Successful leaders don't rest on the laurels. Leadership must be a living process, and life means growth. "Great Leaders Grow" shows leaders and aspiring leaders precisely which areas to focus on so they can remain effective throughout their lives.

The international bestselling authors return to share the four ways leaders must challenge themselves in order to fulfill their highest potential. Successful leaders don’t rest on their laurels because leadership is not a title on a business card. Leadership is a living process—and life means growth. As Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller write in the introduction, “the path to increased influence, impact, and leadership effectiveness is paved with personal growth.... Our capacity to grow determines our capacity to lead. It’s really that simple.” Great Leaders Grow shows leaders and aspiring leaders precisely which areas to focus on so they can remain effective throughout their lives. Debbie Brewster—the protagonist from Blanchard and Miller’s international bestseller The Secret—returns in this book to mentor her mentor’s son, Blake, as he begins his career. Now an accomplished leader herself, Debbie shows Blake how growing as a leader and as a human being are inextricably linked. “How well you and I serve will be determined by the decision to grow or not,” she says. “Will you be a leader who is always ready to face the next challenge? Or will you be a leader who tries to apply yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems?” As Blake confronts the challenges of business in the real world, he turns to Debbie for guidance. Step by step, Debbie and Blake explore the GROW model—four ways that leaders must challenge and stretch themselves, both on the job and off, to fulfill their highest potential. Whether you’re a CEO or an entry-level employee, this book will inspire you to reflect on your life and design your own long-term growth plan—a plan that can lead not only to continuing professional success but to personal fulfillment as well. “Great stories based on principles have proven to be the most effective genre for focused learning. Mark and Ken have proven to be one of the world’s most successful writing teams. With Great Leaders Grow, this creative dream team has produced their best work yet! This is a book for those who seek to be more effective leaders at home, at work, and in our nation as a whole.” —Andy Andrews, New York Times bestselling author of The Noticer and The Traveler’s Gift

All Leaders Face Adversity. Exceptional Leaders Thrive in It. Leadership is often a struggle, and yet strong taboos keep us from talking openly and honestly about our difficulties for fear of looking weak and seeming to lack confidence. But Steven Snyder shows that this discussion is vital—adversity is precisely what unlocks our greatest potential. Using real-life stories drawn from his extensive research studying 151 diverse episodes of leadership struggle—as well as from his experiences working with Bill Gates in the early years of Microsoft and as a CEO and executive coach—Snyder shows how to navigate intense challenges to achieve personal growth and organizational success. He details strategies for embracing struggle and offers a host of unique tools and hands-on practices to help you implement them. By mastering the art of struggle, you’ll be better equipped to meet life’s challenges and focus on what matters most. “Leadership and the Art of Struggle provides you with the opportunity to learn from Snyder’s remarkable wisdom. It is a living guide that you can return to time and time again as new situations arise.” —From the foreword by Bill George, former CEO, Medtronic; Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School; and author of the bestselling True North “The leadership book of the year...one of the most intelligent, revealing, and practical books on the subject I have ever read. It confronts a vital truth: that challenge is the crucible for greatness and that these adversities introduce us to ourselves.” —Jim Kouzes, coauthor of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge “Steven Snyder covers all the bases from channeling your energy to managing conflict, including a great segment about overcoming your leadership blind spots...This encouraging book is a must-read!” —Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and Great Leaders Grow “Leadership and the Art of the Struggle gives you clear and compelling advice on transforming pitfalls into possibilities.” —Jodee Kozlak, Executive Vice President, Human Resources, Target

The authors of Great Leaders Grow use a fable to lay out what is the secret to great leadership in this internationally bestselling guide. It’s a question that everyone in a position of authority—whether in a multinational corporation or a local volunteer group—wonders sooner or later. Here Ken Blanchard, whose books on leadership have sold over twenty million copies, and Mark Miller, who worked his way up from line worker to vice president of Chick-Fil-A, one of the largest fast-food restaurant chains in the country, uncover the secret that great leaders already know and detail what you need to do to truly inspire and motivate others. The authors get at the heart of what makes a leader successful using a classic business fable. Newly promoted but struggling young executive Debbie Brewster asks her mentor, “What is the secret of great leaders?” His reply—“great leaders serve”—flummoxes her, but over time he reveals the five fundamental ways that leaders succeed through service. Along the way, Debbie learns: • Why great leaders seem preoccupied with the future • How people on the team ultimately determine your success or failure • What three arenas require continuous improvement • Why true success in leadership has two essential components • How to knowingly strengthen—or unwittingly destroy—leadership credibility This new edition includes a leadership self-assessment so readers can measure to what extent they lead by serving and where they can improve. The authors have also added answers to the most frequently asked questions about how to apply the SERVE model in the real world. As practical as it is uplifting, The Secret shares Blanchard and Miller’s wisdom about leadership in a form that anyone can easily understand and implement. “You don’t have to be older to be a great leader. The Secret shows how to lay the foundation for powerful servant leadership early in your career to maximize your impact.” —Claire Diaz-Ortiz, Head of Corporate Innovation and Philanthropy at Twitter, Inc. and author of Twitter for Good and Hope Runs “When you learn The Secret, don't keep it to yourself. Share it and use it with your people. It will make a difference in their lives and their performance.” —Donald G. Soderquist, former Vice Chairman, Wal-Mart, and founder of the Soderquist Center for Leadership and Ethics, John Brown University “If you know The Secret, both relationships and results will prosper. It's a perfect move in your life from success to significance.” —Bob Buford, author of Halftime

Today's enterprises face a profound leadership crisis - and the speed of business has far outstripped conventional executive development systems. In Grow Your Own Leaders, three world-renowned experts introduce an entirely new approach for identifying tomorrow's leaders within your own organization, accelerating their development, and deploying them immediately, to address new challenges wherever they emerge.

