Inspire! What Great Leaders Do - Hardcover

by Lance Secretan (Author)

A top business consultant and speaker lights the path to a positive, productive work environment
What do the best leaders do to achieve greatness in the modern workplace that is muddled by fear, pressure for productivity, overwork? Inspire offers business leaders a clear vision of what a positive, productive, inspiring organization looks like in these challenging and chaotic times, and how to get there.
The key to extraordinary long-term performance lies in a transformational commitment to inspiring people rather than motivating them. Lance Secretan's Higher Ground Leadership concepts have been widely used to increase profits and quality, slash staff turnover, and achieve record organizational and personal performance. Inspire describes Lance's breakthrough thinking, often in the words of the pace-setting leaders who are implementing them and building legacies. Countless examples, stories, and case studies demonstrate the magic of these brilliant ideas.
Six essential values form the foundation of positive, productive, and profitable organizations and a meaningful and fulfilling life-courage to begin the transformation; authenticity that lets people contribute all of themselves and excel; service that fosters a spirit of cooperation; truth-telling that builds trust and loyalty; love for others that leads to inspired results; and effectiveness, the attainment of results. Inspire shows leaders in any organization how to foster these essential values that lead to personal and organizational greatness.
Lance Secretan (Alton, Ontario, Canada) is one of the world's foremost thinkers on self-improvement and leadership. He is an author, award-winning columnist, philosopher, corporate coach, and a renowned public speaker and business consultant. He served as chairman of the Advisory Board of the 1997 Special Olympics World Winter Games and is also a former ambassador to the United Nations Environment Program.

Front Jacket

We all yearn to be inspired. Yet today, many people are drifting in organizations, teams, and families that operate from a place of fear. Within the hearts of people everywhere, there is a yearning for something different. We are looking inward and outward, and we are asking questions. Some of the answers are timeless-the world's greatest leaders have known them all along.

From Mahatma Gandhi and Thomas Jefferson to Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and other great contemporary leaders-one attribute has been shared: they aimed not to motivate, but to inspire. What are the unique qualities found in these leaders? And how can you apply their style of leadership to your business? Inspire! has the answers.

Inspire! is a book about how to inspire others and ourselves, the requisite for personal and organizational transformation. Based on a lifetime of research, Lance Secretan takes us on a compelling journey to discover what all great, inspiring leaders have known: their Destiny (Why I am here on Earth), their Cause (How I will be while I am here and what I will stand for), and their Calling (What I will do and how I will use my talents and gifts to serve). He shows us clearly, using concrete examples of successful leaders he has worked with, how we can do it, too.

Inspire! introduces a breakthrough leadership practice that leaps past conventional theory by defining a deeper, more enriching kind of leadership that is precisely relevant to our times. Secretan reveals seven essentials of authentic, truthful leadership that inspire everyone and lead to extraordinary personal and organizational effectiveness.

The central idea of contemporary leadership theory is that manipulating, exploiting, and controlling the behavior of others is both useful and acceptable. But this is leadership based on fear and motivation. Higher Ground Leadership suggests we can inspire people by appealing to their hearts and souls. By engaging people on a new level-by honoring, exciting, and nourishing their souls-we can give them more than a reason to work; we can give them a passion for work.

Secretan shows that we can create more productive, fulfilling workplaces that encourage engagement and contribution from employees. We can build workplaces, governments, and countries based on shared best interest and selflessness, rather than self-interest and cynicism. This is the way forward for leaders in every situation who seek to inspire others. Inspire! offers a proven framework for putting passion and meaning back into work-and therefore the world.

Inspire! will stir you to ask brave and important questions. It will transform and inspire you, and therefore others.

Back Jacket

Praise for Inspire!

Inspire! What Great Leaders Do is a very important book. The ideas it contains have changed our lives and our organizations and the lives of tens of thousands of our employees. It has touched the lives of millions of people whom we serve every day. And it could change your life-and your organization too . . .

Excerpt from the foreword of Inspire! written by 15 CEOs and senior leaders

"Lance Secretan's message is a great testament to the need for a renewed type of leadership-one that serves with courage, authenticity, service, truth-telling, and love. Our businesses, governments, communities, and the world need this critical mass of inspiration now more than ever before."
--Bill George
former Chair and CEO of Medtronic, author, Authentic Leadership

"Lance Secretan first inspired me in 1996 when I read his book, Reclaiming Higher Ground. I had taken over the Canadian operation of The Home Depot and faced many difficult challenges. His words influenced me. This new book, Inspire!, What Great Leaders Do, is a road map for leaders who want to inspire people in their organizations. Lance has an ability to read the needs of our society. Post Enron and 9/11, leaders need to find better ways of responding to the changing needs of the human spirit. Lance has found that way."
--Annette Verschuren
Division President, Expo Design Center (a Home Depot Company), and Home Depot Canada

"This is a tour de force, a must-read for everyone who leads others-Lance's groundbreaking work is inspiring people, changing their lives, creating jobs, building organizations, and changing the world!"
--Marianne Williamson
author, Everyday Grace

"Leaders know that they have to be on higher ground and guide others there. That's the easy part. Knowing what the high ground is-that's the hard part. Secretan's Inspire! guides us through the hard part."
--Gerald Schwartz
Founder and CEO, Onex Corporation

"Lance Secretan has touched our leaders with his message of values, spirit, and soul in the workplace, inspiring us to greater levels of achievement. His principles have universal application that can guide any organization to be a workplace that honors the individuals within and those they serve."
--Pam Bilbrey
Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, Baptist Health Care, Pensacola, Florida

"Inspire! takes on the biggest question facing corporations, nonprofit organizations, and even nations today: how do we overcome fear and tension and replace it with confidence in the potential of the human spirit? Most importantly, Secretan offers a road map for leaders, showing them a way to build confident and inspiring organizations that succeed. What a treasure!"
--Tim Shriver
Chairman, Special Olympics

"I started reading Inspire! and found myself so absorbed that I could not put it down-so much profound thought. Lance introduces a refreshing approach to corporate culture that will not only inspire greatness in organizations but will also help us be more responsible stewards of this planet."
--Don Ziraldo
CEO, Inniskillin Wines

Author Biography

LANCE SECRETAN is one of the world's foremost thinkers and teachers of effective leadership. His breakthrough ideas about how to become inspired and how to inspire others have led to the transformation of individuals, teams, communities, and organizations. An author, award-winning columnist, corporate mentor, advisor to corporations and governments, and one of America's most sought-after keynote speakers, he frequently addresses audiences around the world. The former architect of Manpower Limited, he has been the ambassador to the United Nations Environment Program and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the 1997 Special Olympics World Winter Games.