Your challenge as a high-potential executive is to motivate people to pursue shared goals, even though their responsibilities vary widely. The image of an ideal leader has swung from the benevolent dictator in the Industrial Age to the servant leader in recent years. Yet those models merely flip-flop the dominant and supportive roles in the leader-follower relationship. When executives attempt to control rather than motivate people, or pander to them by abandoning their leadership prerogatives, they risk losing their people’s respect and allegiance—if not actually losing them as employees.

The leadership conversations model shows you how to engage in effective conversations that create connection and alignment among leaders and followers. Everyone has valuable ideas and experiences that he or she is encouraged to contribute to the conversation. By expecting excellence from the mailroom to the executive suite, effective leaders tap into multiple viewpoints to achieve the organization’s goals while concurrently assisting each person in progressing along his or her own professional path.

Part 1 describes the attributes of great leaders and asks you to consider if you really want to be a leader (Chapter 1); portrays differences between the management mindset and the leadership mindset and explains how to blend the two for maximum effectiveness (Chapter 2); introduces the four types and three perspectives of leadership conversations (Chapter 3); and defines the steps on the leadership ladder that we use to discuss the challenges inherent in rising from one organizational level to the next (Chapter 4).