James Scouller's Blog, page 7
October 12, 2016
The New Second Edition Has Just Been Released
Hi,
My guide to growing yourself as a leader just got better. An expanded second edition of The Three Levels of Leadership with new content, ideas and models has just been released and I thought you’d want to know.
It’s just out in the UK (you’ll find it on UK Amazon here). It’s also listed on US Amazon here, but isn’t yet (as of 12th October) the default choice as I imagine they still have stocks of the old version to sell.
You can distinguish the new book from the old version easily – it has a gold flash on the front cover saying “new enlarged edition”.
Here are se
ven new features of the second edition for those who’ve read the first:
(1) A rewritten expanded first chapter. It strengthens my explanations about (a) the flawed, vague mental models that most leaders hold (b) the reality of shared leadership (c) the uniqueness of the leader’s role and (d) the fact that there’s no one way to lead.
(2) A new chapter on how to apply the four-dimensional definition of leadership as a practical tool.
(3) Greater detail on the seven qualities of leadership presence. Plus new questions to help readers assess the degree to which they are expressing the seven qualities today.
(4) A new 15-page section on motivation backed by extensive research. It’s a bit like Dan Pink’s book “Drive” only shorter, but a bit more comprehensive, as he omitted the fourth intrinsic motivator. It ends with practical advice you won’t find elsewhere.
(5) A new 25-page section on how to lead organisational change – the toughest of the leadership arts. Backed by wide-ranging research, containing ideas known to only a few, and closing with my new Spiral-Waves change model, I believe it’s the most up-to date, compact yet complete material you’ll read anywhere on how to lead change.
(6) A new self-mastery technique – 4R – that’s been tried and tested with executive coaching clients since the first edition came out in 2011.
(7) Finally, I’ve sharpened every chapter to make the key ideas even clearer.
As in edition one, Three Levels 2.0 cuts to the chase, but hopefully with greater clarity than before. And in expanding certain sections with new ideas, I haven’t lost sight of my chief aim: to offer you a concise master model.
With this second edition written and released, it feels like “job done”, meaning I don’t anticipate a third edition. Why do I say that?
Because having added the new material and made the smaller improvements, “Three Levels” is now the book I wanted it to be. My aim was to make this new edition the shortest, clearest, most complete and yet practical guide to leadership out there. You of course will judge whether I’ve succeeded.
I hope you like the new second edition and, more important, find it useful.
Your feedback is always welcome…
Kind regards,
James
The author is James Scouller, an executive coach. The second edition of his book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published in September 2016. You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com. If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews. If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE. You can read more about his executive coaching services at The Scouller Partnership’s website.
September 28, 2016
How do I get rid of the False Self the fastest way possible?
After The Three Levels of Leadership came out in 2011, readers followed up with questions on leadership, leadership psychology and self-mastery – all of them interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I’m releasing my answers here as they supplement the “Three Levels” material and others may find them useful. Here’s the seventeenth in the series. I’ll post the others over the coming months…
Q16. The question I was asked at a leadership workshop was: How do I get rid of the False Self the fastest way possible?
Answer:
“Consider this, how long have your False Self fears been inside your mind? I realise you won’t have an exact answer, but you can be pretty sure the answer is, “Most of my life.”
Now what’s the average age of the people on this programme? 40 years? So in other words, the chances are that your False Self has taken the best part of 40 years to develop.
So what do you regard as “the fastest way possible”? What is “fast”? Five times faster than the False Self took to develop? Ten times faster? There is no right mathematical answer, but can you see that the challenge of dissolving the power of your False Self is one that’s likely to take years? It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
So how do you free yourself from it in the fastest way possible?
Well, my first answer is: practise self-mastery.
My second answer is: make sure you understand what self-mastery is. Ask yourself, mastery of what? And mastery by what?
We did two exercises this afternoon that gave you the answers to these two questions. The first was the exercise where you concentrated on a small object. And the second was when we looked at how the self-image beliefs of a former client of mine had changed substantially over the decades.
