This is not a book about the lives of famous leaders, nor is it an academic book with multiple theories of leadership. Instead, this is a book about leading, which I define as “empowering ourselves and others to face challenges and achieve results.”
It is a practical guide that presents, clearly and simply, five essential practices you can use to lead others to accomplish the results you most care about. I have distilled these practices from the best thinking in the field of leadership development, refined through my own research and experience in teaching people to lead in organizations, communities, and universities around the world. The thousands of people who have used these practices to transform their abilities to lead others for results have shown that these practices are both effective and simple to apply.
This book makes the practices of Leading for Results available to readers who may not have access to a leadership development program but are eager to learn how to achieve great results on the issues that they most care about. Each chapter explains a practice and then illustrates it with examples from the leadership development programs that I have designed and led. At the end of each chapter there are exercises for you to perform and apply to your own leadership challenges.