Leadership Begins with You

Having a Sound Strategy and Building a Culture of Commitment are two imperatives for successful leadership. But there is a third, imperative, which is a precursor to these two imperatives. And that is, Being a Self-Aware and Skillful Leader. Leadership begins with you as the leader. This book has two objectives for you as a leader. The first objective is to make you more self-aware of the real you by surfacing your subconscious tendencies, priorities, and preferences. Doing so allows you to better understand and appreciate why you think, feel, and behave as you do. Knowing the real you enhances the quality of your decision making and interacting. This fi rst objective also encompasses helping you discover and capitalize on your strengths. Strengths being the things you are really good at and passionate about.

The second objective is to use your heightened self-awareness to help you enhance three critical interpersonal leadership competencies. They are:

• Sharpening your perceptive skills to help you understand and appreciate what is going on.
• Using effective listening and speaking communication patterns to increase your capability to seek to understand and be understood, especially when interacting relative to different points of view.
• Using both your natural and adaptive behaviors to align with the environment, situation, and relationship when having important conversations.

Although the primary target audience for this book is organizational leaders, the book serves as a valuable resource to anyone since, even they may not be an organizational leader, they, like all of us, are in charge of You, Inc.

“Carl is the most creative, pragmatic, and thoughtful organizational consultant I know. He has helped me address numerous organizational problems and situations.”

—Tom Bjornson, Behavioral Health Executive

Carl is a consummate professional consultant in that he brings deep technical knowledge to the table and has a great facilitative work style. I have found him to be engaging, interested, productive, and always delivering as promised. My business colleagues share my views.”

—J. Allan McCarthy, Executive Management Consultan