Every day, millions of employees watch their leaders sabotage themselves. They watch, they learn, and then they do it, too. Next thing you know, everyone’s lost motivation, and nobody takes ownership. That’s how organizations fail. This book will help you break the vicious cycle of self-handicapping leadership in your organization, stop the excuses, and unleash all the performance your team is capable of delivering. Phil and Jordan reveal how and why people handicap themselves even when they know better. Next, they offer real solutions from their own pioneering research and consulting. You’ll find practical ways to strengthen accountability and self-awareness, recognize the “big picture,” improve decision-making, deepen trust and engagement, develop talent, escape micromanagement, and focus relentlessly on outcomes. Your colleagues can be far more effective, and so can you. In fact, it starts with you–right here, right now, with this book. Many leaders inadvertently create cultures of failure. They model and promote “selfhandicapping” actions, where people withdraw effort or create new problems, in order to maintain their own self-images of competence. Self-Handicapping Leadership shines the spotlight on this widespread and destructive phenomenon and presents real action plans for overcoming it.

Explains why self-deception is at the heart of many leadership problems, identifying destructive patterns that undermine the successes of potentially excellent professionals while revealing how to improve teamwork, communication, and motivation. Reprint.

Leadership Development explores how leaders gain and use self-knowledge for continuous improvement and career development and describes how leaders help themselves and the people with whom they work, understand themselves, and become more self-determined, continuous learners, and make the most of resources, such as feedback and coaching. This book explains why leaders need support for self-insight and professional growth in today's business environment. It explores dimensions of effective leadership in light of business, technological, and economic trends. Focusing on the importance of leaders developing accurate self-understanding, the book defines self-insight, outlines the meaning of internal strength and resilience for self-regulation, and considers how leaders attain a meaningful and realistic sense of self-identity. This volume illustrates ways organizations support these psychological processes. Leadership development is viewed as a comprehensive, continuous process that includes evaluating organizational needs and individual competencies, setting goals for career development and performance improvement, offering needed training and growth experiences, providing feedback, and tracking change in behavior and performance over time. It describes how leaders react to feedback and how 360-degree feedback survey methods and executive coaching help leaders attain and apply self-insight to enhance their performance. In addition, this book considers challenges and opportunities for leadership development, including how leaders overcome career barriers and become continuous learners.

American business leader, entrepreneur, and noted philanthropist Morton Mandel shares lessons he gleaned from co-founding and leading, along with his brothers Jack and Joe, Premier Industrial Corporation, a major industrial parts and electronic components manufacturer and distributor. Now for readers everywhere who are interested in studying leadership development, It’s All About Who describes Mandel’s approach to finding, recruiting and cultivating “A” players. In his book, Mandel shares his fine-tuned set of practices to develop leaders that have proven to deliver dramatically better results. Containing sixteen core sections, “It’s All About Who” covers key strategic topics from “Building a Rich, Deep, and Ethical Culture” to “Killing Yourself for Your Customer” to “Using Business Ideas in the Social Sector.” What makes Mandel unique is his selflessness in pursuing a life of purpose. Mandel has lived in two worlds: the world of profit and the world of social impact. Even as chairman and CEO of a New York Stock Exchange company for more than three decades, he spent as much as a third of his time in the social sector. Mandel has personally founded more than a dozen non-profit organizations. His deep-seated passion is evident in the mission of his Foundation: “To invest in people with the values, ability and passion to change the world.”

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.

This book draws upon resilience research and best practices to answer the question: 'How can leaders move ahead in the face of adversity?' and aims to help leaders thrive in the face of adversity.

Shay was still angry but shrugged nonchalantly as if to say, it’s not that big of a deal. “So, what am I wrong about?” “You’re not going to want to hear this, but I have to tell you anyway.” Liam paused before finishing. “You might be working hard, but you’re not doing it for the company.” “What the hell does that mean?” Shay wanted to know. Knowing that his adversary might punch him for what he was about to say, Liam responded. “You’re doing it for yourself.” New York Times best-selling author Patrick Lencioni has written a dozen books that focus on how leaders can build teams and lead organizations. In The Motive, he shifts his attention toward helping them understand the importance of why they’re leading in the first place. In what may be his edgiest page-turner to date, Lencioni thrusts his readers into a day-long conversation between rival CEOs. Shay Davis is the CEO of Golden Gate Alarm, who, after just a year in his role, is beginning to worry about his job and is desperate to figure out how to turn things around. With nowhere else to turn, Shay receives some hard-to-swallow advice from the most unlikely and unwanted source—Liam Alcott, CEO of a more successful security company and his most hated opponent. Lencioni uses unexpected plot twists and crisp dialogue to take us on a journey that culminates in a resolution that is as unexpected as it is enlightening. As he does in his other books, he then provides a straightforward summary of the lessons from the fable, combining a clear explanation of his theory with practical advice to help executives examine their true motivation for leading. In addition to provoking readers to honestly assess themselves, Lencioni presents action steps for changing their approach in five key areas. In doing so, he helps leaders avoid the pitfalls that stifle their organizations and even hurt the people they are meant to serve.

As a reference that contains original and innovative research on the sociology of emotion, this book will not only appeal to sociologists but also to scholars of psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, history, social work, and business/management. With contributions from experts in the field, this text examines the role and influence of emotion in everyday social circumstances. It poses clear questions and presents the contemporary theoretical developments and empirical research linking social structure and emotion.Comparable books are narrowly focused and less comprehensive, the breadth and depth of this new work is unmatched. - Explores the roles played by emotion in social arrangements (i.e., the power of emotions in psychology, finance, economics, etc...) - Poses clear questions and presents the newest theoretical developments and empirical research linking social structure and emotion - Contributions from experts in the field

The concept of self-handicapping can be legitimately anchored in a vari ety of intellectual contexts, some old and some newer. As this volume reminds us, Alfred Adler was perhaps the first to articulate the signifi cance of various self-defeating claims and gestures for protecting the self concept. Thus the apparent paradox of "defeat" in the interests of "pro tection. " More recently (but still more than 30 years ago), Heider's "naive psychology" added attributional rhetoric to the description of self-defeat ing strategies. While predominantly cognitive in its thrust, the attribu tional approach incorporated several motivational influences-especially those involving egocentric concerns. Heider hardly violated our common sense when he suggested that people are inclined to attribute their performances in a self-serving manner: the good things I caused; the bad things were forced upon me. The notion of self-handicapping strategies, proposed by Berglas and myself a little more than a decade ago, capitalized on these homely truths while adding a particular proactive twist. We not only make ex cuses for our blunders; we plan our engagements and our situational choices so that self-protective excuses are unnecessary. In doing so, we use our attributional understanding to arrange things so that flawed and failing performances will not be interpreted in ways that threaten our self-esteem.

Applauded as one of the world's most popular leadership experts, John C. Maxwell distills many of his winning concepts and scriptural meditations into a daily devotional, following the phenomenally popular format of Grace for the Moment and Hope for Each Day. Delivered with his trademark style of confidence and clarity, Maxwell addresses a host of relevant topics including success, stewardship, teamwork, and mentoring.