Treadmill Tip: Resonant Leadership

Last week--on the treadmill, for the record--I finished Boyatzis and McKee's book, Resonant Leadership: Renewing Yourself and Connecting with Others Through Mindfulness, Hope and Compassion.

In my opinion, I could have saved myself the time by reading the entire title and saying, "Oh," and then going away to focus on living a Christlike life and keeping my antennae up for what's happening within myself and with others around me. Seriously.

This book was written to help driven business leaders, including middle managers, learn some emotionally intelligent behaviors for improving their balance in life and the way they treat others. Essentially, they point out how out-of-whack a leader's life can get, how blind they can become to warning signals in themselves and around them. And then they try to get you to pay attention, be positive, and treat others kindly.

Hope and compassion are integral to a Christian life, so I'm very familiar with the power of those two principles. It is helpful, however to be reminded over and over about is to slow down and listen to one's body, emotions, and the underlying messages one picks up from colleagues at work. That mindfulness is essential in not missing important information. However, I'm not sure that this book did the best job of teaching about mindfulness. Good intro, but there are probably books that do a better job of making it practical. This is where I could use help; my problem is that I don't remember to stop and be mindful. So perhaps that's where it would be useful to go back to the previous book I reviewed--Emotionally Healthy Spirituality--and put to work the principles described there for maintaining connection with God and balance in life.

There go you; you've gotten the basic summary and won't have to read this book! Use your reading time to digest Scazzero's book (and the other ones he recommends in his bibliography) instead.