With this book, Dr Eleonora Bonacossa, wants to accompany readers as they journey to the next level of leadership. This journey begins by admitting you don’t have all the answers and yet are willing to listen proactively. Ultimately, this leads to the most important task of any leader: creating the right working environment so that people on the team can thrive. The right working environment is founded upon three specific qualities: Valuing, Caring and Encouraging. This book is aimed at middle management, at those managers who are ready to do the inner work, who are self-aware and self-managing, and who are motivated to continue on their own leadership development journey. The book is also for those managers who have been inspired by their coaches, mentors or senior executives to develop themselves further in the direction of leadership with a spirit of curiosity and humility. This book will also benefit those who have to work professionally with others – e.g., in extended teams or with stakeholders – and who desire to develop their own capacity as leaders in their own given field, subject or business. Leadership, like all other skills and abilities, can be learned. However, learning Leadership is different from learning technical skills and disciplines such as Sales, IT or Finance. Developing leadership skills requires emotional and social intelligence, so training both intellectual and emotional competencies is of paramount importance. The author is aware that many other skills are currently being discussed and researched. However, she has chosen to focus on the 6 top core leadership skills that she believes creates the most sustainable and revolutionary change. According to Dr. Eleonora Bonacossa, these six leadership skills have the greatest impact on organizations, on ROI (Return of Investment), on ROE (Return of Engagement), and last but not least, on each and every member of a team, who are in fact, the real focus of this book. Learning and practicing these 6 leadership competencies should help prepare one to confront many of the biggest challenges facing organizations today. These skills characterize the heart of leadership: the management of professional interactions and interpersonal relationships between leaders and teams. This is the key to ensuring a healthy working atmosphere and the prosperity, success and sustainability of the organization. The direct results of practicing these 6 leadership skills are seen in increased individual overall performance, better decision making, and greater overall individual and team satisfaction. The end result will be a noticeable and measurable increase in overall productivity.
Dr. Bonacossa’s 6 leadership skills are:
1. Recognize You Don’t Have All the Answers
2. Listen Proactively
3. Provide Safety
4. Appreciate
5. Care
6. Encourage
She hopes the readers become so courageous as to ini.ate Game Changing in their organiza.on by experimen.ng and applying just some of these skills. Can you imagine Leaders admi]ng and showing their vulnerability? Leaders that proac.vely listen to their team members and let them feel heard and seen? Can you imagine how concretely impac_ul this could be? Dr. Bonacossa would like the readers not to refer to them as “Soa skills,” for they are anything but soa. They are HUMAN SKILLS that cannot be learned in a Business School but only through ordinary, everyday interac.on and rela.onships with others. These are Game-Changing skills; these are real leadership skills! Do not underes.mate the value of this book due to its brevity. According to the author, books on leadership are too theore.cal and too long. The challenge for her was not in accumula.ng material, but in cura.ng it to be easily consumable. This book is deliberately short, compact, and to the point.