Do you recall what you learned from these two experiences? You concluded that you are neither your mind nor the contents of your mind… that although you have a mind and you have contents in that mind (beliefs, memories and ingrained habits)… you are more than the mind. Armed with this conclusion you should be able to answer the two questions I just posed.
My third answer is that you should get cracking on the challenge of self-mastery as early as possible. That way, you’re likely to finish earlier. And that means you need to regard this challenge as your highest professional priority. That’s if you’re serious. I outlined a roadmap today and The Three Levels of Leadership gives you more detail in chapters 8 and 9.”
[NOTE: I answered this question when only the first edition was available. In the second edition, which will be out shortly, the chapter numbers are 10 & 11.]
June 16, 2016
How Do I Stop Others Taking Over as Leader?
After The Three Levels of Leadership came out in 2011, readers followed up with questions on leadership, leadership psychology and self-mastery – all of them interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I’m releasing my answers here as they supplement the “Three Levels” material and others may find them useful. Here’s the sixteenth in the series. I’ll post the others over the coming months…
Q16. The full question I was asked was: If I share leadership, how do I prevent others taking over from me? The questioner posed this during a discussion about shared leadership.
Answer:
“You may want to consider whether your interpretation of “leadership” is getting in the way here.
In my book, The Three Levels of Leadership, I described leadership as a four-dimensional process. Morespecifically, the process of paying attention to four dimensions simultaneously. First, a motivating purpose. Second, the task, progress and results. Third, creating and upholding a sense of group unity. And fourth, paying attention to selecting, motivating and developing individuals.
And you may recall I described the leader’s purpose as making sure there is leadership. In other words, making sure your group is addressing all four dimensions.
So if you’re the official leader, your role is to make sure there is a motivating purpose your colleagues care about. You must also pay attention to making happen what you need to make happen, when you need it to happen, how you need it to happen. You must also ensure there’s a sense of team spirit and that individuals feel noticed, appreciated and want to contribute their best. But it doesn’t mean you have to supply the vision. It doesn’t mean you have to provide all the answers, all the brilliance and all the charisma. It just means that if one or more of the four dimensions is unaddressed, you must intervene.
So to come back to your question, if you see “leadership” this way, and if you see the purpose of the leader this way, why would you be worried about your colleagues “taking over from you”?
Remember, your role as leader is to serve the group by helping it define and achieve what it wants while staying together as a group and helping the individuals feel they are contributing and doing something significant and fulfilling. If you have colleagues who in certain circumstances know more than you … or have better contacts than you … or have talents you don’t have … what’s the problem of them leading in that situation? Isn’t that your role, to make sure there is leadership? Does it matter who’s leading from the front at that moment as long as your group is addressing all four dimensions?
It only matters if you see being a leader and preserving your status as leader as an ego game, or rather, as a False Self game. But if you see leadership and the role of leader the way I’ve described here, I think you’ll find this fear fades.
By the way, leaders who work on self-mastery and dissolve their main fears will find their leadership presence begins to flow naturally. And leaders with real presence find that people around them trust them, are inspired by them and want them as leader – they don’t want to take over from them. So the fear that others may take over becomes a non-issue.
The message: change your definition of leadership and the leader’s purpose and work on your psychology. That way you’ll make this question irrelevant.”
April 13, 2016
What Went Wrong at Chelsea (Part 3)
Why did Chelsea football club go from runaway English Premier League champions to relegation candidates within 16 games in 2015?
It was an extraordinary collapse that no one foresaw. In 2014-15, Chelsea won the English championship by eight points having lost just 3 games over a 38-game season. But 16 games into the 2015-16 season Chelsea were only one point above the relegation zone, having already lost 9 games. Experienced commentators said they’d never seen anything like it before in professional football. So what happened? This three-part post explores the possible system story behind the club’s on-field collapse which led to Jose Mourinho’s sacking … and what leaders can learn from it.
