First, click here to order the book from Amazon:

Then return to this website and fill out the form below with your purchase order details from Amazon to get all of the extraordinary supplementary leadership tools, at no additional cost. You can scroll down here.

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This book is different

You’ve seen leadership books before. If you’re like me, you’ve probably invested countless hours seeking to learn how to be a more effective leader. You may have even paid thousands of dollars to attend leadership workshops and retreats. Only to wind up, frustrated by the ordeal, and thinking, where’s the meat?

This book is different. If you want to unlock the mysterious door behind which the secrets of leadership lie, read on.

What do the leadership gurus say?

Financial Times: “If business leaders do not immediately grasp the vital insights offered by this book, both they and their organizations are doomed.”-- Stefan Stern, Financial Times, August 29, 2007.

Chip Heath: "Steve Denning is the Warren Buffett of business communication. He sees things others don't and is able to explain them so the rest of us can understand.” --Chip Heath, co-author of Made to Stick Professor of Organizational Behavior, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

Jim Kouzes: "I highly recommend you get it today and read it tonight. Tomorrow will be an entirely different kind of day if you do. –Jim Kouzes, Co-author of the best-selling, The Leadership Challenge and A Leader’s Legacy

James MacGregor Burns: "I don’t think I have ever read a more compelling preface. And best of all, the advice Denning gives to the reader about speaking and writing is exemplified in the way he has written this impressive book." –James MacGregor Burns, Author of Leadership

Larry Prusak: “Engaging and erudite, this book draws on very wide reading and research to help any leader or manager master the arts of narrative in a way that is both pragmatic and original.” –Larry Prusak, Co-author, What’s the Big Idea? and Working Knowledge

Get your copy now, along with valuable supplementary leadership tools at no additional cost to you:

First, click here to order the book from Amazon:

Then return to this website and fill out the form below with your purchase order details from Amazon to get all of the extraordinary supplementary leadership tools, at no additional cost. You can scroll down here.

P.S. Please go ahead and share this offer with your friends!

Plumbing the meaning of
transformational leadership

1. Learn how to enhance the effectiveness of your personal persuasiveness so that people share your worthwhile goals and do what you want.
2. Understand how to inspire enduring enthusiasm a worthwhile cause in any audience, even one that is difficult, cynical, skeptical or even hostile.
3. Discover how, not just to change people’s behavior, but how to get people to want to change their behavior and turn them into champions who inspire others.
4. Get beyond temporary motivational spikes and inspire sustained gains in productivity: discover how to inspire others to carry on your goals long after you are gone.
5. Learn how to energize a wide variety of audiences – your subordinates, your boss, your kids, your spouse, your community, your town, your profession, your country.
6. Learn how to get crystal clear on your own goals; learn how to evaluate whether they are genuinely worthwhile.
7. Develop your own narrative intelligence so that you are more able to understand and interact with the world in narrative terms.
8. Enhance your capacity to practice deep listening to your audience, so that you can anticipate accurately what will excite and energize them.
9. Discover how to develop your stage “presence” so that you sound like you mean it; learn the body language of leadership so that your presentations become electrifying.

Discovering  the secret language of leadership

1. Understand why the traditional communication (state problem>> analyze problem >> give solution) not only doesn’t work: it’s counter-productive!
2. Understand how we can fundamentally rethink communication so as to make a step change in our communication effectiveness.
3. Know how to engage people’s positive emotions and connect with people at a deeper level.
4. Know how to get people on the edge of their seats so that they give rapt attention to what you are about to say.
5. Learn when to stress the negative and when to accentuate the positive
6. Discover 20 ways to get an audience’s attention and learn which work best.
7. Discover 17 ways of attempting to perform the miracle of stimulating desire in people to want to change.
8. Learn how to make your reasons compelling and memorable, so that you will never be boring again.
9. Know how to continue the conversation so that your audience stays committed and energized.
10. Learn the right sequence of steps to put together an overall presentation and why this is crucial; know how to put together whole presentations that are seamless.
11. Understand how the different tools of communication – stories, metaphors, questions, challenges, offers, images etc – relate to each other and how they can complement each other to enhance the effectiveness of your communications.

