Extraordinary Leadership in Australia and New Zealand: The Five Practices that Create Great Workplaces

Jim, Barry and Michael have produced a truly enjoyable and highly relevant read on leadership and engagement. Reassuringly, they demonstrate that great leadership is grounded in common sense and humanity. That is consistent with our experience at Virgin. The book benefits enormously from a wealth of real-world examples. It is notable that many of the leaders whose experience is referred to are not CEOs, but rather people at all levels of a variety of different organisations who have faced the challenges inherent in successfully leading people. It is axiomatic that successful leadership results in high employee engagement. In purely commercial terms, engagement creates a sustainable competitive advantage. It also acknowledges the broader role of business in the community to develop people to their fullest potential. The authors have produced a work in an Australasian context that identifies universal rules that will be of value to all people managers who want to take on new challenges or refresh their approach to achieve more.

— Josh Bayliss, CEO, Virgin Group (Worldwide)

I have been using The Five Practices framework to develop my executive and managerial students' leadership skills, and in the past I had to make the necessary adjustments to connect those practices to the distinctive elements of leadership in the Australasian region. Happily, this new book makes those adjustments for me, offering many useful examples that connect directly to my students' experience. The framework ...