On Monday I posted part 1, defining what I mean by a system and a system story. Yesterday, in part 2, I posted the Chelsea story. Today, in the final part we’ll analyse the story to see what leaders can learn from it.
Seeing the System Story’s Components
If we stand back from the story and classify its components under these headings – Jose Mourinho, Board and Backroom staff, Players and Context – we see the following picture:
Looking at the four-square matrix we can see the system story’s complexity. By my analysis it had 27 components, 9 of which were external context-driven (although one of them, their continued losses, was partly in Chelsea’s hands).
So What Can We Learn?
I’d suggest there are seven insights we can take from the story and this four-box analysis:
That Jose Mourinho wasn’t the problem … nor was is it the players or pre-season training alone. Or that everything stemmed from the Eva Carneiro episode (we know that’s not true because pre-season results were already poor before the blowup in the Swansea game). Instead, every part of the Chelsea set up – the manager, the board, backroom staff and the players – played an important role in this crisis. This was a multi-issue story. So in complex crises, although it’s tempting, it’s useless looking for scapegoats. Instead, everyone has to combine to solve the problem.
The story’s many parts combined to create what’s known as a reinforcing loop . A “reinforcing loop” is where an action causes results that drive more of the same or similar actions, resulting in either growth or improvement or progress or instead decline, deterioration or crisis. The decisions at Chelsea – and responses to those decisions – magnified and quickened the crisis in one direction until it passed the point of no return, delivering a result no one wanted at the beginning.
Just as important, the story had no balancing loops . “Balancing loops” try to restore the old state though certain actions. So, for example, the thermostat in your house has a balancing loop that stops the reinforcing loop taking the water temperature too high. Once the system passes the temperature you set, the balancing loop kicks in to reduce the room’s heat to where you want it. Thus, balancing loops steer a return to a previous state. But in the Chelsea story we saw no balancing loops to direct them away from crisis.
Jose Mourinho suffered from a problem that many successful leaders experience. To his surprise, he found that what had served him well before – detailed preparation and briefings, close control, siege mentality, directing aggression towards outsiders, blaming others – began to backfire because of the reinforcing loop patterns in the other three quadrants: Board & Backroom Staff, Players and Context. So what? It’s important that leaders learn to change their thinking and behaviour at will, especially under pressure. In this way they can choose their reactions to events rather than trap themselves in old unhelpful patterns. But that’s easier said than done when you’re feeling stressed. The solution? The practice of self-mastery, which I describe in detail in my book, The Three Levels of Leadership.
Those who stand behind the leader – like board members – must make sure they aren’t making the problem worse by their own complacency or failure to help the leader (whether that’s by providing resources or giving emotional support or setting unrealistic goals).
“Followers” must recognise that they share the leadership process for good or ill because “leadership” and “the leader” aren’t synonymous (as I explain in chapter 1 of The Three Levels of Leadership). This means occasional self and group reflection on what they’re doing and the results they’re getting will help. Why? Because they may realise they’re part of the problem instead of blaming others, especially the leader or the board, take responsibility and do something different.
Finally, every system story takes place within a context – you can’t avoid that – but the key for the actors in the story (leader, commissioners and followers) is to stand back at times and see the story as a whole rather than be blinded by its individual elements. In this way they’ll give themselves a chance of creating a helpful balancing loop of sufficient power to avoid the crisis. However, this intellectual truth will count for nothing if – when they are mired in the crisis and feeling the pressure – the actors don’t remember it and find a way of seeing the big picture. The key? Again it’s self-mastery. Only by practising self-mastery can we take control under pressure over how we interpret the context – the events we’re experiencing – and thus control our emotional reactions enough to give us the space to think and choose our behavioural responses. Only in this way can we keep a sense of humour and perspective and stay resilient, ingenious and wise … and avoid results no one wanted at the start.
April 12, 2016
What Went Wrong at Chelsea (Part 2)?
Why did Chelsea football club go from runaway English Premier League champions to relegation candidates within 16 games in 2015?
