The Mind of the Leader

Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter start with a premise: companies find it increasingly difficult to address the need for meaning expressed by their employees. They propose a theory: management must have become too technocratic and insufficiently human. According to them, meaning feeds on quality relationships between staff and managers, and among colleagues. It also requires a company strategy centered on the human, i.e. that places staff development and blossoming at the foundation of the economic performance. If the principle seems appealing, how can you transform it into reality? First of all by working on managerial behaviors, the authors suggest. Companies must encourage their management personnel to develop three aptitudes: stepping back and getting to know oneself; altruism (a manager must leave his/her ego aside and be at the service of the staff); finally, empathy (the authors even talk about “compassion”).

The book is structured around the three dimensions on which managers can work: themselves, their teams and, finally, the organization. Easy to read, concrete, it will enable the readers to renew their vision of management and to develop their relational intelligence.