A significant driver of disengagement amongst employees is a lack of psychological safety generated from weak and underdeveloped intra- and interpersonal skills on the part of managers. Addressing the issue head on, this book enables leaders to lead with conscious awareness to build and sustain psychologically safe cultures through which team members may positively engage with work in a far more meaningful and purposeful way.
All too often, leadership-follower relationships are purely transactional and focus on errors and problems, resulting in an impoverished transactional leadership culture. These dynamics result in weak rapport, low levels of emotional intelligence on the part of line managers and, subsequently, employee disengagement. This book unpacks these drivers in detail and builds a model that can be used as the basis of personal development and as a large-scale intervention into the leadership culture of an organisation. This model is very accessible and can be used in a structured training programme through a series of action learning workshops based upon coaching relationships and mutual dialogue.
The book is ideal reading for HRM managers, change leaders, learning and development managers, students of management and leadership, and line managers in organisations who are involved in leadership roles.
Foreword (Sir Graham Stacey), 1. Responding to the Disengagement Epidemic, 2. It’s All About the Mindset We Choose, 3. Introducing Leadership, 4. Transactional and Transformational Leadership, 5. The Leadership Paradox, 6. Awakening the Need for Change, 7. The Dynamics of Anti-conscious Leadership Explored, 8. A Blended Model of Leadership, 9. The Dialogical Conscious Leader, 10. Preparing for and Actioning a Dialogue Seminar, 11. Conscious Leadership Coaching, 12. The Emotionally Intelligent Conscious Leader, 13. Conscious Leadership and Psychological Safety, 14. The Reflexive Conscious Leader, 15. Modelling Conscious Leadership, 16. Building a Culture of Conscious Leadership
Biography
David Potter is the founder of The Cultural Change Company (www.culturalchange.co.uk) and holds both a PhD and an MBA specialising in organisational cultural change. David has over 25 years of practice as a senior manager leading change across complex organisations.
Jens Starke is a highly skilled coach, NLP master trainer and consultant with almost 20 years of project management experience across more than 15 countries. Jens specialises in facilitating transformations within organisations to leverage project management and cultural changes for competitive advantages.
"This book is a must-read for any leader who is keen to develop and lead consciously. In this time when the world is moving away from capitalism to conscious capitalism, the demand for authentic leadership, emotional intelligence and social responsibility from the leaders has never been greater. The authors successfully argue that conscious leadership is the answer to all of the above. The book provides solid insight into the existing theory (with excellent literature review for those of us who value evidence-based research!) and a variety of practical tools that can be applied instantly in order to develop conscious leadership competencies.
Reading this book has helped me reflect on my own leadership style and the kind of leader I would like to become. I feel much better placed to take my leadership development to the next level with an aim to benefit my career, my organisation’s aspirations and the experience of my team."
Gintare Geleziunaite, Head of Change Strategy, Department of International Trade
"There are many books on the elusive topics of leadership and positive mindset but this new publication by David Potter and Jens Starke takes a different perspective from most with its focus on the concept of 'conscious leadership'. The premise of the book is that good leadership involves building and sustaining 'psychologically safe cultures'. In approaching this, the authors set out how to lead by becoming consciously aware. By doing so, leaders can build an engaged employee culture, avoiding the traditional, transactional form of management that the authors argue is still all too prevalent.
Based on empirical research and including a review of relevant theory, this book is a comprehensive resource. It sets out guidance on how to develop a conscious leadership approach in the workplace. In that sense, the book fulfils its objective of being accessible and practical. The focus on developing reflective learning capability as a leadership tool will resonate with those managers and leaders who see the value of creating a psychologically safe culture and the benefits to an organisation and its people that can follow. Self-awareness and developing a growth mindset are the starting points to becoming a conscious and effective leader and this book is a very helpful resource for students of management, leaders and aspiring leaders."
David Levinson, MBA Careers Manager, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow
"Reading this book gave me explicit insights to deeper grounds that are involved in the transformation of leaders into ‘Conscious Leaders’.
Potter and Starke, in clear language, uncover troubling underlying streams that are present in leaders as a consequence of their lifelong training (upbringing) and subsequent beliefs. And then, more importantly, showing ways and means to transform these streams into a helpful flow. They put together sources from different fields-of-thinking that have – although sprouting from different roots – similarities and remarkable impacts, resulting in an integrative workable approach. An approach in which they come up with a method to help transform anti-conscious leaders into Conscious Leaders. Leaders who consciously take responsibility for the situation they find themselves in. Leaders who have a profound understanding of how they can tune their communication, motivation and inspiration skills to the people around them, thus creating a safe environment for all – themselves included – to live and learn.
To me personally, reading this book proved to be hugely inspiring. It provided me with a skillfully gathered heap of insights and tools that is of critical use in my own work with people who are leaders working with vulnerable target groups: (school)children and refugees; parents, teachers, psychologists and social workers.
This book put together a lot of interesting easy-to-use wisdom and tools from many coaching and spiritual high standard sources, cemented with the apparent knowledge and understanding of both writers. It’s a book worth reading and working from. A gem in the collection of leadership and coaching books. Thank you David Potter and Jens Starke."
Angélique de Graaff, NLP Master Trainer/Speaker
"Building a Culture of Conscious Leadership provides an excellent source for leaders at all levels who aim to build high-performing, collaborative new generations teams. Reading this book is about learning what we do not know and what we need to know in order to be more effective leaders in our organisations. It presents a set of ideas and methods that can be understood and put into practice with little effort by anyone who is expected to fulfil a leadership function.
This book is an excellent source of theoretical and practical guidance in the field of conscious leadership that draws on ideas and practices from behavioural science, political science, psychology, and sociology.
Overall, it is an excellent book with practical exercises and learning that enables managers to reflect on their own leadership competencies and leadership culture."
Eszter Vuity, Marketing Executive MBA, MCIM
"The book introduces an intellectually stimulating discussion of conscious leadership through theory and practice. It explains the role of critical reflexivity in enhancing the role of leaders, as well as their awareness of their competencies. It incorporates insights from work on emotional and cognitive intelligence, and how they are inextricably connected to conscious leadership, but also how they influence other forms of leadership, transactional and transformational leadership. The book further sheds light on the notion of identity work, and how leaders can engage with different activities that inform their professional selves.
Discussions around ‘meaning makers’ are profoundly insightful, with conscious leaders provoking followers to socially construct and internalise shared beliefs. Although this approach is important for motivation and driving success, it is even more crucial particularly during turbulent periods that involve risks and significant change.
I see this book as an important contribution to our understanding of leadership, particularly conscious leadership. I would like to thank the authors for the effort they put into this state of the art."
Dr Rami Al-Sharif PhD/MBA (Distinction); B.Com (Hons); PGCAP; RET-Fellow; AFHEA, Lecturer in Human Resource Management, Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
