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.
