Build Your Leader Identity is a practical guide to harnessing your unique leadership potential. At its heart is the idea that every person has the potential to lead, including you, by drawing on your personal attributes, values, and life experiences. This book aims to give you the skills to build your own unique leader identity - the self-expression of who you are as a leader. It is a personal approach that asks you to consider how your core values and individual history affect your leadership, whatever your position. It questions how events in your life, and your multiple identities such as daughter or son, manager or team member, may have reinforced or undermined your ideas about your potential to lead or what leadership means to you. It is a process that celebrates diversity; a journey where one size for leadership does not fit all. Ultimately, I believe it has the potential to transform the way you think about yourself and your ability to become a more empowered, conscious leader in your chosen area.

The Leadership Identity Journey takes readers on a breathtaking, all-consuming, transformative journey. The invitation is to think of your life as a journey that follows a mythic path. By doing so, new possibilities emerge for thinking about leadership identity and preparation, as well as artistic research and the education field. The perspectives described in this book are supported by school leaders’ insights into powerful iconic photographs relative to the five mythic life phases: the human condition, trials in life, human triumph, human transformation, and human crossing, with the addition of leadership as a dimension of the life-journey model. The authors conducted their study using selected photographs framed by the universal mythic framework inspired by mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Become a passionate, purposeful, and meaningful leader through identifying who you are, your strengths, and your skills. New York Times bestselling author Stedman Graham's Identity Leadership is a very personal and prescriptive guide that is based on his philosophy that a leader can't lead others until he can first lead himself-the more he works on himself -- the more he can give to those around him. To know our purpose in life, we begin with our passions, skills, and talents, and with this book we learn how to channel the best of who we are to achieve success for ourselves and those we lead. In Identity Leadership, Graham examines why self-awareness matters, how leaders lead, the importance of communication, and much more. He then shows the reader how to step into their role as a leader and create their identity leadership plan. Key to the journey is believing in yourself, knowing your competence, continually challenging yourself, and being patient with yourself. Graham uses anecdotes from his own life, as well as discussing successful leaders, to illustrate the importance of identity leadership in each of our lives. Self-leaders can create a roadmap that leads to personal growth, development, and improvement of performance in every area of life. Identity Leadership provides the tools-self-awareness, emotional intelligence, discipline, and more-needed to continually plan and execute learning and development of our talents and skills. These tools enable readers to commit to a personal vision and lead with purpose.

Winner of the University of San Diego Outstanding Leadership Book Award 2012! Shortlisted for the British Psychological Society Book Award 2011! Shortlisted for the CMI (Chartered Management Institute) Management Book of the Year Award 2011–2012! According to John Adair, the most important word in the leader's vocabulary is "we" and the least important word is "I". But if this is true, it raises one important question: why do psychological analyses of leadership always focus on the leader as an individual – as the great "I"? One answer is that theorists and practitioners have never properly understood the psychology of "we-ness". This book fills this gap by presenting a new psychology of leadership that is the result of two decades of research inspired by social identity and self-categorization theories. The book argues that to succeed, leaders need to create, champion, and embed a group identity in order to cultivate an understanding of 'us' of which they themselves are representative. It also shows how, by doing this, they can make a material difference to the groups, organizations, and societies that they lead. Written in an accessible and engaging style, the book examines a range of central theoretical and practical issues, including the nature of group identity, the basis of authority and legitimacy, the dynamics of justice and fairness, the determinants of followership and charisma, and the practice and politics of leadership. The book will appeal to academics, practitioners and students in social and organizational psychology, sociology, political science and anyone interested in leadership, influence and power.

"In [this book], authors Jan A. G. Kise and Barbara K. Watterston guide aspiring and current women leaders through a twelve-week developmental journey. Women are underrepresented in educational leadership positions, and the negative connotations sometimes associated with women holding power roles can discourage them from becoming leaders. Through activities, reflection prompts, and real-life stories and scenarios, this book helps women navigate these challenges to find their own leadership identity." -- Back cover.

