S. Max Brown - Leadership Vertigo: Why Even the Best Leaders Go Off Course and How They Can Get Back On Track

Praise for Leadership Vertigo

Leadership Vertigo offers practical and effective tools for avoiding self-deception and empowering those we seek to lead. By internalizing Naseer and Browns four C s of leadershipCommunity, Competence, Credibility, and Compassionleaders can work to develop an adaptive leadership approach for the increasingly demanding modern age.

Douglas R. Conant
Chairman, Kellogg Executive Leadership Institute;
Chairman, Avon Products; Founder and CEO, ConantLeadership;
Former CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Leadership can be learned but must be continuously refined, requiring personal reflection and focus. All of us search for expertise, but the literary marketplace is flooded with lengthy, complex solutions. Leadership Vertigo offers timely learnings in this brutally competitive and complex environment.

John Loomis
VP and Corporate Officer, General Electric Company (retired)

Leadership Vertigo is a precious gem of a book. Max Brown and Tanveer Naseer explore the timeless truths of what leaders must do to create an engaging and meaningful workplace when the world keeps spinning us off course. Their four fundamentals capture the essential lessons for our times, their compelling examples are from real leaders who have genuinely lived these lessons, and their heartfelt passion grabs hold and wont let go. Leadership Vertigo is one of those books youll read in one sitting, but return to time and again. Enjoy.

Jim Kouzes
Coauthor of the award-winning and best-selling The Leadership Challenge ; Executive Fellow of Leadership,
Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University

Community, competence, credibility, and compassion are absolutely essential to great leadership. Thank you so much for writing this book, Max and Tanveer!

Chade-Meng Tan
Jolly Good Fellow of Google and
New York Times best-selling author of Search Inside Yourself

Max and Tanveer nailed it! Every leader can get off course, and this is the guide for getting back on track.

Jamie Naughton
Speaker of the House, Zappos.com, Inc.

Whether you are a seasoned executive, an aspiring leader-to-be, or a recent college student, Leadership Vertigo provides real-life examples of meaningful leadership principles that are applicable on a global basis. Simply put, Max and Tanveer have authored a must read by reinforcing the importance of EVERY LEADER earning the right to lead EVERY DAY !

A. Mark Guthrie
Manager, Global Employee Relations, General Electric Company

Whether you manage tens of thousands of people or just a few, Leadership Vertigo is a must read! S. Max Brown and Tanveer Naseer have written a great book on leadership that contains useful information that is actionable. I like to think of the four C s in Community, Competence, Credibility, and Compassion as a four-leaf clover with all the leaves facing inwards toward those we lead and with all the benefits that come from leaders who are firmly grounded!

Peter Hart
CEO, Rideau Recognition

I just finished reading Leadership Vertigo: Why Even the Best Leaders
Go Off Course and How They Can Get Back On Track by Max Brown and Tanveer Naseer. It is well worth the read if you are looking to improve your leadership skills, help someone else improve their leadership skills, or simply want to make a more meaningful impact in your workplace.

Lisa Krouse
EVP and Chief HR Officer, FCCI Insurance Group

Reading Leadership Vertigo by Max Brown and Tanveer Naseer is like investing a few hours in intimate collaboration with some of the finest thinkers in business, whose ideas have been linked together, efficiently focused, brilliantly augmented, and then presented by two deep-thinking and broadly experienced observers. The return for making such an investment will find immediate application, plus long-term benefits well exceeding reasonable expectations. This book is a valuable addition to ones bookshelf both as a proximate tutorial and a reminding reference.

Clark A. Campbell, Ph.D.
Award-winning, best-selling author; CEO, OPPM International;
Chairman of the Board, ProLung Medical Diagnostics

Max and Tanveer have encapsulated genuine wisdom from many that have fruit on their trees in the orchard we call life. However, after accessing this wisdom, they have developed a system for implementing improvement in our leadership roles. The four C s represent to me those principles that anchor the system to reality. I have worked in the healthcare industry for over thirty years. Vertigo and non-alignment of leadership is rampant in our industry. The message that resonates with me could not be more helpful and clear for healthcare today.

Alan Gleghorn
CEO Christie Clinic

Take out your own garbage! is just one of many insights and examples S. Max Brown and Tanveer Naseer offer up in Leadership Vertigo , an excellent book on helping leaders achieve the leadership of their dreams.

Whitney Johnson
Author of Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things
Happen When You Dare to Dream

I encourage those who want to be a better leader to read Max and Tanveers book.

John Hope Bryant
Author of Love Leadership ;
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Operation HOPE, Inc.

Gratitude is vital for the health and well-being of organizations, but the workplace is often a gratitude-free zone populated by workers and supervisors suffering from gratitude deficit disorder. Brown and Naseer compellingly and humanely demonstrate the potential power of gratitude and related qualities like compassion and humility in building leadership landmarksthose qualities that are foundational for effective leadership. Their insights address the important yet often overlooked knowledge-to-performance gap that we all struggle with in trying to translate what we know we should do into what we actually do. Much more than another recipe for successful leadership, the books central focus is about leading a better lifeand how to regain our balance when we stumble.

Robert A. Emmons
Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Positive Psychology ;
Author of Thanks! and Gratitude Works!

Looking for a leadership book that makes a difference? Youve found it here. Do yourself and your team a favor and read this book.

Aaron Skonnard
President and CEO, Pluralsight

Copyright

Copyright 2014 by S. Max Brown and Tanveer Naseer

All rights reserved.

Published by Familius LLC, www.familius.com

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Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication Data

2014948925

pISBN 978-1-939629-30-2

eISBN 978-1-939629-86-9

Printed in the United States of America

Edited by Steve Mette

Cover design by David Miles

Book design by Kurt Wahlner

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

Dedication

To parents, who both lead by example.

To Sally, my best friend and eternal companion.

To AnLi and Drew, who teach me with their questions and inspire me with their compassion and commitment to serve others.

S. Max Brown

To my wife, Andre, and my daughters Alya, Malaika, and Zafina, who are not only my inspiration, but the reason why I aspire to be more. Thank you for helping me stay the course to my dreams.

Tanveer Naseer

And to all those who lift, lead, and serve.