The Book(s) You've Been Waiting For

At long last, the Heartfelt Leadership book Dr. Mark and I have been collaborating on for years now is finally coming to life. Best of all, since we made you wait soooo long, we’re actually delivering not just one, but two books in the coming months. Taaa-Daaa!

For those of you who may not be familiar with how these books came to be, here goes:

Shortly after Dr. Mark and I met for the first time, about eight years ago, we got to know each other over a business lunch. It was then that I shared a story with Dr. Mark about my recent participation on a technology industry executive panel discussion on the topic of passion and engagement. Toward the end of this event, we panelists took questions from the audience.

One man from the audience stood up and directed a comment to me, stating “you obviously lead from your heart.” He then continued, “and we all know there is no room for that in business.” I was totally stunned, especially since the discussion topic was “How to drive more passion and engagement in the workplace”.

Upon hearing my story, Dr. Mark immediately did a quick Google search on his smartphone. To our surprise, we found these two words—Heartfelt and Leadership—had never been put together, up to that point, as a web domain, a book title, a training program, or an online community.  We saw an opportunity to collaborate.

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Mark and I established a Heartfelt Leadership group on LinkedIn.  With that, we found many people, from all over the world, intrinsically knew what the term heartfelt leadership meant. Many eagerly pointed out to us someone they believed to be a heartfelt leader, but sadly, we found very few who claimed to report to one at work. Not surprisingly, some people (especially men) expressed fear of being viewed as one, lest they be ridiculed or scoffed at, just as I had been during the panel discussion.

Several months later, Dr. Mark and I produced a full-day Leadership Vistas Symposium dedicated to the topic of Heartfelt Leadership. We invited our first few identified heartfelt leaders from the southern California area to join us in onstage interviews. We also led the audience through a variety of one-on-one and group exercises to explore the many ways just one person might begin to change pervasively negative (and even toxic) management cultures. The response was overwhelmingly positive. The entire audience and the speaker line-up were clearly hungry and anxious to learn more.

With that, Dr. Mark and I embarked on a multi-year research project. We interviewed dozens upon dozens of potentially heartfelt business leaders who were either recommended to us by customers, or by the people who worked from them, or by others who simply knew of them.  A few turned out to be some of the most amazingly down-to-earth yet dearly beloved and highly successful business leaders you could ever imagine.

Ultimately, this research project turned out to be one of the most personally fulfilling missions I have ever pursued. We met so many amazing people, with so many fabulous insights; it just wasn’t possible to fit all the great learnings into a single book that busy working people would be able to digest on one coast-to-coast airline flight. So… what started as one book on Heartfelt Leadership became a two volume series. Voila!

Our first book, The WOW Factor Workplace: How to Create a ‘Best Place to Work’ Culture, is due out this fall. Our second book, Heartfelt Leadership: How to Capture the Top Spot and Keep on Soaring, will be published in spring 2020. We cannot wait to share what we have discovered with you.

Our sincerest thanks go out to you for being so extraordinarily patient with us. Early reviewer feedback indicates you should find it worth the wait. One “previewer” of The WOW Factor Workplace told us:

“I love the way you share everything in a conversational, easy to assess style. This book is a joy to read. I’m still in the process but I really like it. It feels like great mentoring and coaching, and very supportive.”   

To learn more, click on the BOOKS tab of this website.