Product Description

You're a manager. A leader. You come to work and are faced with challenges from the moment you walk through the door (not to mention the ones that followed you home the previous evening). Some of these challenges are internal, some are external. They will also change across your life span and career span.

How are you doing in your response to these challenges? Are you clear on what they are? Could you become more effective at responding to each? What actions will you commit to, in order to move forward?

Up to now, much leadership development within organizations has been through the use of competency models. You've probably experienced this. It will have been decided what behaviours your organization wants to see in its leaders - if they are to be effective. Like the NHS 16 Qualities. The organization then creates and runs a 360 feedback on each manager, the results of which often need an expert to interpret the wad of pages of data. You, the manager probably came away with a few insights and then put the report at the bottom of a deep drawer. And forgot about it.

There is another way. One that you own and that therefore you are far more involved in. It ceases to be something that's done to you - it becomes something you do. Our approach is to engage you in setting the agenda yourself. You become the expert. And you see where you need to act - and how.

With the 18 Challenges:

• You create an agenda for your development that is both simple and that you own.
• You get practical process to help you coach yourself to develop in the leadership challenges that you have identified.
• You identify the interferences - the internal and external blockages - to leadership effectiveness and help you to reduce or remove their impact.

This is the ONLY leadership book that is designed so that you only have to read the chapters you want and need and you can leave the others until you are ready or you need them.

Most leadership books focus either on the theory around leadership or underline the business importance of different aspects of leadership. This book is not about trying to come up with new theories; it is about making the existing theories and models accessible to everyone in a way that helps them put them to work.

This is the book that will allow you to:

Understand

what the key challenges of leadership are

Reflect on your ability to tackle each

Develop your ability to be more effective

Act to become a better leader

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88391 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 364 pages

Review

"... a good self-coaching handbook for anybody who wants to be a better leader."

- Business Executive Magazine

From the Back Cover

When was the last time you lifted up your head?

To succeed in business you need to be more than an effective manager. Organisations are looking for people who are both engaged and can achieve results. They want leaders at all levels. People who lift up their heads.

Becoming a successful leader means meeting some key challenges. These challenges span from what are often called ‘hard’ business-focused issues, such as vision and strategy, to ‘soft’ personal challenges, such as personality and confidence. The leadership challenges are remarkably uniform across sectors and levels.

This book presents the crucial 18 challenges that have been distilled from research and practical experience into what real leaders face in their daily work. After each challenge is described, there is a simple self-assessment process to allow you to see where you are in relation to that challenge. Finally, practical guidance shows you how to go about boosting your ability to meet that challenge and excel as a leader.

The book delivers:

• A fast and sound way of assessing your response to the challenges you face as a leader in your current role.
• A structured, reflective process that guarantees to raise your self-awareness and insight into your leadership.
• A practical step-by-step process to guide you through your development as a leader in response to each of the challenges.

Providing insight, explanation and practical help, The 18 Challenges of Leadership is the self-coaching handbook for anybody who wants to be a better, more assured and effective leader.

About the Author

Trevor is Managing Director of The Executive Coach ltd. He has extensive experience in executive and senior management coaching - including the delivery of 1:1 and team coaching along with whole-organisation coaching interventions and training coaches. His expertise is in combining his passion for leadership development with his skill as a top-level coach, his experience in organisational consultancy and his thorough understanding of the psychology of personal change.Previously Trevor spent 15 years in leadership in the voluntary sector included five years being Chief Executive of a national start-up. He then trained with the Covey Leadership Centre and worked for a consultancy firm before founding The Executive Coach. Trevor works alongside some of the other top Executive Coaches in his role as Faculty member of The School of Coaching at The Work Foundation in association with Myles Downey. He is guest lecturer on Leadership for Anglia Polytechnic University's MBA Programme.

Shenaz has a background in occupational psychology and psychotherapy and has a wide experience in consultancy, research, training and employment development within corporate culture. Her skill and experience in both a therapeutic background and organisational development have given her a unique perspective in individual and team performance issues as well as personal development within an organisational context. Shenaz has increasingly focused these skills in the area of coaching at all levels of an organisation.

Customer Reviews

A practical book that relates to life not just to your work
I read this book and worked on some of the challenges during a four hour plane journey. The time passed quickly and productively. I found the book both thought provoking and practical. Whilst working on some of the challenges it became clear that the work is useful both for my career and for my personal life. Leadership is a skill that we require throughout our lives and one that will stand us in good stead at all times and at any age. I thoroughly recommend this book and have given copies to teenagers and to friends who are now retired - they have all benefitted from the time spent working through those challenges that are relevant to them. I shall return to work with this book again and again as my life and my career develop.

For 'Challenges of Leadership' read 'Challenges of Life'
The word leadership has connotations of an activity that is the preserve of the great and good but this book shows that it is not. Yes, it is about leadership, but it cuts through all the usual 'management speak' and gets to the heart of the subject. Leadership is as much about leading yourself as leading other people. And here the book is brilliant in it's insight and in the way it helps the reader sit down and consider what they are going to do with that insight. Self-help books are often too complicated or unrealistic and one feels inclined to give up before reaching the end. This book provides realistic and practical exercises to help you 'lift your head'. This book does not promise the earth but it does provide valuable help through a combination of theory, examples and exercises to make the reader see a way out of the mire - and as a housewife I know plenty about mire!