Applying  where and how to apply what you learn

1. Know how to deploy storytelling as a leadership tool, in organizations and beyond.
2. Discover how to cope with the “white water” of the rapidly shifting global economy.
3. Understand how to satisfy the multiple constituencies that want to have a say in how any significant organization is run.
4. Learn how to connect with radically diverse audiences in the workforce or in the marketplace.
5. Understand the options when you’re told to do something you don’t believe in
6. Know how to get beyond a glib sales pitch and become a trusted partner that generates lasting loyalty; learn how to speak with integrity and authenticity
7. Learn why most good ideas in organizations go nowhere and how you can get your ideas not only accepted but implemented.
8. Know when to lead and when to manage.
9. Understand how to build your brand into an enduring icon.
10. Understand why narrative and storytelling have emerged as important business tools at this particular time.
11. Discern the significance of winning and achieving instrumental benefits like making money or career success in your life.
12. Learn how to fill your own life and the lives of others with rich deep meaning.
13. Learn how to use PowerPoint to energize and excite your listeners, rather than de-energize and bore them.
    

First, click here to order the book from Amazon:

Then return to this website and fill out the form below with your purchase order details from Amazon to get all of the extraordinary supplementary leadership tools, at no additional cost. You can scroll down here.

Please go ahead and share this offer with your friends!

First, click here to order the book from Amazon:

Then return to this website and fill out the form below with your purchase order details from Amazon to get all of the amazing supplementary leadership tools, at no additional cost. You can scroll down here.

P.S. Please go ahead and share it with your friends!

A fundamental shift in the way we communicate

Are you ready to become a transformational leader and fill your own life—and the lives of other people—with deep meaning? Are you ready to enable others to see possibilities they—for whatever reason—have until now been unable to see?

• What if you learned that for several thousand years, the human race has been going about leadership communication in a way that is fundamentally flawed?
• What if everything you’ve been taught at school, and in organizations, about how to communicate to a difficult audience was not only ineffective but counter-productive?
• What if you discovered that there was a solid body of psychological research showing why this is so?
• And what if, every day, you could observe leaders in organizations, in politics, in communities and in families, go on making the same mistakes, over and over again, all the time wondering why their communications are greeted with misunderstanding, apathy, pushback or antagonism?
• What if you were to discover that there’s a set of simple communication principles that lead to the opposite result: sparking energy, excitement, dynamism and enduring enthusiasm?
• And what if you were to learn that getting access to these principles isn’t going to cost you an arm and a leg? That they are available to you when for just US$18.45 you get The Secret Language of Leadership, and the valuable supplementary leadership tools that my colleagues and I are offering.

Now you might begin to see why leadership guru, Jim Kouzes, author of the best-selling Leadership Challenge, has said about The Secret Language of Leadership:

“Get it today, read it tonight. Tomorrow will be an entirely
different kind of day if you do.”

Do you want tomorrow to be a different kind of day?

If so, this book is waiting for you, along with an impressive array of supplementary leadership tools to speed you on your learning journey.

The practical distilled wisdom in this book will guide you through the intricacies of transformational leadership, the difficulties of getting other people to change.

But here’s a warning! If you do so, it may be impossible for you ever to look on your life or think about your place in the universe in the way ever again.

A book for everyone

The final fact is this: no matter how you are—young or old, weak or strong, good looking or plain, powerful or powerless, rich or poor—your future and your happiness depend in many ways of your ability to influence others and to get them to see your point of view, to share your goals, and to implement them. If you can’t do that, your life will be filled with trouble and aggravation.

If on the other hand you are able to inspire enduring enthusiasm in others for your own worthwhile causes, your life is going to be very different. You’ll feel energized, rewarded and fulfilled, as you look out on the world and see all the leaders that you have inspired into action.

Who doesn't need this book? Anyone who is totally happy with everything that's happening in their work, their family, their community, their profession, their town, their country or the planet, has no need of this book. But for all the rest of us, who can see more than one or two things out there that need fixing, this book has a vital message.

A remarkably interesting offer

Where else in the leadership field can you invest just $18.45 and get, not just a book, but a whole set of valuable leadership tools to accelerate your leadership learning journey?

Now, with brilliant simplicity, the practical, implementable principles that you’ve been searching for, are laid out clearly and succinctly, along with practical steps as to how to go about implementing them.

And what’s more, for US$18.45, you can also receive an extraordinary array of leadership communications tools, never before offered as a package.

