The People Smart Leader: Five Keys to Inspire Others to Do Their Best Work

The leader’s most important role is to deploy finely tuned “people” skills to work with and through others to achieve exceptional results.

Today’s leaders often possess strong job-related technical skills. Yet their staff members frequently report high levels of dissatisfaction, disinterest, and disconnection from their work—and often from the leaders who supervise them.

Do any of these questions resonate with you as you lead your team?

• Why don’t my people seem motivated?
• Why am I spending so much time doing other people’s work?
• How do I get my team aligned and working toward the same goals?
• Why do my best people leave?
• Why am I working hard but not accomplishing much?
• Why do I have to manage so many different personalities?
• How can I improve at giving feedback?
• How do I create an environment that inspires people to deliver their best work?

The “People Smart” Leader, a follow-up to The Everyday Leader, offers practical support for answering these and other questions related to interpersonal leadership competencies. The book encourages leaders to strengthen their skills and recalibrate their mindsets, enabling them to lead and inspire others to achieve exceptional results.

This publication extends the conversations introduced in The Everyday Leader by focusing on additional value-adding skills and approaches. It includes an extensive collection of development tools, reflections, and processes designed to help readers put enhanced leadership skills into practice.

The Five Keys provide deliberately simple labels for the complex work of “people-smart leadership”:

• Lead
• Connect
• Coach
• Develop
• Perform

Readers may work through the Five Keys individually or as part of a leadership development group.