How to Be a Positive Leader: Small Actions, Big Impact

by Jane E. Dutton (Editor), Gretchen M. Spreitzer, Shawn Achor (Foreword)

Positive leaders are able to dramatically expand their people's—and their own—capacity for excellence. And they accomplish this without enormous expenditures or huge heroic gestures. Here leading scholars—including Adam Grant, author of the bestselling Give and Take; positive organizational scholarship movement cofounders Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn; and thirteen more—describe how this is being done at companies such as Wells Fargo, Ford, Kelly Services, Burt's Bees, Connecticut's Griffin Hospital, the Michigan-based Zingerman's Community of Businesses, and many others. They show that, like the butterfly in Brazil whose flapping wings create a typhoon in Texas, you can create profound positive change in your organization through simple actions and attitude shifts.

Genres: Leadership, Business, Management, Nonfiction, Self Help, Business Leadership

233 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 2, 2014

Reviews

[Anton Nikolov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Positivity, nurturing the people you lead and just being a better person to become a better leader.
Nothing really groundbreaking, but still nice to repeat so you don't forget what matters. :)

[Sandeep Gautam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is aimed at leaders and how they can themselves become a positive leader and make their organization a positively deviant one; however front-line employees/ middle managers can also take a lot from this book.

The book is structured nicely and has practical tips well organized in chapters by leading figures in positive organizational scholarship. However, the chapters are of varied quality- some make incisive points , others may just reiterate what your grandmother advised regarding being a good leader.

I experimented with a twitter based book summary for this book, whereby I tried tweeting essence of each chapter via a few tweets. That book summary thread can be found here: https://twitter.com/sandygautam/statu...

My overall suggestion, its a good book to read and apply, and very well structured, although some chapters could have been written better. So do go ahead and read it if you are manager or leader even an IC.

[Alireza Hejazi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The field of leadership is expanding and good books contribute to its growth. This book is exactly on that path. It collects the best research from the leadership researchers and puts it into an easy-to-read text for companies, based on the practical tools and philosophy of leadership. The book draws on the wisdom of 17 leadership experts to show you how to become a good leader who inspires others around him, whether at business or home, by making tiny adjustments that add up to make a significant difference. If your career allows you to bring out the best in others, then this book is for you.

[Martti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Important studies in leadership presented in a boring way. To quote the classics from the Dollhouse: "try to be my best"! A weird feature of the book is to have pre-written tweets for users of Twitter to write something short and "wise".

Invest Your Time Into People - have more high-quality connections by giving people your full attention.

Find Meaning in Your Work - show yourself that your work has meaning, by connecting with those, who benefit from it.

Stay True to Your Values - would I be okay, if the consequences of my decision would be published on the front page of The New York Times tomorrow?

Capture the culture in a vision in a simple and motivating sentence. Define a higher purpose than just the pursuit of profit.

Cut off the straps, meaning to give ownership to empower employees to be resourceful.

Create opportunity from the crisis. Analyze the vulnerabilities, encourage to explore short and long term, learn and implement.

Part of the Leadership HumbleBundle.

[Zaid T. AJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've enjoyed reading this. The book is well written in terms of simpliphying the idea supportted with life examples.

The book emphasizes the role of a leader, and how leadership acts should go beyond own person to whole employees. Building a leading organization starts with a leader actions and words, which has ethical ground and values combined with virtuos deeds and quality connection. This will provide a base to expand more into mirroring these behaviors to your employees, consider them as a resources not a resistors to change. The employees will have shared values, feel much connected to work, contribute more, and able to express, alter, improve and innovate work to the benefit that goes beyond financial goals, but more into higher goal and purpose.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

They authors are all PhDs and leaders in business and leadership research. The forward is by Shawn Anchor, who is well known for writing The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness

They're all really great and wise people!! I can see that this could be a group book study to do over a year and work on implementing many of their suggestions. I can see how the organization I work for has many of these things in place. There are things I could do though to make my work life better. I decided first to focus on high quality connections. I'm tracking my efforts each day in May.

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Small on Impact, Big on Obvious

Analysis essentially stating that leaders should be ethical and virtuous is not exact!y cutting edge. Several good tips included though.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

Different perspectives - concise, pragmatic advice on positive leadership.

[Mariola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Practical advice. Usable.

[Amal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice book for leaders

[Neema Zarrabian · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a good book with a ton of thoughts. The structure has a different author write each chapter which provides great breadth, not much depth within each section though.

[Felipe CZ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Organizational behavior helps us find many things. If we consider emotion, we can have a more productive workforce, making employees feel happier if we care about how they feel.

[Richard Webb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the chapters are good information, others not so much. Average book.

[Mariyan Tashev · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not a good one. Be positive, hold your hands together bla bla.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to thank Goodreads First Reads Giveaway and Jane E. Dutton for the copy of How to Be a Positive Leader: Small Actions, Big Impact that I won in the Giveaway. I never received but borrowed a copy.

Four main areas are covered in How to Be a Positive Leader: Small Actions, Big Impact and they are: tapping into the good, unlocking valuable resources, fostering positive relationships, and facilitating generative change. Each is related how they influence individuals to give guidance in leadership principals.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read for new, emerging leaders, and even some valuable tidbits for seasoned leaders. Mounds of supporting research to backup the "soft" conclusions. Each chapter concludes with some case-study or practically applied scenario (anectdotal cases from live organizations/businesses); I did not find these particularly useful, and you can skip those and not lose any of the meat and meaning of the text.

[Jude Brigley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I probably enjoyed this book because it says many of the things that I believe about leadership. This presents the human face of the work place. It shows how treating people as individuals and letting them play to their strengths brings happiness and productivity. I recommend it to anyone with leadership responsibilities.

[مشاري الإبراهيم · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although not comprehensive,there are some points that can be leveraged.

[Liz Barclay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would be good for an MBA or Executive MBA leadership class.