I'm happy I got the chance to read a copy of this book. Will definitely recommend it! Thank you for the opportunity.

#TheMindOfTheLeader #NetGalley

This is an extraordinary book that have a very different approach about the definition of a true leader. Most of the books are focusing in the maximization of the human capital and resourceful and forgetting the human limitations. The authors point out the importance of a leader to increase his/her compassion and his/her power of Social Cohesion in better understand the organization and improve the inside/outside communication.

A very interesting read and very good pathways to improve managers' attitudes and behaviours for more efficient leadership, management and...results.
I enjoyed reading about the research backing the authors' position and I was convinced by their arguments as to what has to or should change to improve things at all levels.
Mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion are the key-words.
I would really like to see this happen, however this would involve a huge change in mentalities.
Mindfulness can most definitely help a great deal but selflessness and compassion in the corporate world? Get real, people who get promotions quickly are usually the ones who are big on self promotion ( taking the credit for other people's hard work without any feeling of guilt) and ready to kill their mums to succeed. No room for selflessness or compassion.
I can't see that changing unfortunately, except in small companies maybe.
People at the top could be or become as the authors suggest, particularly if they founded a company that developed into a very large organisation, but with management below them (middle and top), that seems more like wishful thinking than anything else, unfortunately.
The analysis was however very, very interesting and if the word spreads, maybe, one day, we will see some improvement, who knows?

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley -- it fits in nicely with a lot of the leadership books I have been reading this year. The authors describe "MSC" leadership: Mindfulness, Compassion and Selflessness. The book is organized in three sections -- self, people and organization. This overlaps nicely with the Universal Leadership Model from "Mastering Leadership."

The authors dive deep into what makes people happy and neuroscience. Integral lessons are that we are not as rational as we would like to think we are, and thoughts that pop in our brains do not define us -- "You are not your thoughts" is repeated often in this book. You have the power to choose to do things differently - and that requires establishing habits or practices of quieting your mind, reducing distraction and developing a greater sense of self-awareness and awareness of things around you.

The authors also stress the importance of reflecting deeply on your personal values as a way of helping drive your decisions so that you can feel happier about things in your life. "Action addiction" makes people think that they are actually productive when they are busy all the time -- but it's actually the contrary.

Hougaard and Carter provide rich examples of business leaders and individual experiences along with really excellent and useful exercises. Some of the exercises are guided meditations -- and there is even a companion app which provides the guided meditations as audio files (I'm totally signing up for this program!).

All in all - a very solid book with practical advice, very well researched, documented and inspiring.

The Mind of the Leader
Book Review | 📚📚📚📚📚 5/5
Rasmus Hougaard; Jacqueline Carter | Harvard Business Review Press

A well-crafted book for leaders of all levels (skill, tenure, disciplines) to enhance their leadership abilities through improved behavior.

Why I was interested in this book:
As a non-profit executive and a college-level educator, I thought this could be a useful book for work and for instruction.

My assessment:
I really found the book to be very helpful. It focuses on three personal areas of behavior that lead to improved leadership: Mindfulness, Selflessness and Compassion. What? Is this a Harvard Business Review book or something off a bookstore’s self-help shelf? What the book does is assess how these three character traits can be used for self-improvement, leadership among co-workers and institutional leadership. I found it extremely helpful and useful and plan to share it with co-workers and students.

Stories of the human condition:
The book takes a holistic approach to leadership, starting from within and then moving to other people. Learning and applying techniques in mindfulness and then selflessness and finally compassion, it becomes a “lead-by-example” methodology that builds stronger leadership skills through understanding people. If there was one area that I thought was weakest, it was the final section on applying this methodology to the organization. It’s nice to do things in groups of threes (three traits, three areas), but the third area seemed to be a repeat of the second section of leadership with co-workers. However, it was still excellent. Finally, the book offers great tips and questions to think about, and there is an app that can also be used after the book is read.

Disclosure: I received an advanced reader copy of this book from netgalley.com for an honest review. However, I requested to read it because of its subject matter and reputable press. And I was not disappointed!

TAGS:
#TheMindOfTheLeader #NetGalley #review-book #book review #Business Book #Harvard Business Review Press #Leadership #Leadership Book #TuggleGrassBlues #Tuggle Grass Reviews #TuggleGrassReviews

An interesting book! Clearly a book of its time!

