Description
There are countless personal and leadership development books full of jargon, fads, and buzzwords flooding the market. A
bestseller, this is a book of "profound simplicity" that cuts to the essence, while being easy and fun to read. Although
highly applicable to readers of Jim's previous bestselling books with roles and titles like manager, supervisor, or executive,
Growing the Distance is written for a much broader audience. This book is written for "seeker's on the grow" - anyone
constantly looking to change and improve.
At home or in the workplace, change is an inevitable fact of life. How we choose to respond to it - as leaders or as followers
- determines our personal and professional growth. Growing the Distance is about developing the leader within all
of us. This helps us to continue "growing at the speed of change." A central theme of the book is that leadership is action,
not a position. We all need to be leaders regardless of our formal title or role. This starts with inner self leadership
and moves outward to influence, guide, support, and lead others. Leadership ultimately shows itself in what we do "out there,"
but it starts "in here."
This enchanting book entertains, inspires, and moves readers to action. Growing the Distance is a browser's delight.
"I hope readers find this book as fun to read as it was to write," Jim says. In 192 pages, he weaves together many humorous
quips, light-hearted stories, and charming tales with "growing points" intended to "drive you to thinking." This is done
with both original and ageless fables, current situations, pithy quotations, whimsical illustrations, and personal examples.
Growing the Distance is not a conventional book with large, dense blocks of text to plow through. Rather, it has
a unique and distinctive, three-tiered structure and magazine-style. One level is made up of inspirational, humorous, or
thought-provoking quotations. A second level consists of timeless fables, tales, and current stories. The third level is
Jim's core text with his observations, personal examples, reflections, illustrations, application ideas, and key learning
points. Each section is headed by a short "lead line", introductory sentence, and title or sub-title.
The depth and authority of this captivating book comes from the research and writing of Jim's three previous bestselling
books, specific research for this book, decades of training and consulting with hundreds of organizations, and over 25 years
of applying these timeless principles to his own personal, career, and family life. "One of North America's leading transformation
and improvement thinkers," Jim is the author of three other international bestsellers: The VIP Strategy: Leadership Skills
for Exceptional Performance, Firing on All Cylinders: The Service/Quality System for High-Powered
Corporate Performance (Canada's all time bestselling management book) and Pathways to Performance:
A Guide to Transforming Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization.
At the center of Growing the Distance (and the hub of the "leadership wheel" model in the book) is Focus and Context:
The Core of My Being. This timeless principle is built around three central questions of vision, values, and purpose.
Focus and context provides the central core for the six remaining timeless principles:
- Responsibility for Choices: If It's to Be, It's Up to Me
- Authenticity: Getting Real
- Passion and Commitment: Beyond "Near-Life" Experiences
- Spirit and Meaning: With All My Heart and Soul
- Growing and Developing: From Phase of Life to Way of Life
- Mobilizing and Energizing: Putting Emotions in Motion
Growing the Distance makes a great gift for:
- young people getting started in life
- someone contemplating career changes and choices
- people wrestling with major change or a crisis
- someone who's lost their job or had it dramatically changed
- people feeling unfocused and listless
- managers, entrepreneurs, and executives looking to increase their leadership effectiveness
- anyone "on the grow" always looking for personal development
- customers, suppliers, distributors, dealers, and other partners
Growing the Distance is an ideal guide to be distributed in quantity by executives, managers, and training professionals
attempting to help people throughout their organizations:
- embrace personal growth and development as a key to dealing with continuous and unpredictable change
- provide a strong base for leadership development programs
- build a common foundation of values around its timeless principles
- establish a broader "context of being" for training programs teaching technical, process, or behavioral "skills of doing"
- bring teams together with a common language and set of values
- help everyone in the organization become leaders
- nurture ongoing personal growth and development