Here was a collapse that no one foresaw. In 2014-15, Chelsea won the English championship by eight points having lost just 3 games over a 38-game season. But 16 games into the 2015-16 season Chelsea were only one point above the relegation zone, having already lost 9 games. Experienced commentators said they’d never seen anything like it before in professional football. So what happened? This three-part post explores the possible system story behind the club’s on-field collapse which led to Jose Mourinho’s sacking … and what leaders can learn from it.
Yesterday I posted part 1 and defined both a system and a system story. Part 2, in which I tell the Chelsea system story, follows today. Tomorrow in part 3 we’ll analyse the story to see what leaders can learn from it.
Imagine This Story…
Just remember, as I said in part 1, this story isn’t the absolute truth – it’s simply a plausible system-story explanation of what happened . .. or may have happened. It may be true – and it does fit the facts reported by the media at the time – but it may not be (and probably isn’t) the whole truth…
The story starts in early 2015 as Chelsea’s performances start to look laboured even though they are still winning matches. Their performances are in stark contrast to the first half of the 2014-15 season when they weren’t just winning, they were playing dazzling football.
In April 2015, the father of Jose Mourinho, the Chelsea team manager, suffers a brain haemorrhage. He is operated on in Portugal, but afterwards suffers two strokes and develops a lung infection. His condition worries his family, including Jose, who flies back from the UK to see him whenever he can. This period of concern lasts until September-October 2015, placing prolonged emotional strain on Jose Mourinho who is close to his father.
Meanwhile we move on to May 2015 as Chelsea ease over the finish line to end the 2014-15 season as Premier League champions. The trouble is, the players look tired.
Tired or not, Chelsea become champions with three games to spare, ending up eight points ahead of their nearest rivals. Here the seeds of complacency are sown. The younger, less experienced players think next season will be easy. Members of the board and Chelsea’s backroom staff are similarly convinced of their superiority. This will soon have negative knock-on effects on the new players that Chelsea sign – and don’t sign – and early 2015-16 performances.
Jose Mourinho, noticing how tired his players are, gives them extra time off at the end of the 2014-15 season so they start new-season training later than everyone else. This well-intentioned decision will mean the players aren’t as fit as their rivals when the 2015-16 season begins.
The pre-season build-up goes badly. Of their five games, Chelsea lose three and draw two. One of their losses is to the New York Red Bulls who play with several young academy players. Mourinho is furious with his men.
Meanwhile, talented and experienced players leave the club, including two outstanding players of the previous decade who were clear leaders in the squad – Petr Cech and Didier Drogba. With the departure of them and – in the previous season – Frank Lampard, Chelsea lack on-field and dressing room leaders apart from their ageing captain, John Terry. In parallel, the Chelsea board fail to buy any of the players that Mourinho wants and make some strange signings just before the transfer window closes. Experts judge Chelsea’s signings to be below par, especially compared to those of their competitors. Confidence among players and fans begins to wobble. Mourinho is frustrated and feels let down, but says nothing in public.
In the background, all Premier League opposition teams in 2015-16 are better funded than before and buy superior players, reducing the gap between them and Chelsea.
In the new season’s first league game in August 2015, Chelsea face Swansea. Chelsea’s poor pre-season form continues and Swansea pour forward, looking confident. Mourinho’s tension increases even though his team take a 2-1 lead. His frustration rises another notch when his goalkeeper is sent off soon after half-time, reducing his team to 10 men. The sending-off was debatable, fuelling Jose Mourinho’s old pattern of seeing injustice and unfairness towards Chelsea. Swansea immediately equalise and look the likelier winners. But there’s more trouble ahead. Near the end, Chelsea’s star player, Eden Hazard, goes down and the Chelsea doctor (Eva Carneiro) and physiotherapist (Jon Fearn) run onto the field to treat him although Mourinho doesn’t think he’s really injured. Mourinho’s anger turns to rage because this means the player must come off the pitch, reducing Chelsea to 9 men while trying to score an unlikely winner. He’s seen shouting at Carneiro as she returns to the team bench. The game ends in a 2-2 draw and Mourinho is visibly upset.