One of America’s most accomplished landscaping professionals reveals his methods for cultivating greatness. Nowadays, greatness tends to be measured by shortest or longest times, highest heights, medals won, honors given. But as Aristotle taught us, greatness is what we can do every day, without recognition or reward, for the satisfaction that comes from meeting the challenge, creating a team, and overcoming the odds. Under Jeff McManus’s leadership as Director of Landscape Services, the Ole Miss campus has won professional awards—and been cited by Newsweek and Princeton Review as America’s “most beautiful campus.” In Growing Weeders into Leaders, he relates the principles behind his team’s success. It is an entertaining and thoughtful look into the hearts and the workday lives of ordinary people who tapped into their inner greatness in pursuit of a vision. Creating one of America’s most beautiful college campuses at the University of Mississippi did not happen overnight and, inside these pages, McManus describes the joys, the defeats, the brilliant problem-solving and the best laid plans that are proven worthless . . . until the bigger picture appears. This is the bigger picture as viewed from the ground level—taking you through the practical applications of empowering people to experience not only what it means to grow outstanding landscapes, but also to grow greatness in themselves and encourage it in others. “A straightforward approach to problem-solving and methods to grow individuals into a team.” —Susanne Woodell, CGM Historic Gardens Manager, Biltmore

Beginning with an exploration of leadership and moving on to his seven steps to growing leaders, Adair provides unique insight into the heart of leadership, helping readers discover skills in themselves and in those around them.

As a serial entrepreneur, Kevin Kruse has seen time and again that the leadership practices that actually work are the opposite of what is commonly taught and implemented. Close Your Open Door Policy shows how a contrarian approach can be a better, faster, and easier way to succeed as a leader. Chapter by chapter, Kruse focuses on a piece of popular wisdom, then shows with real-world case studies and quantitative research that the opposite approach will lead to better results, encouraging leaders to play favorites, stay out of meetings, and, of course, close their open doors.

Leadership legend and bestselling author Ken Blanchard and trust expert and thought leader Randy Conley present this carefully curated collection of fifty-two essential leadership principles that are easy to implement and practice. Effective leadership is an influence process where leaders implement everyday, commonsense approaches that help people and organizations thrive. Yet somehow, many of these fundamental principles are still missing from most workplaces. In Simple Truths of Leadership, legendary servant leadership expert Ken Blanchard, whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide, and his colleague Randy Conley, known and recognized for his many years of thought leadership and expertise in the field of trust, share fifty-two Simple Truths about leadership that will help leaders everywhere make commonsense leadership common practice. Readers will discover profound, memorable, and in some cases counterintuitive leadership wisdom such as • Who should make the first move to extend trust • What role a successful apology plays in building trust • When to use different strokes (leadership styles) for different folks—and for the same folks • Where the most important part of leadership happens • How to create autonomy through boundaries • Why the key to developing people is catching them doing something right A fun, easy read that will make a positive difference in leadership and organizational success, Simple Truths of Leadership will show readers how to incorporate simple but essential practices into their leadership style, build trust through servant leadership, and enhance their own lives and the lives of everyone around them.

From executives complaining that their teams don’t contribute ideas to employees giving up because their input isn’t valued--company culture is the culprit. Courageous Cultures provides a road map to build a high-performance, high-engagement culture around sharing ideas, solving problems, and rewarding contributions from all levels. Many leaders are convinced they have an open environment that encourages employees to speak up and are shocked when they learn that employees are holding back. Employees have ideas and want to be heard. Leadership wants to hear them. Too often, however, employees and leaders both feel that no one cares about making things better. The disconnect typically only widens over time, with both sides becoming more firmly entrenched in their viewpoints. Becoming a courageous culture means building teams of microinnovators, problem solvers, and customer advocates working together. In our world of rapid change, a courageous culture is your competitive advantage. It ensures that your company is “sticky” for both customers and employees. In Courageous Cultures, you’ll learn practical tools that help you: Learn the difference between microinnovators, problem solvers, and customer advocates and how they work together. See how the latest research conducted by the authors confirms why organizations struggle when it comes to creating strong cultures where employees are encouraged to contribute their best thinking. Learn proven models and tools that leaders can apply throughout all levels of the organization, to reengage and motivate employees. Understand best practices from companies around the world and learn how to apply these strategies and techniques in your own organization. This book provides you with the practical tools to uncover, leverage, and scale the best ideas from every level of your organization.