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    The Heart of Leadership: Becoming a Leader People Want to Follow
    The Heart of Leadership: Becoming a Leader People Want to Follow
    The Heart of Leadership: Becoming a Leader People Want to Follow
    Ebook138 pages1 hour

    The Heart of Leadership: Becoming a Leader People Want to Follow

    By Mark Miller and Patrick Lencioni

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    About this ebook

    Understand what sets great leaders apart by learning the five qualities of leadership character from the international-bestselling coauthor of The Secret.
     
    Certainly, leaders need people skills, execution skills, a deep knowledge of industry trends, the ability to articulate a vision, and more—they must be competent—but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What’s below the waterline? What’s deep inside the best leaders that makes them different?
     
    Mark Miller contends it is their leadership character. In his latest enlightening and entertaining business fable, he describes the five unique character traits exhibited by exceptional leaders and how to cultivate them.
     
    The Heart of Leadership begins with young and ambitious Blake Brown being passed over for a desperately wanted promotion, despite an outstanding individual performance. Confused and frustrated, he turns to his former mentor, who sends him on a quest to meet with five of his late father’s colleagues, each of whom holds a piece of the puzzle he’s trying to solve.
     
    As Blake puts the pieces together, he discovers that in the final analysis, a lack of skills isn’t what holds most leaders back. Without demonstrated leadership character, a skill set will never be enough. Most often, when leaders fail to reach their full potential, it is an issue of the heart. This is Blake’s ultimate revelation.
     
    This book shows us that leadership needn’t be the purview of the few—it is within reach for millions around the world. The Heart of Leadership is a road map for every person who desires to make a difference in the lives of others and become a leader people want to follow.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 7, 2013
    ISBN9781609949624
    The Heart of Leadership: Becoming a Leader People Want to Follow
    Author

    Mark Miller

    Mark Miller (BA, Evangel University) is executive pastor at NewSong Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and he consults for other churches on reaching postmoderns, creativity, and leadership. He is the founder of The Jesus Journey, an experiential storytelling retreat that makes the story of the Bible accessible to postmoderns. He is married to Stacey and has two daughters.

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      The Heart of Leadership - Mark Miller

      More Praise for The Heart of Leadership

      "The Heart of Leadership addresses the primary stumbling block for leaders—themselves! If you want to improve how you lead others, you must first improve how you lead yourself. This great little book shows you how."

      —Daniel S. Harkavy, CEO, author, and Executive Coach, Building

         Champions, Inc.

      "The Heart of Leadership extends and deepens the bestselling leadership models pioneered by Mark Miller. This book is clear, compelling, and of real practical value. Keep it on hand—a small investment of time will yield a lifetime of dividends, in your life as well as in your career."

      —Jeff Rosensweig, Associate Professor of International Business

         and Finance and Director, Global Perspectives Program, Goizueta

         Business School, Emory University

      There’s a difference between potential leaders with raw talent and great leaders with real influence. Mark’s book reveals the foundational difference—it’s all about leadership character.

      —Tony Morgan, author and Chief Strategic Officer and founder of

      TonyMorganLive.com

      "Mark Miller’s The Heart of Leadership immediately creates a place for personal discovery. As I read each page, I was no longer thinking of Blake, the main character, but myself. Blake’s journey of discovery became my own. This is about the ‘life’ of leadership and how it reaches within and without, having profound and long-lasting impact. It’s about being unselfishly driven and highly motivated. It is about how others within the workplace and within our lives benefit from our personal resolve to lead from the perspective that others matter."

      —Clifton L. Taulbert, author of Eight Habits of the Heart and President,

         The Freemount Corporation/Building Community Institute

      "There are so many buzzwords in business that claim to be the answer to all leadership woes. The truth is that leadership is all about the people, and to have success with people, read The Heart of Leadership, and watch your leadership soar to a whole new level."

      —Todd Nielsen, author and COO, JMARK Business Solutions

      The Heart of Leadership

      OTHER BOOKS BY MARK MILLER

      The Secret of Teams

      The Secret of Teams Field Guide

      With Ken Blanchard

      Great Leaders Grow

      The Secret

      The Heart of Leadership

      Becoming a Leader People

      Want to Follow

      Mark Miller

      The Heart of Leadership

      Copyright © 2013 by Mark Miller

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

      Ordering information for print editions

      Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the Berrett-Koehler address above.

