Phil Harkins – författare

Powerful Conversations breed a powerful organization. POWERFUL CONVERSATIONS is packed with goal-oriented strategies, tools, and real-life examples from great leaders. Use its deliberate, directed techniques to achieve exceptional levels of performance, create and maintain valuable relationships, and forward the goals of both yourself and your organization with every word you speak. Mastering the three stages of a Powerful Conversation—from shared feelings and beliefs, to an exchange of wants and needs, closing with action steps and mutual commitments—will help you exercise more control over your interactions, and greatly enhance both your leadership skills and your success.

Look inside to discover: How to plan, conduct, and measure Powerful Conversations; Using the Tower of Power as a tool in coaching; The four Cs of Trust—clarity, caring, consistency, and commitment Five strategies to satisfy—and keep—your best employees Tools to turn the company grapevine from a poisonous plant into a pathway for learning Determining your leadership competencies through the Leadership Assessment Instrument Targeting Passionate Champions to drive an Agenda for Change.

Leaders across the country are praising POWERFUL CONVERSATIONS:

"Phil Harkins has it exactly right. To be a leader is to communicate powerfully—as he does in this thoughtful book." - Robert B. Reich, Professor of Social and Economic Policy, Brandeis University.

"Powerful Conversations have made a real difference in the effectiveness of the Operations Senior Leadership Team. We are delivering unprecedented results thanks to the clearer communication and improved working relationships." - Larry Gundrum, Senior Vice President, Kraft Foods.

"In my business, Powerful Conversations are leading to believability and a growing sense of achievability by our employees that they can drive a massive agenda for change." - Linda Coughlin, Managing Director, Scudder Kemper Investments, Inc.

"In a fast forward world, candor and clarity are prerequisites for success. POWERFUL CONVERSATIONS is a must read book for leading into the 21st century." - Steve Ozonian, Chairman and CEO, Prudential Real Estate and Relocations Solutions.

"A powerful guide, both savvy and wise, to emotional intelligence in action. Phil Harkins has given us an essential handbook for leaders at any level." - Daniel Goleman, Author, Working with Emotional Intelligence.

What truly drives a leader?

The role of leadership is crucial to every occupation-whether you're in business, or government, whether you're a parent or a teacher, and whether you're at the early stages of your career, or are at a crossroads after decades of success.

Linkage CEO Phil Harkins and ARC Financial Corp cofounder Phil Swift have enjoyed decades of experience in leading and working with other leaders. Along the way they became aware that many leaders find themselves in search of their personal purpose for leading.

This search led them on a new journey--traveling around the world to interview corporate executives, presidents and prime ministers, educators, an important spiritual leader, and other leaders in a wide array of fields, including

Mary Robinson, first female president of Ireland Henri Landwirth, holocaust survivor, hotel mogul, philanthropistMikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union and 1990 winner of the Nobel Peace PrizeRafiah Salim, International Center for Leadership in Finance, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources Management, U.N. Rajaa Khuzai,former Member of the Iraqi Governing CouncilBenazir Bhutto, former prime minister of PakistanErin Gruwell, Freedom Writers founder and education innovator

Harkins and Swift asked each of these leaders the fundamental question “Why Lead?” The answers were startling in their wide range and also the commonality of a recurring theme. Essentially, great leaders, at some point in time, all experience a transformational shift that motivates them to move to the next level by thinking and operating outside the box of personal power and material gain. In Search of Leadership reveals the essential qualities and life lessons of leaders who have made this shift. The authors found that all great leaders eventually realize the need to serve not only their organization but society and the world at large. By doing so, they give profound new meaning to what they do and why.