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The Lasting Impact of Positive Leadership
Copyright 2019 by Stan Toler
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97408
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
ISBN 978-0-7369-7498-1 (pbk)
ISBN 978-0-7369-7499-8 (eBook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC
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Contents
P ositive leadership that provides a lasting impactthat phrase describes what leaders strive to achieve. It raises the bar for leaders who want to pursue this level of excellence. And it defines a leader not based on a position, but the person.
When I think about positive leadership, Stan Toler is one of the few people that I place in this category. How do I know this? I have known Stan for nearly my entire life. We were boyhood friends. My dad, Dr. Melvin Maxwell, was his college president and encouraged him to follow his call to the ministry. Anyone mentored under my dads ministry was one of his boys for life.
Stan and I attended college together. When I started out in the ministry as pastor of a church in Ohio, the first staff member I hired was Stan. That began a fruitful professional association. Through the years we have had countless opportunities to work together. But theres another reason Im highly biased about the person who Stan is and how great this book is.
For years, Ive talked and written on leadership. Most people never get past the point of talking about it. I promise you, its much easier to talk the talk than to walk the talk. There are only a few who execute the role of being an exceptional leaderthe subject of another book that Stan has masterfully written. The premise that Stan writes of in The Lasting Impact of Positive Leadership is one that relates to and motivates leaders through practical principles.
Readers, once you start this book, dont expect to put it down until the end. While most leadership books are more business-related, The Lasting Impact of Positive Leadership focuses on the practical principles and embracing the essential qualities of being, first, a leader as a person who sets the foundation in his or her own life, then having a lasting impact on others.
If you follow the simple yet profound wisdom in this book, then you, too, will take leadership to a level that youve never experienced.
Enjoy!
John C. Maxwell
Founder and CEO of the John Maxwell Company a #1 New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and coach with more than 30 million units sold in 50 languages
If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you wont, you most assuredly wont. Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad.
D ENIS W AITLEY
W hether youre in the ministry business, politics, education, or community service, people are talking not only about the need for more leaders but also the need for better leaders. The rapid rate of change at the dawn of the twenty-first century has created a need for those who will lead at a higher dimension. Mere mental or physical manipulation doesnt cut it anymore; organizations and societies have evolved beyond traditional modes of influence. People want more. Effective leaders today draw from creating a synergy for change and organizational vitality. Throughout history many great leaders have led this way with their heads, hearts, and souls. This kind of leading is not optional if the end goal is effective leadership.
Many are intimidated by the gleaming, breathing leadership icons. Yet the principles by which they lead are within the grasp of most of us.
Where are you as a leader? What defines you as a leader? Is it more about your performance versus your attitude? Is it more focused on self-leadership versus servant leadership? How do others perceive you? Are you modeling godly leadership or leadership dictated by the pressure of achieving successful results?
These questions (and many others) are not always simple to answer. In fact, the end result is far beyond defining just one answer. Rather its a process based on how a leader responds over time that reveals the leaders true identity. And often, the simple formula for a leaders success starts and ends with a positive outlook.
Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.
W ASHINGTON I RVING
F or centuries medical professionals have studied the human condition through the lens of disease. That means they have generally paid less attention to healthy people than to the sick, and they have focused their attention on whats wrong with the goal of making it better. Theyve focused on the symptoms and root causes of illness and tried to alleviate or eliminate them. That has been true also in the relatively new medical specialty of psychology. It has been driven largely by the attempt to identify and eliminate mental illness.
However, there is an emerging focus on wellness in the practice of medicine, and that exists within the practice of psychology as well. Positive psychology focuses on fostering positive attitudes toward ones experiences, individual traits, and life events with the goal of minimizing destructive thoughts and creating a sense of optimism toward life. Positive psychology examines how ordinary people can become happier and more fulfilled.
Barbara L. Fredrickson, a researcher at the University of Michigan, found that positive thinking is more than just a feel-good exercise; it actually changes the way your brain works. In her experiment, Fredrickson divided her subjects into five groups and showed each group different video clips, each intended to foster a different kind of emotional response. The first group saw clips intended to create feelings of joy, the second group feelings of hope, the fourth group feelings of fear, and the fifth group feelings of anger. The third group was the control group, so they watched videos that did not evoke any emotional response.
Afterward, Fredrickson asked each person to imagine themselves in a situation where they would experience similar emotions to what they had just seen and write down what they would do in response. Each person had a piece of paper with twenty blank lines that began with the words, I would like to
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