Uplifting Leadership: How Organizations, Teams, and Communities Raise Performance

What does it take to do more with less? How can you do better than before, or better than others? How do you turn losses into wins, or near-bankruptcy into strong profitability, or abject failure into stellar success? The power of uplift enables any organisation to do more with less, beat the competition, and perform better than ever. Leaders who uplift their employees' passions, intellects, and commitments produce remarkable results.

Based on original research from a seven-year global study, Uplifting Leadership reveals how leaders from diverse organisations inspired and uplifted their teams' performance. Distilling the six common characteristics of leaders at high-performing organisations across business, sports, and education, authors Andy Hargreaves, Alan Boyle, and Alma Harris explore the nature of uplift, its impact on performance, and the ways to achieve it within and beyond an organisation's walls, revealing how leaders:

• Identify and articulate an inspiring dream that is coherently connected to the best of what the organisation has been before
• Pursue that dream at a sustainable pace without squandering resources, incurring excessive debt, or burning people out
• Forge paths of innovation and improvement that others have overlooked or rejected
• Monitor progress by using metrics and indicators in a mindful and meaningful way
• Build teams that naturally pull people into change rather than pushing them through it

Featuring case studies of organisations as diverse as Shoebuy.com, Fiat, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Marks & Spencer, Cricket Australia, Burnley Football Club, and the Vancouver Giants, as well as world-leading educational systems, Uplifting Leadership provides tools for leaders to incorporate these performance-driving strategies into their own.

For leaders who want their people to try harder, transform what they do, reach for a higher purpose, and stay resolute and resilient when opposing forces threaten to defeat them, Uplifting Leadership provides a path to better performance across any organisation.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Uplift

1. Dreaming with Determination 17
2. Creativity and Counter-Flow 45
3. Collaboration with Competition 67
4. Pushing and Pulling 93
5. Measuring with Meaning 113
6. Sustainable Success 137
7. Uplifting Action 159

Appendix: Research Methodology 177

Notes 181

Acknowledgments 207

The Authors 209

Index 213