      Individual sales. Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores. They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626; www.bkconnection.com

      Orders for college textbook/course adoption use. Please contact Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626.

      Orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact Ingram Publisher Services, Tel: (800) 509-4887; Fax: (800) 838-1149; E-mail: [email protected]; or visit www.ingrampublisherservices.com/Ordering for details about electronic ordering.

      Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

      First Edition

      Hardcover print edition ISBN 978-1-60994-960-0

      PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-60994-961-7

      IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-60994-962-4

      2013-1

      Production Management: Michael Bass Associates

      Cover Design: Irene Morris

      To Mom and Dad:

      Your love, challenge, encouragement,

      and prayers have marked me and

      my leadership forever.

      Thank you!

      Contents

      Foreword by Patrick Lencioni

      Introduction: Leadership Character

      Leaders Are Different

      When the Student Is Ready

      It’s Not About You

      Leaders Create the Future

      Vision Fuels Courage

      The Price of Leadership

      No Substitute for Wisdom

      Look in the Mirror

      I Can Change This

      A Matter of the Heart

      The Next Step

      Epilogue

      Author’s Note

      Self-Assessment

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author

      Foreword

      Leadership has been the subject of so many books, studies, and commencement speeches that many people have started to ignore the importance of the message. And, to be fair, authors and speakers often rehash the same clichés and obvious truths, leaving readers and audience members searching for something new.

      But maybe it’s not something new that we need. Maybe we only need to take a longer, harder look at what we already know but have failed to grasp—the simple but painful truth that if your heart is not right, no one cares about your leadership skills.

      In The Heart of Leadership, Mark Miller makes a compelling case for a radical form of leadership. According to my dictionary, radical means favoring extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions. And, Mark’s ideas around the heart of leadership just do not correspond to the more self-oriented views, habits, and conditions of today’s culture.

      This book also illustrates the idea that there is much more to the concept of leadership than most people realize. As the main character in the story comes to understand, wisdom, responsibility, and courage are not generic, fluffy or simplistic concepts that any leader can easily embrace. They can only be achieved through a radical detachment from self, through a painful honesty about our past mistakes and limitations. Anything short of that will leave an aspiring leader, and his or her constituents, feeling empty.

      For those who have the courage and the character to embrace the radical nature of heart-based leadership, the rewards are great. But those rewards are not always tangible nor are they guaranteed. They cannot be calculated like a bonus or a 401(k) program. That may be why relatively few leaders choose to lead this way. But perhaps this book will begin to change that. I certainly hope so.

      —Patrick Lencioni

      President, The Table Group

      Author, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

      and The Advantage

      INTRODUCTION

      Leadership Character

      Have you ever noticed how many books are written to help leaders improve? As many books as there are out there focused on helping leaders enhance their skills, there are far fewer written to help the leader with the all-important self-work—the part on the inside. That’s why I’m excited about this book.

      I’ll let you in on a little discussed fact about leadership: As important as the skills are, lack of skills is not what derails most leaders; skills are too easy to learn. If you want to predict people’s ultimate success as leaders, evaluate not their skills but their leadership character.

      The challenge of growing our leadership character is complicated by a lack of clarity as to what we’re actually discussing when the term is used. Ask people what character traits they look for in leaders, and I’m guessing they will probably name attributes like integrity, honesty, and, perhaps, loyalty. These alone are not a great answer. Don’t get me wrong—these are fine traits, but they are totally inadequate when describing leadership character.

      The best leaders must certainly be honest and have integrity, but we expect these qualities from everyone in our organizations. There are additional traits that set leaders apart. This book is about identifying and developing leadership character. When these traits are evident—and a leader possesses the requisite leadership skills—you find people eager to follow.

      So, why is a book like this necessary? This book is intended to help leaders and aspiring leaders strengthen their leadership character, and, as a consequence, position themselves for greater opportunity, influence, and impact. For some of you, the ideas in this book may help transform your leadership and unlock opportunities as you’ve never imagined. It might even

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