The New Roles/Behaviors/Skills of Leaders (all levels) in a Healing Ecosystem

Cameron, K.  Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance, Berrett-Koehler, Oakland 2012.  To achieve exceptional success, leaders must emphasize strengths rather than simply focus on weaknesses, foster virtuous actions, encourage contribution goals in addition to achievement goals, and enable meaningfulness in work.

Dutton, J. and Spreitzer, G. How to Be a Positive Leader: Small Actions, Big Impact. Berrett-Koehler, Oakland, 2014. Positive leaders can dramatically expand their people’s—and their own—capacity for excellence; and they accomplish this without enormous expenditures or huge heroic gestures.

Margaret Plews-Ogan and Gene Beyt, Wisdom Leadership in Academic Health Science Centers: Leading Positive Change, Radcliffe Publishing, London and New York, 2013. Essays by multiple authors illuminate leadership for change in the rapidly evolving and stress-laden arena of health care.

Arena, M. J., Adaptive Space: How GM and Other Companies Are Positively Disrupting Themselves and Transforming into Agile Organizations, New York: McGraw Hill, 2018. Transforming organizations via utilization of the concept of adaptive space to edge out competition in today’s disruptive environment ensures agility such that response to change is rapid and effective.

Heath, C and Heath, D. The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2017. Human lives are endlessly variable, yet most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection.

Gardner, H. Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2004. Minds must change before new knowledge and behaviors can be embraced: but how?

Jaworski J. Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 1996. Posits three shifts in perception – of the world, relationships & commitments – can be used to build real leadership.

Goleman, D. Emotional Intelligence, Bantam Books, New York, 1995. Explains the concept shift to EI and ways to accomplish it, describes its use as a lever to improve performance.

Peterson, C. A Primer in Positive Psychology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006. A textbook, the focus is on shifting attention from the negative (to fix it) to building on the  positive and what’ s working well.

Kim, W. Chan and Mauborgne, Renee. Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing. Hatchett Books, New York, 2017.  Outlines the importance and methods for thinking differently about competition and collaboration.

Duhigg, C.  Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Powers of Communication.  Random House,  2024. An overview of the methods and approaches used by those who are successful communicators, and how we can practice them ourselves.

Greenleaf, R.K. Servant Leadership: The Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Paulist Press, Mahwah, 1977. Leaders who seek first to ensure others’ needs are met create willing and enthusiastic follow

Thinking Differently/Systems Thinking

Quinn, R. The Positive Organization: Breaking Free from Conventional Cultures, Constraints, and Beliefs, Berrett-Koehler, Oakland, 2015. Shows how to defy convention and create organizations where people feel fully engaged and continually rewarded, where both individually and collectively they flourish and exceed expectations.

Isaacs, W. Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together. Currency, New York, 1999.  Practical applications of how we can apply dialogue to creating the collaboration needed in today’s complex environment.

Bohm, D. and Edwards, M. Changing Consciousness. Harper, San Francisco, 1991.  Discussion of how we need to apply whole system thinking by examining its parts

Zander, R.S .and Zander, B. The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life. Penguin Books, London, 2002. An interweaving of principles from symphonic work and organizational psychology in supporting how we can live a more fulfilling life.

Organizational Design/Management/Innovation

Edmondson, A. Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate, and compete in the knowledge economy. Jossey-Bass, Indianapolis, 2012. Organizations thrive, or fail to thrive, based on how well the small groups or teams within those organizations work.

Govindarajan, V. and Ramamurti, R. Reverse Innovation in Health Care: How to Make Value-Based Delivery Work, Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, 2018. Leading thinkers have argued passionately for value-based health-care reform: replacing delivery based on volume and fee-for-service with competition based on value, as measured by patient outcomes per dollar spent.

Arena, M. J., Adaptive Space: How GM and Other Companies Are Positively Disrupting Themselves and Transforming into Agile Organizations, New York: McGraw Hill, 2018. Transforming organizations via utilization of the concept of adaptive space to edge out competition in today’s disruptive environment ensures agility such that response to change is rapid and effective.

Nonaka, I. & Takeuchi, H.  The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995. Failure to value the experience, intuition, and “gut” of everyone in the organization is wasteful and short-sighted.

Collins, J. Good to Great, Harper Business, New York, 2001. Lessons learned from great companies’ experience can be applied to other companies to improve their performance.

Collins, L. & Porras, J. Built to Last,   HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1994. Examines difference between highly successful companies in an industry and less successful competitors.

Kotter, J. Leading Change, Harvard Business School Press. Boston, 1996. Kotter’s 8 steps to creating change are likely the best-known approach; it describes the leader’s role in managing the sequential process

Sinek, S.  The Infinite Game.  Penguin Books, 2019.  The need to move from finite approaches with short deadlines to a longer approach and attention to the legacy we leave behind.

Crowe B, Gaulton J, Minor N, Asch D, Eyet J, Rainosek E, Flint K, Joo J, Chambers D, Bright S, Yang J, Beyt G, Pierce R, Moses J. To Improve Quality, Leverage Design. BMJ Quality and Safety, 31(1):70, 2022. The systems transformation methodology of Design Thinking can enhance quality improvement efforts when its human-centered frames and tools are deployed alongside traditional methods.

Dialogue/Communication – New Ways to Communicate

Cialdini, R. Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2016. Optimal persuasion is achieved only through optimal pre-suasion; i.e., to change “minds” a pre-suader must also change “states of mind.”

Goleman, D. Emotional Intelligence, Bantam Books, New York, 1995.  Explains the concept shift to EI and ways to accomplish it, describes its use as a lever to improve performance.

Goleman, D. , Bayatzis, R.,& McKee, A. Primal Leadership, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2002.  Building on EI, identifies different leadership styles, when each is appropriate and how an EI leader can shift as  needed.

Manville; B. and Ober, J. A Company of Citizens: What the World's First Democracy Teaches Leaders About Creating Great Organizations. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2002.  What we can learn from our history in creating the nimble organizations needed to face the future.

Kaissi, A. Humbitious: The Power of Low-Ego, High Drive Leadership.  Page Two, Coppell, TX. 2021. When leaders behave with both compassion and action, humility and ambition, good things happen.