Some leaders create more energy, joy, productivity, and dedication in their staff than others. For many of us, when asked to remember a boss for whom we loved to work, we can immediately conjure up someone; the memory of working for them brings a smile to our face. Sometimes we can be articulate about one or two particular behaviors the boss exhibited that made them so great to work for; sometimes its a an overall attitude or approach of the boss. Bosses with an abundance mental model ? seeing the world as resource sufficient and power as shareable ? are preferred over scarcity bosses and their organizations are healthier. Their organizations do better at conflict resolution, communication, and teamwork. Abundance leadership behaviors, of which there are 26, include: ? Manages by walking around; is visible to staff ? Focuses on the bottom line - is financially savvy ? Cares about social issues (e.g. justice, poverty, education, etc.) ? Cares about the natural environment (e.g. recycling, alternative energy, global warming, etc.) ? Has high cognitive or technical intelligence ? Takes chances and gets overburdened too easily ? Lacks focus and can be recklessly optimistic No leadership model has adequately encompassed the range of leadership behaviors that sum up the felt experience by staff of great bosses, nor do the models examine the mental models that drive those behaviors. Leadership research has tried to explain this phenomenon with numerous conceptual models. Is it the personality of the leader? Social stature? Training? Context? The research has evolved over time to explain great leaders as a mix of personality, experience, context, and serendipity. A new instrument and model, the Abundance Leadership model which comes out of research created a spectrum of abundance and scarcity mental models from which a leader operates and shows how this is reflected in their daily leadership behavior.

LAURA FREEBAIRN-SMITH is a Partner and Co-founder of Organizational Performance Group (OPG), a management consulting firm. She holds an MBA from Yale and a PhD in Organizational Systems from Saybrook University. She has taught as faculty and guest lecturer at Yale, Georgetown, Central CT State University, and the University of New Haven.

Foreword ix

Preface xiii

Section I Abundance Leadership

1 My Journey to Abundance Leadership 3

2 How Abundance Leaders Think 19

Looking for Explanations 19

Optimism 25

Three Other Fields That Inform Abundance Leadership 30

3 Four Meta-Competencies 43

Visioning for the Greater Good 48

Visibility 56

Self-Awareness 58

Managing Well 60

Section II Organizational Health and Abundance Leadership

4 Improving Your Organization’s Health 65

5 Macrolevers 69

Charrettes 69

Four-Day Workweek 73

Workspace Design 75

Managing by Circadian Rhythm 77

6 Microlevers: Small Tools for Big Change 87

The Gong 88

The Annual Donation: Collective Competition for the Greater Good 89

Public Agenda: Speak Up and Get Heard 90

Community Wall: Life Outside of Work 90

Snow Globes and Collective Memory 91

Facilitation Rotation 92

Dream List: Imagining Our Ideal World 92

Section III the How-to Manual

7 Visioning 99

Visioning 100

Creativity 107

8 Visibility 113

9 Self-Awareness 117

Reflection and Affect 121

Interpersonal Adeptness 135

Morality 140

Ego Control 141

10 Managing Well 145

Team Building 146

Communication 153

Protection 157

Decision-Making 163

Epilogue 169

Appendix A: Additional Resources 171

Appendix B: Organizational Development Bibliography 173

References 181

Acknowledgments 187

About the Author 189

Index 191