Henry Evans - Step Up: Lead in Six Moments That Matter

Table of Contents

At the FBI, we realized that the most successful agents consistently demonstrated specific behaviors for building trust and credibility in the field. Evans and Foster do a great job of explaining the skills and competencies required for successful leadership. This is an easy-to-follow guide for generating leadership in both public and private sector organizations.

Supervisory Special Agent Tim Turner (retired), FBI Academy, and associate professor, Anderson University and Columbia Southern University

Evans and Foster point out that leadership is something we all do, even if we didn't understand our role as leaders before. With examples from widely known leaders and case studies from their consulting practice, Step Up shows how to manage and listen to our anger and anxiety, improving our mental models and creating emotional safety around us. This lively, accurate, and practical book will inspire readers.

John D. Mayer, professor of psychology, University of New Hampshire, and author, Personal Intelligence

If you think that emotional intelligence is about being nice or avoiding conflict and you see yourself as a leader, you'd better get this book. Step Up introduces you to the nitty-gritty of emotionally intelligent leadership. You'll find examples and suggestions on how to handle negative emotions and arm yourself for those make-or-break leadership moments.

Steven J. Stein, author, Emotional Intelligence for Dummies

Innovation requires decisiveness and tough discussions where assumptions and ideas are explored and challenged. In Step Up, Evans and Foster give a road map to help any organization gain a competitive edge by igniting leadership at every level of the organization.

Soren Kaplan, author, Wall Street Journal best seller Leapfrogging

Cover design by Wiley

Copyright 2014 by Henry Evans and Colm Foster. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass

A Wiley Brand

One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594www.josseybass.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.

Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002.

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Evans, Henry J.

Step up : lead in six moments that matter / Henry Evans and Colm Foster ; foreword by Marshall Goldsmith. First edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-83828-0 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-89175-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-89173-5 (ebk)

1. Leadership. I. Foster, Colm. II. Title.

HD57.7.E93 2014

658.4092dc23

2014002422

We dedicate this book to the people who step up and
demonstrate leadership in important moments,
with or without the official title and authority to do so.

Foreword

I've enjoyed working with Henry Evans in both university and corporate environments. I also appreciate and respect the research and approach of Dr. Colm Foster's work. They are an international team, and I know from working within some of the same client organizations that they bring high cross-cultural sensitivity and awareness to their work.

In my book What Got You Here Won't Get You There, I emphasized the need for people to recognize their need for change and to change when necessary. As a business author, I know that we have a difficult task when trying to serve the business community through our writing: to make the complex simple for busy people who don't have a lot of time to read what we are writing.

In this book, Step Up, Henry and Colm manage the difficult task of making the complex simple. They give the reader a clear understanding of six critical moments that matter and when leadership is required. Leadership is not an esoteric concept, and Henry and Colm do a great job of illustrating how anyone can lead, regardless of his or her title, and no matter where he or she may sit on the organization chart, so long as he or she recognizes opportunity and knows what to do when opportunity knocks.

Henry and Colm help bridge the gap between the needs of an organization and the needs of the human beings who sit within the organization. They are both former competitive martial artists, so they bring a certain balance of pragmatism, only doing what works, along with an intuitive sense of what people need. I hope you will find, as I did, that they present this balance in a simple and accessible series of behaviors that we can all demonstrate when there is a leadership void in the room. They bring a style that is both compassionate and practical.

Enough about them; let's talk about us, readers. Henry and Colm are challenging us to recognize special moments in which we can demonstrate leadership and then step up in those moments so that we can elevate the performance and social experience that people have working in organizations. This is a high calling. From my perspective, Henry and Colm are challenging us to be catalysts for positive change in the form of better business results and better relationships at work, through our own decisions, actions, awareness, and behaviors.

We've got the road map in this book. Now we need to get to work and start recognizing the moments that matter so that we can lead when they arise.