Leading Lightly: Lower Your Stress, Think with Clarity, and Lead with Ease

by Jody Michael

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER
and PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY BESTSELLER

A Conscious Approach to Leadership and Life

Leading lightly is about looking at what you do through a radical new lens. It’s a way to powerfully transform your performance, make better decisions, gain greater self-awareness, and develop the capacity to manage your work and life with enduring ease and clarity. An alternative to the everyday stress, pace, challenges, and burdens that weigh you down, leading lightly shows you how to shift your mindset, live lighter, and optimize your effectiveness. Part leadership, part mental fitness, part health and wellness guide, Leading Lightly empowers you to work at your best and operate at your fullest potential. 

Stress and difficulty don’t have to be a given. Learning to lead lightly and live mindfully can profoundly change the trajectory of your day. This book is for anyone who finds themselves overloaded, frustrated, anxious, or exhausted by their life circumstances. It offers more than just tactical strategies for sustained optimal performance at work, but transcends that, helping you develop a conscious approach to all the facets of your life, so you’re able to leverage the choices you have each day and take action that puts you in control of your experience. You’ll not only be able to create better outcomes but also do this in a way that energizes and enlivens you.

​In Leading Lightly, author Jody Michael brings together 20+ years of her research and work as a psychotherapist, Master Certified Coach, and leadership expert to provide you with a practical, measurable, and proven process for developing your mental fitness. You’ll increase your emotional intelligence, discover how to respond to situations with more agility, build stronger interpersonal relationships, and find that the ability to thrive in leadership and life is within your grasp. This book will show you how to think differently, feel lighter, and achieve personal and professional well-being. You’ll notice the results immediately, and those around you will too.

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction, Leadership, Business, Professional Development, Productivity, Mental Health

248 pages, Hardcover

Published June 28, 2022

About the author

Jody Michael is CEO of Jody Michael Associates, a premier coaching company specializing in executive coaching, leadership development, and career coaching. She is recognized as one of the top 4% of coaches worldwide and is an internationally credentialed Master Certified Coach, Board Certified Coach, University of Chicago trained psychotherapist, and Licensed Clinical Social Worker.

Jody brings a rare combination of global SVP leadership, theoretical knowledge, plus extensive field experience. She’s built her expertise through 40,000+ hours of individual sessions across 25+ years of coaching; post-graduate education in human behavior, neuroscience, and psychology; and 15 years in corporate leadership with Goldman Sachs, Chicago Research and Trading (CRT)/Nations Bank, and Kidder-Peabody.

Jody has coached some of the nation’s top performing leaders and teams across diverse industries and organizations, from hypergrowth tech companies to global Fortune 100 organizations. She has a special affinity for partnering with tech, finance, and healthcare. Among her clients are more than 120 senior executives across 18 Fortune 100 companies.

She’s a renowned keynote speaker, author, and thought leader in her field who has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Oprah Magazine, Huffington Post, Crain’s Chicago, and more. She has appeared as an expert on MSNBC, CNN, the TODAY Show, and NPR.

Jody and her partner Kathy reside in Chicago, IL, and Palm Springs, CA.

Reviews

[Nici · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book approached the topic of leadership from another side. It's not about the typical 'how to give feedback, how to x, how to y' but it's more about the state of mind that makes leadership easier.
To me this is a very appealing concept and I believe that many of the exercises in this book are incredibly useful.
However I felt that half of this book was marketing for an app from the same author. Over and over again she explains why it is so useful to use the app. And where you can download the app. And how the app works. For me that somehow deminishs the rest of the book that I actually liked a lot.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author has a very inspiring personal story about how she lost everything financially but was able to keep a strong, positive mindset to rebound in her career. It gives a lot of credibility to her recommendations about how anyone can create a mindset that helps them be at their best. This book is definitely relevant right now when so many people are feeling so much stress. It’s written in a very conversational style, as if the author is speaking directly to you … easy to digest and very useful.

[McKenzy Hupke · Rating 4 out of 5]

another good self-help! even if you don't expect to be the leader or be the boss, it certainly is good to learn and read about lowering your stress and picking up on self-awareness in leading and work in general. In the end she does kind of just want you to download her app and some of the writing becomes pushing her app and personal for herself which i didn't enjoy as much, but I did use a lot of this!

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've already gifted this book to others because I think it could help change lives for the better. Mental fitness isn't just the latest buzzword, it's important for leaders (or really anyone for that matter) to know how to flex those brain muscles to increase their resiliency, especially in today's crazy world. Leading Lightly is a guidebook on how to do that. Peppered throughout the book are real-life examples of how to put the author's methodology into practice in your daily life. Ever sent an email in the heat of the moment that you later regretted? Yeah, me too. But once you learn how to stop, breathe (who knew how important this is?!) and consider the situation from multiple alternate lenses, you'll see that a knee-jerk reaction doesn't have to be your standard. This book will change your perspective and your productivity in both your professional and personal lives!

[Kelee Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don’t let the breezy title fool you. This leadership book is a must read. The author elegantly guides you to become more conscious about your lens, to understand what it means to take radical accountability and to truly lead with lasting impact. She also helps you realize the energetic power in shifting your mindset and adapting your style to lead more effectively no matter what comes your way. You will not only notice profound shifts after applying the tools in this book, but the results will come more quickly and with greater ease. Jody Michael is truly a transformational leadership expert. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to up their game in work and in life.