I really appreciated my reading. Well documented, easily understandable. Heart and Mission, soft and hard skills.
Highly recommend

Concrete examples and clear charts make the abstract ideas in this business leadership book easy to follow. An emphasis on self-awareness and self-leadership set this apart from other books on the subject, encouraging managers and leaders to consider their own impact on employees and the organization.

"There are three qualities that are foundational for leaders today: mindfulness (M), selfl essness (S), and compassion (C)s."
"At the center of the practice of mindfulness is learning to manage your attention. In mindfulness practice, we train both our focus and our awareness."
"With selfl essness, trust increases because we have no secret agendas and followership strengthens because our selfl essness sets free our people to be their best selves."
"Compassion is the ability to understand others’ perspectives and use that as a catalyst for supportive action. It
means making diffi cult decisions for the good of the organization, even when it negatively impacts individuals."
These are only few of the sentences of this leadership book that is divided in three main sections: 1) Understand and Lead Yourself 2) Understand and Lead Your People 3) Understand and Lead Your Organization.
It gives a clear roadmap how to apply MSC leadership, be connected with others, and be happy.
Highly recommend.

THE MIND OF THE LEADER

A natural consequence of rising to positions of responsibility is the tendency to become isolated from the people one is meant to lead. This is necessary to some degree, as leaders need to view things from a much broader perch than frontliners do. Leaders also often require a measure of professional distance from colleagues—peers and subordinates alike—in order to remain effective and occasionally make hard decisions without fear or favor.

However, this inherent isolation can cause leaders to become increasingly disconnected with the situation on the ground. Examples abound: Marie Antoinette (“Let them eat cake”), the Kennedy White House (the Bay of Pigs Invasion), even Steve Jobs (getting fired from the very company he started). Thus, staying grounded is imperative for anyone in a position of responsibility and certainly no easy feat.

Authors Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter offer a useful paradigm in this regard in their book, The Mind of the Leader: How to Lead Yourself, Your People, and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results.

As the title suggests, Hougaard and Carter take the view that effective leadership begins with the mindset that leaders adopt. They submit that leaders must begin with a basic understanding of what matters to people so as to be in a position to motivate others and rally them around a common cause. This, they further argue, can be accomplished when leaders observe principles of mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion.

Hougaard and Carter define the elements of their “MSC” framework for leadership specifically:

Mindfulness is the quality of being both focused and aware, the two ingredients for optimal effectiveness.

Selflessness is “the wisdom of getting out of your own way, the way of your people, and the way of your organization to unleash the natural flow of energy that people bring to their work.”

Compassion is “the quality of having positive intentions for others...It’s the ability to understand others’ perspectives and use that as a catalyst for supportive action.”

Together, these three qualities make for a more empathic brand of leadership to which people respond. “Leading with mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion makes you more human and less leader, “ Hougaard and Carter write. “It makes you more you and less your title...When leaders model mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion, they speak to employees’ intrinsic motivations. They enable a stronger sense of meaning, real happiness, connectedness, and contribution.”

What’s interesting about this MSC framework for leadership is how it is a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop. The more mindful one is, it follows that they should become more selfless. And the more selfless they become, they ought to be more compassionate by definition.

Yet all this must emanate from the mind of the leader. Only after a person works at being more mindful, selfless, and compassionate—that is to say, only after exercising leadership over oneself—can a person hope to be effective at leading others. If successful, however, the same qualities can easily rub off on the people one leads, resulting in an organization that is itself more mindful, selfless, and compassionate.

Overall, Hougaard and Carter’s MSC framework is an interesting leadership paradigm that will especially appeal to individuals of an introspective persuasion occupying positions of responsibility.

Out in March! This is definitely a book I'll purchase and re-read, pen in hand! So many quotes on improving yourself and influencing those around you to help them grow. The Kindle edition of the galley was rather hard to follow due to formatting issues so I'd like to re-read it in a print format.

Reading this book will help leaders to unleash the MSC of leadership: mindfullness, selflessness, compassion.

It is an interesting book that I received it through Netgalley, but it was not well converted for Kindle so I read only a part of it but it is definitely worth it.