After the Swansea game Mourinho complains to the media about the behaviour of the Chelsea doctor and physiotherapist, calling them naïve. He bans both from front bench duties. Fearn says nothing, but Carneiro reacts negatively and is supported by two professional medical associations and, later on, FIFA. Mourinho’s behaviour towards her is universally denounced. The tension at Chelsea rises. Remember that throughout this time Mourinho’s father is ill.
Chelsea’s poor form continues, as does the fallout from the Carneiro incident. She puts in a formal complaint and effectively stops working for the club, citing constructive dismissal and unfair treatment by Mourinho. Mourinho’s attitude towards the popular doctor antagonises the Chelsea players who appreciate her expertise. An ex-pro, Robbie Savage, warns Mourinho that he faces a backlash because players and medics form close bonds when players are recovering from injuries. Rumours grow that Eden Hazard and other players resent Mourinho’s attitude and behaviour towards Carneiro.
This resentment feeds an unconscious dip in on-field commitment by those closest to Eva Carneiro, leading to worsening performances (which are already mediocre). Meanwhile, with Chelsea weaker in attack and more porous in defence than last season, the mass media is full of articles debating Chelsea’s extraordinary loss of form versus the previous season. This loss of form is particularly acute in key Chelsea players: Eden Hazard, Cesc Fabregas, Diego Costa, Nemanja Matic and Branislav Ivanovic. These men were outstanding in the previous season, but now their performances are notably poor.
Meanwhile other teams have lost their fear of playing Chelsea. Last year they entered the field nervous of Chelsea, but now they approach games confidently and aggressively. Also, their desire to claim they’ve “beaten the champions” brings extra intensity to their performances against Chelsea. These forces – together with opposition teams’ greater strength as noted earlier – combine to hurt the Chelsea players’ in-match confidence and resilience, which shows as lower energy, reduced discipline under pressure … and losses.
Chelsea’s losing streak continues. The players notice they are often on the end of unlucky close calls that go against them (equalisers flagged for offside, shots that hit the post, harsh sendings off). They start believing that everything is against them, that nothing will go their way. Subtly but gradually this drags their self-belief downwards and their resilience in tough matches goes down a notch, adding to the problems caused by individual losses of form.
In parallel, Jose Mourinho’s frustration rises to a new level, fuelled by his fear of failure (so strong that his stated goal is to never lose a match). This triggers old behavioural defence mechanisms – he sees injustice, he believes he and his players are victims and he starts criticising outsiders like referees and the football authorities. One of his past team-building methods has been to create a siege mentality, but this time, with everything else going on, it backfires. It so overheats the atmosphere that it hurts morale and, eventually, on-field performance.
Media criticism rains in on Chelsea, the players and Mourinho as their poor results continue. Mourinho has never been in a situation like this as Chelsea sink towards the relegation zone. Even though the Chelsea fans remain supportive, his self-esteem is under pressure as never before in his professional life and he starts criticising his players in public. But he doesn’t get the reaction he wants – indeed it seems that some players’ commitment slips further. Certainly, the players suffering confidence dips after losing their form aren’t helped by his criticism.
A loss at West Ham in October is followed by a Mourinho outburst which leads to FA sanctions. This only fuels his sense of injustice … and his tension around his players. His players wonder if he’s “losing it”. Unconsciously, they start hoping for a new manager, which lowers their on-field resilience under pressure.
By now, the media are openly talking about Mourinho’s likely dismissal, which only adds to his irritation and aggression. Mourinho tries to handle the situation by openly admitting the pressure he’s under and describing what he’s going through as a good learning experience. But everyone can see he’s in pain. His ability to connect with and motivate his players slips further.
After losing their 16th game of the 2015-16 season (their 9th loss in all), Chelsea – the previous season’s runaway champions – are one point above the relegation zone. Mourinho is now talking about “betrayal” by his players. He believes they ignored his briefings on the opposition’s tactics in the four-day build-up to the game. His bond with them weakens further.
