Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance, 2nd Edition,

Leadership should be about much more than hitting targets and avoiding mistakes. Kim Cameron shows how to reach beyond ordinary success to achieve extraordinary effectiveness, spectacular results, and what he calls "positively deviant performance"-performance far above the norm. Positive leadership enables thriving and flourishing rather than simply addressing obstacles and impediments. It helps bring out the best in human nature.

Cameron is one of the founders of the new field of Positive Organizational Scholarship, which studies unusually high-performing organizations. In Positive Leadership he draws on discoveries in this field and in the allied field of positive psychology-which focuses on high-functioning individuals-as well as positive organizational change methodologies. He identifies four interrelated 
leadership strategies:

• Positive Climate: fostering emotions such as optimism, compassion, and gratitude
• Positive Relationships: building positive energy networks and developing strength-based activities
• Positive Communications: fostering best-self feedback and supportive communication patterns
• Positive Meaning: helping people find profound purpose and a sense of calling

Cameron cites the empirical research that these strategies are rooted in and that supports their bottom-line effectiveness, lays out a proven process for implementing them, and includes a self-assessment instrument and a guide to assist leaders in the implementation process. Positive Leadership is a concise, thoroughly researched, and practical guide that any leader can use to generate truly amazing results.

About THe Author:

Kim Cameron is the William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations in the Ross School of Business and Professor of Higher Education in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. He currently serves as associate dean in the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and has served as dean of the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, as associate dean in the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University, and as a department chair at the University of Michigan. He also currently serves as a Fellow in the Wheatley Institution at Brigham Young University.  

Cameron is one of the cofounders of the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship at the University of Michigan— a research center focused on the investigation of positively deviant performance, virtuousness, strengths, and practices in organizations that lead to thriving and extraordinary outcomes. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Brigham Young University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University. His research on organizational virtuousness, effectiveness, quality culture, downsizing, and the development of leadership skills has been published in more than 120 academic articles and 14 scholarly books.  

Cameron is married to the former Melinda Cummings and has seven childrens.