Have you ever been thrust into a surprising place of leadership? Ebony S. Small is a young leader with a wealth of experience in both churches and organizations. With both practical and biblical wisdom, she invites you to discover your unique leadership gifts and see how every life experience can be used to help you lead from an authentic and healthy place.

Ask yourself this question: What type of character qualifies the people God chooses to use? The question itself assumes an atypical answer, simply because it leaves out so much. To ask only about one's character seems inadequate when defining a leader. We surely need to ask about character, but also about personality, communication skills, IQ, education, previous experience, and more... don't we? Crawford Loritts disagrees. He answers the question with four simple words: Brokenness, communion, servanthood, and obedience. These four traits form the framework for Leadership as an Identity. By examining each trait, Loritts undermines many pervasive assumptions about leadership that are unbiblical. According to Loritts, God doesn't look for leaders like the world does. He looks for disciples, and ironically, as these disciples follow Him, they will lead.

If your people know you care about them, they will move mountains. Employee engagement and loyalty expert Heather Younger outlines nine ways to manifest the radical power of caring support in the workplace. Here's the thing: most leaders think of themselves as caring leaders, but not all of them act in alignment with what that means for employees. Leaders may not be able to identify the level of care they are extending to their employees, but all employees intuitively know whether their bosses or managers are caring for them. Heather Younger argues that if you are looking for increased productivity, customer satisfaction, or employee engagement, you need to care for your employees first. Genuinely caring for people means that you want to see them succeed for themselves, not just for what they can do for you, your team, or your organization. This book incorporates ten sections with breakout stories and interviews that outline the necessary steps to make all employees feel included and cared for, as well as a call to action for all leaders. Younger states that leaders who have the positive power to change the lives of those they lead shouldn't just want to care for them; they should see it as imperative for the success of their employees and their organization.

In Mission-Driven Leadership, Mark Bertolini, the long-time chairman and CEO of Aetna, the Fortune 500 health insurance company, reveals that genuine leadership is not about dollars and market share but about improving lives and communities. Mark Bertolini didn't get to the corner office through traditional means. He grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood in Detroit. Early in his career, he was known for his bare-knuckled leadership and hard driving competitiveness that helped him to turnaround several companies. But his ambition came at a cost as he ran roughshod over his colleagues and employees, and spent time away from his family. Two events served as wakeup calls for the hard-charging Bertolini. First his son Eric was diagnosed with incurable cancer, and Bertolini found himself confronting the healthcare industry firsthand, not as an executive, but as the parent of a deathly ill child, determined to save his son's life. And miraculously, after a year in the hospital, often at death's door--Eric was twice given last rites--his son recovered. The second wakeup call was a skiing accident several years later in which Bertolini broke his neck. As his life unraveled in the face of years of chronic pain, therapy, and medication, he realized he had to reinvent himself, emotionally, spiritually, and as a leader--or go under. Mission-Driven Leadership speaks to the lessons Bertolini learned about empathy, about helping employees and Aetna's customers take better care of themselves and each other, about the need to "find the divine in me," and the importance of getting out to meet with employees and customers face-to-face in town halls to truly discover their needs and better serve them.

Have you ever asked yourself? "Who am I?""What am I supposed to be doing?" or"Why am I here?" Answers to those questions may take you down a road that is bumpy, unsupported by friends or family, and maybe even a little isolating, but it is full of happiness and adventure. Grab a pen, your copy of "Identity, Calling and Assignment" and a desire to work through and find the TRUE answers to those questions. This simple-to-read and easy-to-use workbook will walk you down a journey that will open your eyes to the things that God has called you to do in this life. You will learn:?how to study your Bible?how to find your identity?how to narrow down the calling in your life?how to find, accept and succeed at your current assignment God did not mean for the answers to these questions to be so difficult to find. Life as we know it tends to confuse, steal, and convolute these things which lead us to unfulfillment, frustration, closed doors, and a lack of confidence. Accept the challenge to be a little weird, but happy as a clam in a world of chaos.