That’s when the board steps in and Jose Mourinho – one of the world’s greatest-ever football managers – loses his job.
So there’s the story. Now we need to see what we can learn from it. That will be our focus tomorrow in part 3, the final part.
April 11, 2016
What Went Wrong at Chelsea (Part 1)?
Why did Chelsea football club go from runaway English Premier League champions to relegation candidates within 16 games in 2015?
Here was a collapse that no one foresaw. In 2014-15, Chelsea won the English championship by eight points having lost just 3 games over a 38-game season. But 16 games into the 2015-16 season Chelsea were only one point above the relegation zone, having already lost 9 games. Experienced commentators said they’d never seen anything like it before in professional football. So what happened?
This three-part post will explore the possible system story behind the club’s on-field collapse which led to Jose Mourinho’s sacking … and what leaders can learn from it. I’ll argue that the story’s main actors (the official leader, the people who commission the leader and the “followers”) must stand back at times and see the whole emerging story rather than let its individual elements blind them. That way they’ll have a chance of steering their organisation away from a downward spiral into crisis. However, this intellectual truth will count for nothing if – while mired in the crisis and feeling the pressure – the actors don’t remember it and find a way of seeing the big picture. The key? It’s self-mastery, the ability to choose your emotional reactions under pressure – a continuing theme of this blog. Today I’m posting part 1. I’ll post part 2 tomorrow and part 3 the day after.
This Is Not the Truth
Let me be clear from the start: I have no inside information on what happened at Chelsea football club over the summer and autumn of 2015 when they went from champions to relegation candidates and Jose Mourinho, the club’s extraordinarily successful manager, was sacked. So what follows is not the truth, but rather, the possible truth.
Why Bother with This Story?
My intent is not to write the definitive story of what happened at Chelsea, but to illustrate how complex systems stories can explain the way seemingly small or trivial causes can produce major, even surprising, consequences. The consequences at Chelsea, I believe, are impossible to explain with single-issue accounts.
The trouble is, so many superficial explanations and one-dimensional stories about Chelsea’s unheard-of slump emerged (“the problem was his dispute with the doctor” or “he lost his players’ backing” or “Costa is spending too much time outside the penalty area”). That’s why I feel it’s time to, one, explain how problems like Chelsea’s are rarely due to one issue and, two, dig for the root problems rather than mistaking effects for causes as many journalists did, probably because they were writing to tight deadlines.
So, to repeat: what follows isn’t the truth, but an illustration of how a major, stunning, explosive crisis that no one foresees can develop from small beginnings and reach unstoppable momentum.
Why engage in this piece of fiction? Three reasons. First, because it might sensitise leaders to the idea of keeping an eye on the big picture and checking to see whether their behaviour might be unintentionally creating results they don’t want … even if that behaviour served them well in the past. Second, to show how those who appoint or commission the leaders – for example, business owners or boards of directors – can unwittingly worsen the crisis. And third, to point out that those playing “follower” roles may also be unconscious architects of results they don’t want. In short, this offers learning points for the leaders, the people who commission them and the people who follow them.
What Is a System Story?
A system is a complex whole driven by its interacting parts. It arises when its many elements work together to make a whole with a distinct identity and purpose that’s greater than its parts. So, for example, a car is a system. It contains assemblies like an engine, a gearbox and a dashboard computer, and tiny parts like screws and rivets, but what makes it a car is the way they all work together to create a means of transport. By themselves the parts can’t do that. Your body is also a system. So is a computer. And so is a football team and a football club, but the parts are human beings.
A system story is the narrative of how and why a system changed over time through the interaction of its many parts – often in unintended complex ways and with time delays that, without the story, would make it hard to connect cause with effect.
The system we’ll be looking at in this example is Chelsea football club between January and December 2015. The system story will appear tomorrow in part 2 and we’ll analyse it in part 3.
