THINKERS50 BEST MANAGEMENT BOOKS FOR 2024
GOLD MEDAL WINNER - 2024 AXIOM BUSINESS BOOKS AWARD - LEADERSHIP CATEGORY

Work-life balance isn't making anyone happy.

In fact, our relentless attempts to achieve this goal have created workplaces full of stress, discontent, and burnout.

While this workplace disillusionment has been brewing for years, the pandemic helped catalyze a cultural shift of workers redefining themselves beyond what they do for a living. Now, it's time for you to rethink your role as a leader in the nexus of work and life.

In Work-Life Bloom: How to Nurture a Team That Flourishes, award-winning author Dan Pontefract contends that a thriving workplace isn't about employee engagement levels, nor is it predicated on your team members bringing their best selves to work. Instead, it requires you to support the people you manage so they can be their best in work and life.

Just as a flower needs the right mix of sunlight, water, and nutrients to grow, your people need the right mix of work-life factors to create a fulfilling and harmonious existence. Pontefract introduces a new leadership paradigm focused on twelve key work-life factors that determine whether your team members' gardens are able to grow.

Drawing upon primary global research, interviews, and personal experiences, Pontefract delivers a timely blueprint for leaders to cultivate work-life ecosystems where individuals don't just survive--they bloom.

Your people are your most valuable asset, and if you want them to excel (and your profits to soar), you'll need to abandon your traditional command-and-control management style and adopt a collaborative, open leadership approach-one that engages and empowers your people. While this isn't a particularly new idea, many leaders, while they may pay lip service to it, don't really understand what it means. And most of those who do get it lack the skills for putting it into practice. In Flat Army you'll find powerful leadership models and tools that help you challenge yourself and overcome your personal obstacles to change, while pushing the boundaries of organizational change to create a culture of collaboration.

• Develops an integrated framework incorporating collaboration, open leadership, technologies, and connected learning
• Shows you how to flatten the organizational pyramid and engage with your peoples in more collaborative and productive ways-without undermining your authority
• Explains how to deploy a Connected Leader mindset, a Participative Leader Framework, and a Collaborative Leader Action Model
• Arms you with powerful tools for becoming a more visible leader who demonstrates the qualities and capabilities needed to become an agent of positive change

Pontefract combines years of experience and research on employee engagement to create a work about the three crucial areas of purpose: individual, workplace role, and organizational. When one area is lacking, this three-legged barstool starts to wobble, and the results range from disengagement to bankruptcy.

A business leader that is committed to purpose will create purpose for his/her employees. An employee that feels his/her sense of purpose on the job will be an invaluable asset to productivity and success. An organization centered on purpose will benefit every stakeholder, from employees to society in general. This sweet spot of purpose creates a reciprocal relationship between all three areas, and sits at the center of Pontefract's work.

Dan Pontefract is on a mission to change the world of work. Lead. Care. Win is his fourth book, and like the previous three is the product of relentless focus, observations and research that have led him to define 9 insightful yet super-practical leadership lessons. His latest thinking will help you become a more caring and engaging leader, one that will fully (and completely) understand the critical importance of crafting meaningful, respectful relationships among all your stakeholders. Every human interaction is crucial. Every exchange can be mutually beneficial. These 9 leadership lessons center on your willingness to improve how you treat people, a call for meaningful change to:

Be relatable and empathetic

Act not out of ego but out of purpose

Share knowledge to build a wise organization

Stay present and attentive to the needs of others

Embrace change and the opportunity for growth it offers

Stay curious and adopt lifelong learning

Think and act with clarity

Commit to balance and inclusivity in all your dealings

Act with humility and thoughtfulness

The bottom line is that when you care enough to champion others, the workplace becomes happily infectious and the organization benefits in more ways than one. It's time to care. Full potential is possible.

Dan Pontefract combines years of experience and research on employee engagement, behavior and culture to create a work about the three crucial areas of purpose: personal, organizational and workplace role. If all three can come to fruition--if there is a positive interconnection between the three distinct definitions of purpose--the benefits should be felt by employees, teams, the organization, customers, and perhaps most importantly, society as a whole. We can refer to this balanced state as the sweet spot. When one area is lacking or ignored the results range from disengagement, apathy, lack of growth and even bankruptcy.

The Purpose Effect is aimed at both leaders and employees who wish to achieve a purpose mindset on a personal level, for the organization where they are employed and in their role at work, too.

A business leader that is committed to purpose will create purpose for the organization. An employee that feels his/her personal sense of purpose is being fulfilled at work will be an invaluable asset to productivity and success. An organization centered on purpose will benefit every stakeholder, from employees to society in general. This sweet spot of purpose creates a reciprocal relationship between all three areas and sits at the center of Pontefract's work.