ABSTRACT

Global Leadership & Coaching: Flourishing Under Intense Pressure at Work is a unique and personal look at coaching, leading and working internationally, bringing together inspiring, original and dramatic stories of leadership from around the world. From war zones to refugee camps, prisons to hospitals, elite sport to supermarkets, each case study draws on psychoanalytic below the surface thinking to analyse, interpret and understand a leader’s decisions, motivations and fears.

Rachel Ellison’s inter-cultural approach takes us to Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and the Central African Republic, to Honduras, the Czech Republic, the USA and the UK. Global Leadership & Coaching presents a series of individual case studies from Ellison’s own experiences working with senior commercial, public and third sector leaders across 35 different countries, cultures and organisational contexts. Compellingly written, this book explores the a diverse range of themes to consider when managing risk, danger and extreme emotional stress in some of the most hazardous and challenging work environments. Throughout the text, leaders share their stories of learning how to lead and develop others.

Accessible, engaging and original research, Global Leadership & Coaching: Flourishing Under Intense Pressure at Work is essential reading for today’s leaders and aspiring leaders looking to develop themselves personally and professionally. This book is also a resource for coaches and coach supervisors. Global Leadership & Coaching provides contemporary, practical and applicable examples of excellence in leadership, for individuals and organisations seeking to develop a high performance, reflective and reflexive corporate learning culture, which enables employees to successfully navigate challenge, increase productivity and find joy in coming to work.

 

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

chapter Chapter 1|22 pages

Leading where it’s hot, dusty and dangerous

What commercial and public-sector leaders can learn about effective leadership from non-governmental development aid workers

chapter Chapter 2|14 pages

A hero is someone who wins a war, not loses a leg

How a Paralympic coach led his diversely disabled athletes to gold

chapter Chapter 3|8 pages

Stocking the World Foods aisle

The story of how a global supermarket manager had to relearn how to lead effectively, in a multi-ethnic context

chapter Chapter 4|10 pages

Cooking for conflict resolution

An exploration of difference: how unexpected collaborations can foster greater innovation, creativity and success

chapter Chapter 5|7 pages

Coaching across multiple cultures

Confronting stereotypes in the coach-leader relationship

chapter Chapter 6|17 pages

Leading behind bars

Insights from inside. Leadership learning from a former prison governor who says in terms of crime, he could have ‘gone either way’

chapter Chapter 7|14 pages

Location location location

How one client claims his leadership learning was transformed, because of the different places, buildings and environments in which his coaching conversations took place

chapter Chapter 8|19 pages

Desires and defences

Leadership in a refugee context

chapter Chapter 9|11 pages

Communism cripples character

The story of how transition from political oppression to free democracy unleashed waves of innovation, capitalism, lies and laziness

chapter Chapter 10|22 pages

Comfort and containment

An exploration of the architectural and psychological ‘spaces’ associated with an experience of being in a neonatal intensive care unit

chapter Chapter 11|2 pages

Closing thoughts