I’m also offering a 100% unconditional money-back guarantee on your purchase: if you’re not satisfied for any reason with the book. Just send the book back to me, along with evidence of your purchase, and I’ll refund you whatever you paid for it.

And the time to get started is not next week. Or next month.

If you’ve ever dreamed of being an effective leader, you’re in luck. Now is the moment to seize the opportunity that is being presented to you and become the authentic inspirational leader you’ve always dreamed of being.

And be sure to pass the message along to friends, colleagues, your boss, your boss’s boss, your staff, your family, so that they can share in this exciting offer and learn the hitherto secret language of leadership.

Look how simple it is.

First, click here to order the book from Amazon this week:

Then return to this website and fill out the form below with your purchase order details from Amazon to get all of the amazing supplementary leadership tools, at no additional cost. You can scroll down here.

P.S. Please go ahead and share this offer with your friends!

Become an inspiring leader

In just two minutes, you can start accessing the insights that you need to become an inspiring transformational leader.

The Secret Language of Leadership is published this week, but it has already enjoyed some remarkably positive reviews. For instance, here’s the 700 word review from the Financial Times:

Financial Times Book review:
Let me tell you a story about Al Gore

By Stefan Stern

August 29, 2007

If business leaders do not immediately grasp the vital insights offered by this book, both they and their organisations are doomed. But the good news is that there are examples of executives out there who have taken this book’s messages to heart, and have acted successfully on them.

Got your attention? That opening paragraph was a ham-fisted attempt to put some of Stephen Denning’s theories into practice. Leaders who want their businesses to embrace change, he says, must first get the attention of the people who matter. Negative messages (or bad news) tend to attract people’s attention more effectively than good news.

But bad news alone might just be depressing. Hence the need for the second sentence of this review. The desire for change must be stimulated, Denning argues, by holding out the prospect that a better world can be  and indeed already is being created.

This new book is Denning’s latest attempt to explain why storytelling – or “narrative” – has such an important role in leadership. In the past few years he has written of the need for “springboard” stories – the sort of tale that can spark a reaction even among jaded and cynical audiences. He wrote an extended parable, published in 2004, about a community of squirrels, and the way in which powerful storytelling saved them from disaster.

This new book represents a considerable advance on the earlier work. The squirrels have been superseded by an intelligent and sustained analysis of the art of contemporary leadership. Those bosses who quietly despair of ever getting their people to change should spend a bit of time learning how to speak Denning’s “secret language”.

One leader who does seem to have got the message is former US vice-president Al Gore. In a superb opening section, Denning takes Gore’s lousy presidential bid of 2000 apart, showing how at each stage the man of destiny from Tennessee blew his  chances.

The author describes 10 ways in which candidate Gore failed the test of leadership. His campaign was confusing and uninspiring, Denning says. He lacked commitment. His body language sucked. He misread his audience. He lacked “narrative intelligence” – in other words, Gore just couldn’t tell a story that people wanted to hear.

He did not talk straight, unlike the apparently much more direct Governor George W. Bush. He lost people’s attention, if he ever had it. He campaigned as the candidate of change, but failed to get people interested in the sort of change he was promoting. His supposed strengths came across as weaknesses. And, in the end, every attempt to establish a dialogue with the electorate  failed.

“Fast-forward to 2006, and what do we see?” Denning asks. “Millions of people have paid more than $40m to watch a movie of Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation. And Gore’s live talks enjoy the response of a rock star.”

What has changed? “In his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore conveys a passion for a subject he cares deeply about,” Denning explains. “Now he isn’t merely repeating what his political managers or handlers have told him to say...it also helps that he has learnt not to take himself so seriously in his public speeches and is able to poke gentle fun at himself. Even more important, the Al Gore of 2006 has abandoned speaking in a tangle of complex abstractions and used appropriate narratives.”

Denning is a subtle and astute reader of audiences’ minds. Don’t try to out-reason deeply sceptical employees, he says. You have to make a personal – and emotional – connection with them first. Indeed, facts may be the last thing people want to hear right now. They will simply be discounted and rejected.

Of course, there is still a need for reasoned arguments, he says, but it is crucial to get the “sequencing” of messages right. Get people’s attention, “stimulate the desire for change”, and then wheel out the rationale.

