Internationally recognized speaker, executive coach, writer, and leader John Baldoni believes it’s up to those at the top to bring meaning to employees’ day-to-day work. In this encouraging guide, he’ll show you what it takes to build a company of committed employees from your current workforce--using nothing more than a toolkit of powerful leadership skills. Featuring illuminating stories, interviews, and profiles of leaders from a variety of fields, Lead with Purpose can help all leaders take their organizations to the next level. You’ll learn how to: instill your team with a sense of ownership; spotlight your organization’s mission; encourage resourcefulness and flexibility; harness creativity and the desire to succeed; transform a shared vision into real results; and develop the next generation of leaders.At successful organizations, people know what they do and why they do it. With these practical tips and applicable techniques, you’ll not only improve your leadership skills--you’ll bring a sense of purpose to your workplace that produces incredible outcomes.


Book Description

Ask any leader: What would you give to have an entire company full of committed employees willing to go the extra mile? For all your people to work together as a unified force, knowing exactly what they do, and why they do it?

Featuring illuminating stories, interviews, and profiles of leaders from a variety of fields, Lead with Purpose shows readers how to take their organizations to the next level with renewed focus and improved direction. The book gives readers practical tips and techniques to:

• Instill a sense of ownership

• Ensure that organizational purpose is understood and acted upon

• Encourage resourcefulness and flexibility

• Communicate a narrative that will drive the organization

• Harness creativity and the desire to succeed

• Transform a shared vision into real results

• Develop the next generation of leaders

It’s a leader’s job to provide his people’s work with meaning. Lead with Purpose shows you how it’s done.

From the Inside Flap

Can you describe the purpose of your organization in a single sentence? More importantly…can your employees?

When an organization succeeds, it’s because the people who drive it know what they do and why they do it. As a leader, it’s your job to provide your people’s work with meaning. Yet the kind of attitude, commitment, and direction found in a workplace led by a clear sense of shared vision and direction is found at only the most successful, top tier organizations.

Based on in-depth research and interviews with business executives in multiple sectors—and featuring practical steps you can take to instill a sense of purpose throughout your organization—Lead with Purpose gives you the insight and guidance you need to ensure that your company succeeds in the new world economy.

Lead with Purpose illuminates the essential actions you must take to turn a sense of collective direction into a strategic advantage for you and your people, including how to:

• Instill purpose in others. Develop your peoples’ talents and skills, and harness their creativity and desire to succeed.

• Make your employees comfortable with ambiguity. In today’s business world, black and white is a luxury. Gray is the new norm. Live with it.

• Turn good intentions into great results. Turn ideas into practical applications that satisfy customer needs.

• Make it safe to fail (as well as prevail). It is ingenuity that turns ideas into practical concepts. Successful companies allow their work forces to experiment.

• Develop the next generation. The time to develop the next generation of leaders is now. Integrate leadership development into management as an ongoing process.

You’ll learn how to instill a sense of ownership from the top down, ensure that organizational purpose is understood and acted upon by all your people, encourage resourcefulness and flexibility, and communicate a narrative that will drive your organization from one success to another.

It’s your responsibility to provide those around you with a shared, focused sense of engagement and direction. This book provides you with a proven blueprint for leading your organization clear-eyed into the future.

JOHN BALDONI is an internationally recognized leadership educator, executive coach, and author of many books, including Lead by Example, Lead Your Boss, and Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders. John is much in demand as a speaker, and in 2011, Leadership Gurus International ranked him No. 11 on its list of top 30 global leadership experts. John is a regular online contributor to Harvard Business Review and Bloomberg/Businessweek.

His leadership resource website is www.johnbaldoni.com.

From the Back Cover

What would you give to have an entire company full of committed employees willing to go the extra mile, working together as a unified force to fulfill a shared sense of mission? Filled with practical tips and featuring illuminating stories, interviews, and profiles of leaders from a variety of fields, Lead with Purpose shows you how to provide renewed focus and improved direction…and shape the destiny of your organization.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR LEAD WITH PURPOSE:

“The capacity to imagine and articulate exciting future possibilities is the defining competence of leaders. It’s also the toughest of all skills for leaders to learn. That’s what makes John Baldoni’s new book, Lead with Purpose, so vitally important. It focuses on the one thing that makes leaders leaders—giving people a reason to believe and a reason to commit themselves to something meaningful and significant. This book is just a delight to read. John writes with elegance and ease about the solid evidence, valid principles, and practical ways in which real-life leaders bring purpose to life. I highly recommend that you make this one of your must-read books of the year.”— Jim Kouzes, coauthor of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge and The Truth About Leadership, Dean's Executive Fellow of Leadership, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University

“Lead with Purpose inspires and instructs with research, interviews, stories, examples, reflective questions, lessons, and action steps.”— Dan McCarthy, Director, Executive Education Programs, The Whittemore School of Business and Economics, University of New Hampshire

“Without a doubt, Lead with Purpose will help you reconnect to your own purpose and be a better leader for it.” — Ora Pescowitz, M.D., Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, University of Michigan; CEO, U-M Health System

“Purpose drives passion and superior results. John Baldoni reminds us that meaning can be found in our work, no matter what it is we do. Lead with Purpose will change the way you lead for the better.” — Chester Elton, bestselling author of The Carrot Principle and The Orange Revolution

“Anyone who wants to learn to lead effectively in this new era will be glad they made time to read Lead with Purpose!” — Ari Weinzweig, cofounder of Zingerman’s, named “coolest company in America,” Inc. magazine; author of A Lapsed Anarchist's Approach to Building a Great Business

About the Author

JOHN BALDONI, president of Baldoni Consulting LLC, is an internationally recognized executive coach, speaker, and author. In 2011, Leadership Gurus International ranked John No. 11 on its list of the world's top 30 leadership experts. He is a regular online contributor to CBS MoneyWatch, Inc, and Harvard Business Review.