to reprogram them such that they no longer trigger self-destructive habits but instead focus on recent successes. Finally, tips are provided to help leaders to successfully sustain this transformation.