“Leadership communications begin as monologue,” Denning says. “If they are successful they turn into dialogue and then conversation. The conversation emerges because of the enduring enthusiasm for change that has been inspired.”

Some business leaders may be sceptical about the need for language skills these days, but this “secret language of leadership” will reward further study.

.......................

Stefan Stern asks: Do you want to be doomed as a leader because you haven’t read The Secret Language of Leadership? Frankly, although I love his review, Stefan might have gotten a little carried away with his enthusiasm here, but hey, what he’s trying to say is clear enough: this book is important and urgent and needs to be read by anyone who’s trying to get something worthwhile done in the world.

And you can get your copy of The Secret Language of Leadership now, as well as a whole array of valuable supplementary leadership tools.

Here’s how:

First, click here to order the book from Amazon this week:

Then return to this website and fill out the form below with your purchase order details from Amazon to get all of the amazing supplementary leadership tools, at no additional cost. You can scroll down here.

P.S. Please go ahead and share this offer with your friends!

What is leadership?

For a very long time in my life, I imagined that leaders were a special kind of people. I looked from a distance at people with charisma. People like Gandhi. And Martin Luther King. And Nelson Mandela. I was dazzled. And I thought to myself. They are different. They are a special kind of people.

And as a corollary, I also assumed: I could never be one of these charismatic leaders. I don’t have charisma. I don’t have any striking physical characteristics or advantages. I’m not a great speaker. In fact, making presentations has been identified in my personnel evaluations as one of my weakest points. I’m not a natural communicator. Quite the opposite.

So I assumed I could never be a leader who could mobilize tens of thousands of people for a cause.

How mistaken I was!

The power of storytelling

When I found myself in a situation in 1996, when I had no choice but to try to mobilize a large number of change-resistant people to understand and get behind a strange new idea, I stumbled on the power of narrative to communicate complex ideas and spark action.

In the Preface to the The Secret Language of Leadership, I tell the story, blow by blow, of how and why this happened.

"I don’t think I have ever read a more compelling preface."

James MacGregor Burns, author of Leadership

I found that leadership was not only about discovering the leader deep within yourself. Equally importantly, it's about being able to stimulate the leader deep inside others. And I found that certain kinds of narrative had the capacity to do just that.

And once I had stumbled on the power of narrative, I spent the next decade or so, broadening and deepening my understanding of how narrative works and what it means for leadership today.  My new book, The Secret Language of Leadership, is the fruit of those labors.

An intensely personal journey

When I was writing the book, I did wonder about the wisdom of including so much of myself in the book. I talk about things I’ve never talked about before—how a profoundly moving experience as a young adult changed the course of my life, what it meant to me and my family, and later on my leadership struggles at the World Bank—I wrote about things that I had experienced first hand, as well as about the wider global scene of transformational leadership.

As I was writing the book, I wondered whether those personal events, which were so pivotal to me, would mean anything to other people. Would anyone care?

As it turns out, several reviewers have noted that the personal aspects of the book are what gave it for them a special meaning. For instance, here’s what Jim Kouzes, author of the best-selling Leadership Challenge, has to say:

“There is something very special about The Secret Language of Leadership. A lot of authors write about storytelling and other methods of leadership communication. What sets Steve Denning apart is his authenticity. He is one of the rare few who write about it from intensely personal experience. This book offers a genuinely refreshing perspective and an uncommon insight into the narrative life of leadership." Jim Kouzes, Co-author of the best-selling, The Leadership Challenge and A Leader’s Legacy

How ordinary people can become extraordinary

And in due course, in my work at the World Bank, I did get meet—and work with—heads of state, CEOs and ministers—as well as people who inspired change withouto any hierarchical authority.

From this experience, I’ve come to see that most of the great transformational leaders are not born with special innate physical advantages. In fact, they are ordinary people, but they speak and act in a different way. Once I figured out the elements of the language of leadership that they are using, and how they are using it and supporting it, then I came to the stunning realization: anyone could learn and use that language and become a transformational leader—and become someone who could move other people and inspire action!

Now you too can become an extraordinary leader. Here's how:

First, click here to order the book from Amazon this week:

Then return to this website and fill out the form below with your purchase order details from Amazon to get all of the extraordinary supplementary leadership tools, at no additional cost.

P.S. Please go ahead and share this offer with your friends!