Vertical Growth

Vertical Growth

by Michael Bunting, Carl Lemieux
Released August 2022
Publisher(s): Wiley
ISBN: 9780730395515

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Book description

Learn the secrets to self-awareness, life-changing growth and happy, high-performing teams—from the bestselling author of The Mindful Leader

Great leaders and teams don’t know everything, and they don’t get it right every time. What sets them apart is their commitment to continual learning and vertical growth. Vertical growth is about cultivating the self-awareness to see our self-defeating thoughts, assumptions and behaviours, and then consciously creating new behaviours that are aligned with our best intentions and aspirations.

By embracing the deliberate practices and processes for vertical growth laid out in this book, you’ll not only radically improve your leadership and personal wellbeing—you’ll also foster the highest levels of trust, psychological safety, motivation, and creativity in the teams and groups you work with.

You’ll to discover how to:

  • Identify when, where and how to develop new leadership behaviours to get better results
  • Regulate your emotional responses in real time and handle the most difficult challenges with balance, wisdom and accountability
  • Cultivate practices for self-awareness that foster lifelong internal growth and personal happiness
  • Uncover and change the limiting assumptions and beliefs that keep you, your team and organisation locked in unproductive habits and behaviours
  • Create practices and rituals that enable the highest levels of psychological safety, innovation and growth

Filled with fascinating real-life case studies as well as practical tools and strategies, this is your handbook for mastering vertical growth in yourself, your team and your organisation.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Free bonus resources
  5. Author’s note
  6. INTRODUCTION: The vertical growth imperative
    1. Horizontal skills and knowledge versus vertical growth
    2. Vertical growth within organisations
    3. Vertical growth cuts through image management
    4. Why self-awareness is critical
    5. Becoming deliberately developmental
    6. Cultivating inner psychological safety
    7. Research on vertical growth and mindful leadership
  7. PART I: Developing a vertical growth mindset
    1. 1 The Mindful Leader Matrix
      1. How to use the matrix
      2. Fast brain, slow brain
    2. 2 Why leaders struggle with walking their talk
      1. Stages of human development
      2. A self-examined life requires courage, but it's worth it
      3. Leadership and the self-examining mind
    3. 3 How values help us grow
      1. Values to increase engagement and commitment
      2. Quadrant 1: growth values
      3. The most important leadership values
      4. Honesty as a foundational value to a growth mindset
    4. 4 Choose your growth values
      1. Find your growth edge
      2. Places to explore growth values
      3. Results, goals and strategies versus values
      4. Statement of aspiration
    5. 5 Commit to action
      1. Four steps for taking conscious, committed action
      2. Using the Mindful Leader Matrix
  8. PART II: Developing self-awareness and resolving the shadow
    1. 6 The role of mindfulness in personal growth
      1. The research on mindfulness
      2. Two types of mindfulness training
      3. Mindfulness and the Mindful Leader Matrix
      4. Mindfulness cultivates distress tolerance
    2. 7 How to practise self-awareness
      1. The four foundations of mindfulness
      2. The four foundations in practice
      3. Mindfulness and subject–object theory
    3. 8 Overcome numbness and denial
      1. To see our shadow, we must first overcome numbness and denial
      2. How the inner judge triggers numbness
      3. Self-compassion creates inner psychological safety
      4. Use the matrix to break the pattern of numbness
    4. 9 See and resolve the shadow
      1. Uncovering the shadow
      2. Using the Mindful Leader Matrix to see and resolve the shadow in quadrants 3 and 4
      3. Discover your unconscious assumptions
      4. Find the fears, attachments and assumptions causing your stress
      5. Two more exploration questions on attachment
      6. Completing the left side of the matrix
      7. Using the matrix in your personal life
      8. Expect a messy process
  9. PART III: Vertical growth in teams and organisations
    1. 10 Setting and living team and organisational values
      1. Using the Mindful Leader Matrix within teams and organisations
      2. Using the matrix to set team or organisational values
      3. Translate your values into behavioural commitments
      4. Owning your organisational shadow
    2. 11 Creating a container of team psychological safety
      1. How team psychological safety impacts the left side of the matrix
      2. Four key elements of psychological safety
    3. 12 Eliminating team triangulation
      1. The three roles of triangulation
      2. How to stop triangulation
      3. The cost of triangulation
    4. 13 Keep the team on track with 200 per cent accountability
      1. Accountability starts with ourselves
      2. A simple question that helps you take personal accountability
      3. Two sides of accountability
      4. 200 per cent accountability in action
      5. Making mindful agreements
      6. Constructive feedback creates psychological safety
    5. 14 Giving and receiving conscious feedback
      1. Why giving feedback is so difficult
      2. How to give conscious, compassionate feedback
      3. How to receive feedback with a growth mindset
      4. Defensiveness destroys trust and credibility
      5. Cultivate distress tolerance to receive feedback
      6. Use curiosity to understand feedback
    6. 15 Personal transformation and the hero's journey
      1. The hero's journey in adult development
      2. Be kind to yourself on the journey
      3. Be true to yourself
  10. The Mindful Leader: Vertical Growth Resources
  11. Sources
  12. Index
  13. End User License Agreement

Product information

  • Title: Vertical Growth
  • Author(s): Michael Bunting, Carl Lemieux
  • Release date: August 2022
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9780730395515