Business schools teach the transactional tools one needs to work in business. They teach various strategic planning and decision-making models such as SPACE or SWOT or decision trees or weighted grids. They teach about the various functions of an organization, financial ratios, and breakeven analyses. And they may even have a class on business ethics. But those tools are more about knowing where the business-case boundaries are as a risk prevention measure and do not help one to think about how they should comport themselves as a leader.

This book is about helping you to become your best self and helping those around you to achieve their best. Inherently it’s about authenticity, integrity, and empathy and how these simple traits can lead to high performance. The book explores ways to make our leadership more authentic and to lead with integrity. It discusses how to mentor employees and how this can lead to higher-performing teams and more successful organizations.

The book is organized around four major constructs. The first is about personal leadership. It starts with honesty and integrity. That provides the basis for an empathetic leadership style. This is one that helps to engage followers and brings them along because they want to come along for the journey, rather than feeling forced. That is the nature of the second construct: building and maintaining high-performing teams. This is then the basis for building a trusting culture. Change is all around us and that can be exhausting. Building a culture of trust is the first step toward building an agile organizational culture. That is the third construct. Finally, the last is a message of simple optimism. There are many challenges facing society today, but with thoughtful, engaging leaders there is hope that we can collectively rise to the challenge.