[txncupcake]

***I won the Kindle Edition of this book in the Goodreads Giveaway ***

This book introduces the reader to how our perception might cause us to see things in a distorted way. This, in turn, causes us pain.

The author introduces us to methods on how we can assess our current mood, utilize breathing exercises, and change our mood to perform at our highest capacity as a leader (and not take things personally.)

I downloaded the app that the author recommended to monitor my moods throughout the day. I intend to reread this book since it is chock full of methods that I'm excited to apply and integrate into my daily life!!

[Sarah Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feeling burned out? This is the book you've been waiting for.
Leading Lightly is an absolute game changer! Through extensive research and thousands of hours of executive coaching, Jody has developed THE essential toolkit to finally break through cycle of stress and negativity in the workplace. This book profoundly changed me. I've grown my self-awareness, learned to move through negative moods more quickly, and can think more clearly to be my best self. Mental fitness takes effort, but I can I promise you it's worth it! I'll being coming back to this book again and again.

[Gabriella Fregona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking for a book that gives you practical ways to build your resilience and be more self-aware? Then this is the book for you. Leading Lightly makes complicated theory into something digestible and functional - which is what we all need to build our mental fitness, be less reactive, and be more aware of ourselves and how we show up in the world. A great read for not just your professional but also your personal life.

[Ligia Bonetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing book that can be of great help for leaders of today that are confronted with major stress, anxiety and mood swings caused by many factors. Learning how to build your mental fitness developing five muscles in your brain is definitely a must try to people like me. Remembering your ABC - Assess - Breathe - Choose as well as SENSE, EXPLORE and EFECT. I highly recommend this easy read book for anyone trying to lead with a better head, more motivation and inspire people around.

[Katie Podmokly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This successfully articulated so many realizations & self-awareness lessons that I’ve learned over the years. It’s a guide to being a fully aware, empathetic, effective, and grounded human. Quotes I love, "let go of the impeding belief that everything and everyone else is the main problem...much more often than we think, we are responsible for our own pain...own your stuff & get out of your own way."

[Renata · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was interesting and helpful read how to build mental fitness.

Thanks to author #JodyMichael who shares her thoroughly defined method how to do it by using self-awareness, identifying deap-seated impeding beliefs and how to change them into helpful ones and react productively.

🙏 #NetGalley #LeadingLightly

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This books offers real exercises and options to build your resilience and learn what works best for you. The author also has an app that you can use along with the book to help you keep track of what's working vs. not so much. It helped me gain perspective about what the sources of stress were and how to understand them better so they no longer caused me to worry as much.

[Midlife Moxy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learn to let go of the negative

The book goes through the steps on how to change your negative thoughts and emotions into positives. The process can be used by everyone. I plan to use in my life as a wife, mother, and employee.

[Carol Bradford Worley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A common sense approach to taking some of the stress out of leadership. I appreciated the discussion about the need for mental fitness to lead effectively and the thoughts and plans for developing the 5 muscles of mental fitness. This book will change the way I think about my leadership.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re looking for a practical guide or how-to approach to improve your leadership, this is probably not your book. If you’re looking to challenge your frame of mind and theoretical approach, this is for you!

[Kimberly Griffith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodreads Giveaway Win

Lots of good advice and practices for executives. I’m taking over as a president of a ladies organization in January and this was the perfect book to get my mindset shifted before I became a leader

[Leah McDermott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some decent tips and helpful mindset shifts. Definitely more useful for the stereotypical stressed out executive than the average leader. Felt repetitive at points, though I recognize that’s the goal - continue the practice, develop the habits, build the mind mastery muscle.

[Kirsten Imhoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm in the middle of reading this and just have to say... it's enlightening and transformational. I already feel lighter, more positive, and clearheaded both at work and at home.

[David Castillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book have good leadership tips. However, I thin it spends a lot of time promoting their app instead of going deeper into the concepts. Despite this I was able to take some key concepts.

[Sarah Drasner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was great and had so many practical and useful suggestions. Gives leaders real tools to use to build resilience in frantic environments.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love that this book had a bit of a different approach than many other self-help books and focused on mindset. Such a useful tool!

[B H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great personal development book with a different perspective.

[Jessica Bodford · Rating 3 out of 5]

The primary takeaways from this book were actually super meaningful—I just wish I didn’t have to comb through the 85% of the book that was pure marketing for her app to find that 15% of solid, actionable content.

[Przemek Krydka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was an outstanding book on leadership development. If the current influencer fare that gets rehashed daily on social media is equivalent of middle-school level material, then this book by Jody Michael is graduate school material. To make the best use of this book, the reader will need to sit down with it, and work through it slowly and deliberately, journal nearby. This book demands lots of personal introspective work and I think it will make the reader, who is willing and able to do the work, a better executive leader in high-visibility, high-stakes corporate settings. The wisdom gained from the book however is not limited to the business settings. The skills presented can be applied to everyday life at home with spouse and family just as successfully. Furthermore, Jody Michael brings in a unique perspective shaped by her past career as a futures trader in the pit of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. And business is a contact sport, similar to trading in the pits, there is just a little bit of sugarcoating in the corporate world on it day-to-day, but it's just a coating.

[Waseem Ahamed · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author specifies the negative effects of catabolic human emotions and rectification to anabolic with pure positive energy to lead lightly. Good read.

[Janet McMillan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good ideas

It was a very slow read for me. The ideas are good. But I would have to read a bit, set it aside, think about it and apply.