Jim Moats - Leading From the Edge of the Inside: Embracing the Heart of Business Leadership

I have not read a more powerful book on business leadership than Leading from the Edge of the Inside . This extraordinary volume documents an understanding of the power of awareness and the examined life to transform oneself, ones team, and ultimately the world.

James R. Doty, M.D.

founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), Stanford University

senior editor of The Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science

New York Times bestselling author of Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeons Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart

Most leadership teams dont really communicatethey just take turns talking. It becomes a conspiracy of superficiality. Leading from the Edge of the Inside guides us from the surface to the deeper regions of our beingto mindfulness and wisdom. The essential conversations are a path to a greater collective wisdomgreater successand more conscious organizations

James Newton

CEO, Newton Learning

If dramatically improving the performance of your executive team is your goal, read this book! Leading from the Edge of the Inside lays out a clear path for unleashing greater management team capacity and sets the stage for full commitment. This book will help you experience your work in a fresh way.

Tom Zahniser

Master Chair, Vistage International

When your management team becomes a place of practice everything changes. The stories and essential conversations in this book can help you make a very important shiftone that has helped my management team experience 20x growth. The practices described in this book work!

Monty Montoya

CEO, CorneaGen

Creating a high-performance leadership team has never been more challenging. From concept to execution, Leading from the Edge of the Inside unlocks management team formation in fresh ways. The essential conversations represent a profound breakthrough. I look forward to leveraging this work in my CEO and Key Exec groups. This book is a must read!

Tom Leonard

Master Chair, Vistage International

Leading from the Edge of the Inside lays out a convincing argument that business requires a new operating system. The essential conversations are a framework for dramatically increasing value creation for customers, employees, and owners. I could almost hear these conversations taking place in environments in which I have been engaged with management teams. This approach will yield much better outcomes!

Carole Whittaker, Ph.D.

founding and emeritus member of the Board of the Arizona Enneagram Association

Enneagram teacher and spiritual director

Leading from the Edge of the Inside is a leadership story about the journey into deep awareness. The essential conversations and their foundational practices represent a profound breakthrough. By discovering the invisible patterns that block your management team your ability to differentiate your company will dramatically improve.

Tim Call

SVP Vistage International

Copyright 2019, Jim Moats

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

Jim Moats jim@peer-place.com

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. The author has tried to recreate events, locales, and conversations from memories of them. In order to maintain their anonymity, in some instances names of individuals and places, some identifying characteristics and details such as physical properties, occupations, and places of residence were changed.

Poem by Judy Brown, A Leaders Guide to Reflective Practice. judysorumbrown.com

Editing by Cara Highsmith, Highsmith Creative Services,

www.highsmithcreative.com

Cover and Interior Design by Mitchell Shea

ISBN 978-1-7339502-0-6

ISBN 978-1-7339502-1-3

Library of Congress Control Number:2019907938

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition 14 13 12 11 10 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my son Nick - one of the most courageous people I know.

This book emerged through my work with management teams and Vistage members in Seattle, Washington. I wish to thank Curt Altig for offering me an initial framework to test my early ideas. Without his encouragement this book would never have been written. I also wish to thank the many CEO and executive members of the Vistage groups I have chaired and the management teams I have worked with. My interactions with them around the ideas I was trying to articulate in our groups over many years, shaped each of the pages in this book. I also want to thank my colleagues, the Vistage Chairs who have encouraged me throughout this endeavor.

I want to thank writing coach Rob Jolles for pushing me in the very early stages of this manuscript and my editor Cara Highsmith for the depth of commitment displayed throughout the entire creative process. A special thank you to Jim Henderson for generously advising me and also for connecting me to expert help.

Also, this book has been shaped by several very brave people who serve as my alpha and beta readers: Leslie Osborne, Tom Zahniser, Tom Paladino, Carole Whitaker, Tim Call, and John Nichols. The endless hours they invested to help me bring order out of chaos exceeded my expectations. I want to acknowledge my friend Michael Stuart. Our weekly conversations strengthened my spirit.

I am especially happy to be able to acknowledge and thank my wife, Becky, for her continuing role in my spiritual development, especially for the way she models a life of prayer. Our morning conversations are among my lifes most fulfilling experiences.

Thanks be to God!

INTRODUCTION

The primary concern that occupies the minds of most company leaders is solving problems, and it becomes the focus of most management team meetings. I want to help you and your management team tackle problem solving from a new perspective, using an approach I developed during my own leadership journey.

While I was the majority owner of a software company, I became a member of Vistage Internationalthe largest CEO membership organization in the world. A Vistage CEO group consists of up to sixteen CEOs of privately owned companies. After I sold the software company, I decided to become a Vistage chair. That role became a learning lab for me to study patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that consistently sabotage the best intentions of CEOs.

This is how it all started. Susan, the regional president for a public company and a very bright, take-charge kind of leader, set the tone for something special to happen within her company: she demonstrated a willingness to be vulnerable in front of her employees, something few leaders do voluntarily.