Enlightened Leadership: Getting to the Heart of Change [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

The book is longer than it needs to be, and tends to be repetitive, but it's a fast read. I have already tried their strategy at a meeting, and I am pleased with the results that I obtained. Any book that gives me the tools to help solve some of my department's problems is a winner. It's a very general and flexible strategy, and I expect to be using it again in the future.

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Oakley and Krug understand that "it is vitally important to balance the energy focused on the these two factors: supporting our people and creating results. A closer look at these questions provides that balance. Questions 1 and 2 provide encouragement and growth for people. Questions 3,4, and 5 focus on creating results. "Both factors are essential for long term results." The difficulty that we have is most of the time we are asking core and critical questions in crisis. It is sometimes difficult to see what is working when the company is in the red or being taken over by another or losing core quality employees. The power, however, comes from asking these questions in good times and in bad. By starting with the positive-people come together to problem solve not point fingers. Due to the complexity of today's business the "cookie-cutter hierarchy" does not work. Each organization needs to come up with individual and personal models that allow for business needs to be accomplished in a manner that engages employees. While many are practicing Total Quality Management the power comes from Total Quality Consciousness. This comes when leaders are asking positive and effective questions that raise the employees awareness of what is being accomplilshed and how they contribue to make the vision a reality. A large part of the book is laying the foundation for the importance of questions in getting buy in. But all the questions in the world cannot make an Enlightened Leader. Englightened Leaders come with a framework that have the following core beliefs about people in the workforce: · The most important factor in an organization's success is its people. · The behavior of leadership has a major impact on the people. · People resist being told what to do, and they reading commit to making their own ideas work. · To the extent that people feel cared about and supported, they will go to extremes to help those who help them. · There is tremendous support in numbers. For those of you who are feeling uncomfortable with this emphasis on the "soft side" of business, Oakley and Krug say "get used to it!" When you get to the heart of most business problems there are usually fundemental human issues at the core. Oakley and Krug bring with them several examples of how this framework has truly empowerd and facilitated results from a vast cross sections of business from Hewlett-Packard, U.S Customer Service, Colorado State Patrol, and General Electric. While the book certainly inspires leaders to think about how they engage their workforce and provides examples of the results of this type of leadership. There is little information on "how to get there." Certainly it is a process more complicated than asking the right questions. Traditional leaders and managers may need some more practical scenarios to facilitate the internal and external changes needed to provide the level of awareness that is required of Enlightened Leaders. The book is full of wisdom from the masters including Peter Drucker, John Naisbitt, Tom Peters, Warren Bennis, Peter Block, and W. Edwards Deming. It was dissappointing that none of the voices highlighted were female. After all, Patricia Aburdene helped to write Megatrends. As Peter Drucker says," The best way to predict the future is to create it," there is no better way to create your disired future than asking Effective Questions!

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The value to me of Enlightened Leadership is being even more aware of how people perceive and process change in their own minds and the sensitivty leadership needs to exercise as we communicate and manage change.

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