The first step towards becoming an outstanding leader: know yourself. This book will help you understand yourself as a leader... so you can change, grow, and become powerfully more effective. Authored by four world-renowned leadership experts, including the legendary Ken Blanchard, it draws on an extraordinary seven-year research study on how successful corporate executives exert influence. The authors begin by presenting self-change as your must urgent leadership challenge, and showing how your values and personality govern your actions, even when you don't realize it. You'll examine the inner self you're currently bringing to your "moments of influence," discovering how your disposition, values, beliefs, and persona are contributing right now to your success -- or failure. Throughout, the authors present proven, values-based approaches to leadership in both group settings and one-to-one contexts.

About the Authors

DR. DREA ZIGARMI is a respected management consultant, bestselling author, and powerful trainer and motivational speaker. He co-authored Leadership and The One Minute Manager, and has co-developed several Blanchard Training and Development products, including its Leader Behavior Analysis instruments.

Few people have impacted the day-to-day management of people and companies more than KEN BLANCHARD. His phenomenal best-seller, The One Minute Manager (co-authored with Spencer Johnson), has sold 9,000,000+ copies and been translated into 25 languages. He leads the Ken Blanchard Companies®, a global leader in workplace learning, productivity, leadership, and team effectiveness.

MICHAEL O'CONNOR co-founded and directs the Center for Managing by Values. He specializes in strategy, behavior, and process-driven performance. With Ken Blanchard, he co-authored Managing by Values.

DR. CARL EDEBURN has spent 25 years consulting on key management and leadership issues. A certified trainer for the Ken Blanchard Companies, he has co-developed several Blanchard instruments.

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Preface The Book's Origin The Leader Within is the result of our many years of experience training, consulting, coaching, and researching American business managers and leaders. At the heart of this book is a seven-year, in-depth, statistical study of the influence behaviors used by American corporate executives. Although the report's statistics are not included (to reduce reading time and save space), the conclusions presented in this book are sound and substantiated. The Book's Purpose This book is a self-development resource; its purpose is to help you learn more about yourself so that you can change, grow, and become a better leader. Its primary objective is to present some well-developed models that help you re-create or reinvent your leadership approach so that you can bring about better organizational results and greater human satisfaction. Knowing yourself is key to being an effective leader. The models explained in this book can help you examine the inner self that you bring to your organizational life's frequent "moments of influence." Examining how you presently behave as a leader, and then contrasting and comparing those behaviors with possible alternatives, can provide you with invaluable insights for becoming a more effective leader. The Book's Intended Audience We wrote this book for managers and leaders--people who earn a living by influencing others within organizational settings. However, other audiences will also find it informative and helpful. Consultants can utilize the information within this book to better understand the executives they coach. Human resource professionals can use this book as a tool for broadening and refining their executive development programs. College and university faculty can use this book as a challenging and stimulating text for their own leadership teaching or research, and the research formulated by the students they advise. The Authors' Frame of Reference The working definition of leadership used in this book is, of course, values based, as is any definition of worth. We define a leader as anyone who acts to arouse, engage, and satisfy the motives of the follower--within an environment of conflict, competition, or change--that results in the follower taking action toward a mutually shared outcome or vision. As you will see, that vision must be growthful for the follower, ultimately societal, and also contribute to the well-being of all involved. The values inherent in this definition involve the follower's growth and development; they imply the follower's eventual independence and autonomy of action when serving the (organizational) outcome or vision. The term servant leader might come to mind. The leader who is a servant judges his or her success not only in the accomplishment of the outcome, but also by the effects the accomplishment has on those who do the accomplishing. Are those who are led healthier, happier, committed, and more apt to become leaders themselves? The true intent of the servant leader is to serve both the vision and all those who seek to achieve that vision. The servant leader's inner intent is not self-oriented, but other-oriented. Such a leader ensures that other people's high-priority needs are being served.1 The Book's Organization The book is organized into seven chapters, which move from a discussion of an individual's inner makeup or personality dimensions, to the role of a leader, to the implications inner personality has on an individual's potential to carry out the leader role. Each chapter is divided into two sections that help organize the seven key chapters.Chapter 1 discusses the leadership challenge of self-change.Chapter 2 defines the parameters of personality and leadership.Chapters