How to Lead without Domineering

This is a book for which we waited a long time. For too long, emotionally-poor leaders have damaged our people and weakened our organizations. Rolf Arnolds book is a new starting point for emotional literacy for leaders. It opens our minds, providing us with prudent rules, tools, and instruments about the art of leading yourself, other people, and organizations. Arnolds views are a breath of fresh air. I have learned much. -- Dr. Ulrich Erhardt, chief executive officer, Denkmodell International Consulting, Berlin, Germany

Professor Dr. Rolf Arnold, born in 1952, obtained his PhD at the University of Heidelberg, worked thereafter in an International Adult Education Centre, obtained his postdoctoral qualification at the Distance University of Hagen, Germany, in 1987, and has been working since 1990 at the Department of Pedagogics (in the fields of Vocational and Adult Education) at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. He is also Scientific Director of the Distance and Independent Studies Center (DISC), and the Speaker of the Virtual Campus RhinelandPalatinate (VCRP).

Preface Introduction Rule 1: Demonstrate how you became certain, but instill confidence Rule 2: Practice forming the vision Rule 3: Identify and reinforce talent and potential Rule 4: Use time-outs to reflect, focus, visualize, and formulate your organization's strategic guidance Rule 5: Question the beliefs that shape your decisions and actions Rule 6: Stimulate creativity when performing tasks and requirements Rule 7: Ensure a systematic external audit and specify criteria or key measures to provide information to evaluate success Rule 8: Develop an understanding of the social environment Rule 9: Conduct regular exploratory conversations with employees Rule 10: Practice employee counseling sessions Rule 11: Practice the art of "eloquent silence" in meetings Rule 12: Attempt to orchestrate conflict with new ideas Rule 13: Practice skills development with your employees Rule 14: Promote team development Rule 15: Create a learning organization Rule 16: Practice capacity building, support individual and organizational networking Rule 17: Be a friend to the unexpected Rule 18: Avoid elaborate PowerPoint presentations Rule 19: The more confident and decisive your actions, the more you should distrust your choices Rule 20: Acknowledge your inner images of leadership and loyalty Rule 21: Analyze your attitudes and your motives Rule 22: Make an attempt at more elegant communication Rule 23: Reinvent difficult colleagues and practice the emergence view Rule 24: Exercise change management through self-transformation Rule 25: Banish the ice-cold manager in you become a more humane leader Rule 26: Accept the limits of leadership and learn to manage dissent Rule 27: Work with synergy markers. Avoid the trap of individualizing and personalizing! Rule 28: Learn to lead knowing that you can be replaced and ensure the system you are, temporarily, responsible for will live on Rule 29: Mistrust in rules and explore your own relationship to rules Afterword Bibliography