The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership

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Crown, 2018 M05 1 - 368 pages
Advisor of Leadership at Google and former vice president of leadership at LinkedIn claims that the biggest driver of motivation is the chance to serve a larger purpose beyond our careers and ourselves, rather than salary, benefits, bonuses, or other material incentives; companies that are able to successfully focus their people, their teams, and their culture around meaning outperform their competition.

Fred Kofman's approach to leadership has little to do with the standard practices taught in business school and traditional books. Bringing together economics and business theory, communications and conflict resolution, family counseling and mindfulness mediation, Kofman argues in The Meaning Revolution that our most deep-seated, unspoken, and universal anxiety stems from our fear that our life is being wasted--that the end of life will overtake us when our song is still unsung. Material incentives--salary and benefits--account for perhaps 15 percent of employees' motivation at work. The other 85 percent is driven by a need to belong, a feeling that what we do day in and day out makes a difference, that how we spend our time on earth serves a larger purpose beyond just ourselves.

Kofman claims that transcendental leaders, wherever they are in the hierarchy, are able to put aside their self-interests and help others to feel connected with others on a team or in an organization on a great mission and part of an ennobling purpose. He argues that every organization involved in work that is nonviolent and non addictive has what he calls an "immortality project" at its core. And the challenge for leaders is to identify and expand on that core, to inspire all stakeholders to take part.

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About the author (2018)

Fred Kofman is Google’s Vice President and leadership development advisor, founding president of the Conscious Leadership Center at Tecnológico de Monterrey, and founder and president of the Conscious Business Center International. Previously, he was Vice President of Executive Development at LinkedIn and a co-founder of Axialent, a global consulting company which has delivered leadership programs to more than 15,000 executives around the world. Fred earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of the trilogy Metamanagement (2001), Conscious Business (2006) and The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership (2018).

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