Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams: How You and Your Team Get Unstuck to Get Results - Hardcover

by Roger M. Schwarz (Author)

A proven approach for helping leaders and teams work together to achieve better decisions, greater commitment, and stronger results

More than ever, effective leadership requires us to work as a team, but many leaders struggle to get the results they need. When stakes are high, you can't get great results by just changing what you do. You also need to change how you think. Organizational psychologist and leadership consultant Roger Schwarz applies his 30+ years of experience working with leadership teams to reveal how leaders can drastically improve results by changing their individual and team mindset.

• Provides practical guidance to help teams increase decision quality, decrease implementation time, foster innovation, get commitment, reduce costs and increase trust
• Outlines 5 core values leadership teams can adopt to exponentially improve results
• Author of The Skilled Facilitator and The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook

Get the results you and your team need. Start by applying the practical wisdom of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams.

Front Jacket

How well does your leadership team work?

Do you and your team consistently achieve the results you want?

Do ineffective problem solving, inability to resolve conflicts, strained relationships, and lack of trust get in the way of what you need to achieve?

Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams introduces Mutual Learning, a comprehensive approach that has enabled Roger Schwarz's clients in global corporations, federal agencies, and nonprofits worldwide to get to the heart of their toughest challenges and significantly improve their results.

In this book, Roger Schwarz addresses a critical question: Why does a group of smart leaders so often create a less-than-smart team?

For thirty years, Schwarz has studied and consulted with leaders who faced challenges in which they were less effective than they wanted to be. Almost all leaders fall into the same unproductive traps stemming from their mindset--deeply ingrained beliefs about how leaders are "supposed" to act.

In challenging situations, most leaders use a unilateral control mindset in which they attempt to make others do what they want them to do. Leaders think they're acting in the best interests of their organization. Yet unilateral control consistently generates subpar results.Unfortunately, leaders are not usually aware of the negative impact this mindset creates.

The antidote to unilateral control is Mutual Learning in which the team works together to shift its values, assumptions, and behaviors so that leadership is invested in the full team--rather than just a formal leader. The approach is based on five core values that fundamentally change the way the team thinks and acts:

• TRANSPARENCY
• CURIOSITY
• ACCOUNTABILITY
• INFORMED CHOICE
• COMPASSION

Apply the principles of Mutual Learning to your toughest challenges. You and your team will get stuck far less often, achieve higher levels of performance, have better working relationships, and enjoy greater well-being.

Back Jacket

PRAISE FOR SMART LEADERS, SMARTER TEAMS

"Roger Schwarz has hit the nail on the head. To bring positive long-term change and achieve the results you and your team are capable of, you can't just change how you act; you need to fundamentally change how you think about your team. Practical. Insightful. Outstanding."
--Marshall Goldsmith, million-selling author, MOJO and What Got You Here Won't Get You There

"Roger Schwarz argues that leaders must first change themselves to change their teams and transform results. He clearly explains how a default approach used by many leaders leads them and their teams to get stuck. He also provides a winning alternative--a set of values and beliefs that leaders can adopt to build commitment, make better decisions, and obtain better results."
--Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School; author, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy

"A powerful compendium of practical wisdom that artfully gets at the 'what' and the 'why' of superior team leadership and performance. A very worthy read."
--Douglas R. Conant, former president, CEO, and director, Campbell Soup Company; New York Times bestselling author, TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments

"In Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams, Roger has done for leadership teams what The Skilled Facilitator did for facilitators--provides a practical and powerful framework for getting to the heart of tough challenges, getting unstuck, and getting the results they need. This book should become required reading for all leadership teams."
--Thomas P. Zgambo, ombudsman, the World Bank Group; former president, the Ombudsman Association (now International Ombudsman Association)

Author Biography

ROGER SCHWARZ has been a recognized thought leader in the realm of team leadership for three decades. An organizational psychologist and president and CEO of Roger Schwarz Associates, he is a sought-after advisor to global companies, federal government agencies, and international nonprofit organizations.

Clients include Hewlett-Packard, the American Red Cross, the World Bank, TransCanada, Chevron, and the U.S. Department of the Interior. He is author of the seminal work The Skilled Facilitator and coauthor of The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook. He holds a Ph.D. in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan, and a master of education degree from Harvard University. Schwarz lives in Chapel Hill with his wife. They have two children.

www.schwarzassociates.com