April 7, 2016
Two New Books to Come…
I want to apologise for not having posted a blog for four months. It’s because my attention has been elsewhere. More specifically, it’s been on completing the second edition of The Three Levels of Leadership (due out at the end of May 2016) and on starting my long-awaited second book, which will be on teams.
For those of you wondering “Why a second edition of ‘Three Levels’?” here’s what I’ve written in the new book’s preface:
Why issue a second edition of The Three Levels of Leadership five years after the first version? It’s because of what I’ve learned after using the “Three Levels” material with coaching clients.
First, I realised I should have said more about the four dimensions of leadership. In the first edition I outlined the four dimensions briefly, thinking that was enough. It wasn’t. I failed to convey the huge difference it makes to clients when they adopt and apply this four-dimensional way of looking at leadership. For example, after studying their groups or firms through these four windows, leaders I’ve worked with noticed issues they previously ignored or denied and felt the need to act fast. In other words, they learned they can use the four-dimensional view as a practical tool. So I’ve rewritten chapter 1 and added a new chapter (chapter 2, Applying Leadership’s Four Dimensions) using content developed from coaching sessions.
Second, I learned that leadership presence (the subject of the old chapter 5) fascinates readers. In fact, I sense that interest in presence is growing worldwide. This time around I wanted to say more about inner division – something I mentioned but didn’t explain – and offer more detail on the seven qualities of presence, giving each quality its own section. I’ve also added self-reflection questions after describing each quality to make the text more personal and useful to you. The result is an expanded rewritten chapter (now presented as chapter 6).
Third, in the old chapter 6 (developing your Technical Knowledge & Skills) the section on individual psychology and motivation didn’t say much about the latter. It should have. The same chapter also had only a cryptic one-liner on leading change, a subject I’ve been researching since writing the first edition in 2010. This was inadequate on a topic that all leaders need to grasp. I’ve therefore added new sections on motivation and leading change. In both areas I’ve made sure you have content that’s fresh and perhaps surprising for some readers, not a regurgitation of familiar stuff you could read elsewhere. It includes the new Spiral-Waves change model. I hope you’ll feel the two new sections are the clearest, most complete, and yet practical summaries you’ll find anywhere.
These two additions have led me split the old Technical Knowledge & Skills chapter into two: one for knowhow (chapter 7) and the other for skills (chapter 8).
What else? Well, there are several other improvements on the first edition:
I wanted to show how the three levels and four dimensions connect visually to make it easier for readers to see the book’s big picture. This I’ve done in chapter 5, Summarising The Foundations.
As I’ve been coaching clients on self-mastery, I’ve tested and added new methods so I’ve updated the section on self-mastery techniques in chapter 11, taking one out and adding one in.
I corrected an omission in the section on creating and testing a vision by including competencies. This I’ve addressed in chapter 9, Attitude Towards Others.
I’ve said a bit more about the distinction between the Fountainhead and Self in the model of the human psyche in chapter 10 as I know this point puzzled some first edition readers.
I sharpened my writing to explain the key ideas in every chapter better than before. Thus, no chapter is unchanged from edition one.
Finally, I improved the notes section and index.In expanding certain sections I’ve not lost sight of my chief aim: to offer you a compact master model for growing yourself as a leader. This meant avoiding excess detail. Thus, having explained what I felt would help you most, I’ve pointed you towards other sources where needed.
By the way, I’m working on a new blog post right now, which will be with you soon. It’s about the importance of understanding systems stories.
To illustrate my point, I’ll be looking at Chelsea football club’s unforeseen collapse in the English Premier League. In 2014-15, Chelsea won the championship by eight points having lost only three games over a 38-game season. But 16 games into the 2015-16 season Chelsea were only one point above the relegation zone, having lost nine games already. Experienced commentators said they’d never seen anything like it. What happened? The coming post will explore the possible system story behind the club’s on-field collapse and Jose Mourinho’s sacking … and what leaders can learn from it.
