Uplifting Leadership: How Organizations, Teams, and Communities Raise Performance, June/2014

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 organization 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 organizations inspired and uplifted their teams' performance. Distilling the six common characteristics of leaders at high-performing organizations 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 organization's walls, revealing how leaders:

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

Featuring case studies of organizations 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 organization.

About The Authors:

Andy Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at Boston College. In 2014, he was ranked as one of the 12 most influential scholars on US public education policy. He has written or edited more than 25 books on leadership and change, including Sustainable Leadership (with Dean Fink) and Professional Capital (with Michael Fullan). For more information, please visit www.andyhargreaves.com.

Alan Boyle is director of Leannta Education Associates. He designs and creates professional learning for education leaders in the United Kingdom and abroad. For more information, please visit www.leannta.com.

Alma Harris is professor and director of the Institute of Educational Leadership at the University of Malaya. She is also Pro-Director (Leadership) at the Institute of Education, University of London. She is internationally known for her work on school improvement. For more information, please visit www.almaharris.co.uk.