1st Edition
Leadership Levers Releasing the Power of Relationships for Exceptional Participation, Alignment, and Team Results
There’s an epidemic of leadership failure—whether something as small as a meeting, or as large as implementing enterprise wide change. Leaders know that sinking feeling when a gap emerges between themselves and the groups they most need to engage with. Leaders and business schools are looking in the wrong places for the cause.
What holds most leaders back, as if their foot is always on the brake, is their failure to engage, and gain alignment. This book shows the reasons why.
Leaders rarely recognise that:
- Shaping group behavior is describable as a process, which they can learn. Instead, they unconsciously fall into relationship patterns influenced by early family experiences.
- Informal relationship patterns have a dramatic effect on results, which is why birds in flight manage to alter course without bumping into each other.
Leadership and collaboration are primarily a matter of principles and process, and not personality and content alone. If leaders master the process, they achieve consistent results.
This book reveals the leadership levers to release the power of relationships for exceptional participation, alignment and results in organizations. It enables leaders to mine the brilliance that often lies dormant and untapped within their organizations. Readers will have the principles and tools to go beyond the agenda, truly engage with those around them, and release untapped capacities within their organizations. These qualities and skills will inspire associates and employees.
Foreword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction
Chapter 1: Having the top job doesn’t make you the leader
Chapter 2: Unity In The War Room
Chapter 3: The Profound Value of Movement and Distance for Leaders
Chapter 4: Reading People Not Content
Chapter 5: The Everyday Relationships We Fail To Recognize: Structure Is Only Half The Picture
Chapter 6: The Power of Purpose
Chapter 7: Generating Seismic Shifts With Fine Touches
Chapter 8: Building Collaboration and Commitment—Not Compliance
Chapter 9: From Dysfunction to Impact and Influence in Leadership Teams
Chapter 10: Press the Release Button Before You Get to the Trip Wire
Biography
Diana Jones is a trusted and experienced leadership coach working with senior leaders and their leadership teams within federal agencies, local government, small-to-medium enterprises, non-government organizations, and not-for-profits. She works across several sectors including health, business and innovation, primary industries, security, education, and social services.
She has travelled through more than 30 countries and brings both a professional and personal experiential base that supports the wisdom in the book.
She specializes in real work environments where she observes the dynamics and interrelationships in work interconnections, the flow-on behaviors, and implications for business results. She coaches groups of experienced executives from different organizations exploring live scenarios with not-so-sure responses, then integrating learning from their peers.
A trainer, educator and practitioner with the Australia Aotearoa New Zealand Psychodrama Association, she is one a handful of sociometrists in the world with behavioral change consultants, trainers, coaches, and therapists.
She has a master’s degree from Victoria University of Wellington, and is a past treasurer and executive member of an international professional association, and former chair of the Wellington Homeless Women’s Trust. She was inducted into the Alan Weiss Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame in 2020. Please visit www.diana-jones.com
Diana Jones has managed something few others can claim – merging rigorous research with highly pragmatic and specific advice for leaders. Leaders who dedicate themselves to learning what she has to teach will not only immediately improve the likelihood of success, they will be more capable in virtually any future situation. Rarely does a book offer advice, the rationale for the advice, and tell the reader what to do when things go awry. This book should be on every leader’s desk, read and re-read because the first reading will provoke change and second allow deep understanding.
-- Constance Dierickx, Ph.D., The Decision Doctor®
Diana Jones helps us to see the invisible cords of leadership - it's not the job title or mastery of content that matters, but mastery of relationships. This book is full of insights into how we can better understand and dramatically influence the interpersonal dynamics of the leadership challenge.
-- Murray Sherwin, Former Chair of the New Zealand Productivity Commission
Leadership Levers is a landmark book. Diana Jones makes the invisible visible, slaughters the sacred cows of "engagement" and ‘"consensus," and truly shows how to release untapped potential in organisations.
-- Andrew Hollo, Author of From Impossible to Possible
Diana compellingly articulates what we might intuitively know but struggle to describe. She makes the case for leadership of both the head and the heart, then methodically sets about explaining how to go about this - whether she is talking about navigating the complexity of multi-force stakeholder dynamics, the direct relationship between purpose and results, or shifting the way we should think about meetings. Insightful and pragmatic, Leadership Levers stands out both new leaders and the experienced who are wondering why they are struggling to get results.
– Susan Freeman-Greene, CEO, Local Government New Zealand
