Multi-award-winning executive coach shares her simple and robust Re4 coaching model that helps business leaders navigate uncomfortable tensions otherwise titled, paradoxes.“A smart, systematic approach to enlightened leadership.” (Kirkus Reviews)”… a compelling business advice book that encourages adaptation and balance.” (Clarion Foreword Reviews) RATED 5 STARS by Readers’ Favorite.“Change … balance.” (Clarion Foreword Reviews) RATED 5 STARS by Readers’ Favorite.“Change isn’t always easy, but the author gives examples to show how possible and easy it is.”
The world is ever-changing in unpredictable ways.
Leaders, therefore, need to constantly re-examine their assumptions of what it means to be a “great” leader as old models of leadership quickly fade into irrelevance.
In short, leaders need an agile mindset.
But how can leaders become agile?
We need to update and disrupt past definitions of leadership. To challenge ourselves and test our relevance often. We need to recognize challenges swiftly and respond decisively, especially when our environment is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.
8 Paradoxes of Leadership Agility shows the way by describing how leaders met challenging conundrums with agility and emerged stronger, using the Re4 Coaching Model developed by Chuen Chuen.
This book addresses the gap between theory and practice through stories of leaders distilled into eight representational paradoxes that can occur in any culture, contexts, levels of seniority or industries.
The Re4 Coaching Model, clearly illustrated in this book, helps leaders see their world with objective clarity, understand what has to be done and why. Through this coaching model, leaders gain the resolve and confidence to overcome challenges with authenticity. Through it, they integrate theoretical learning with practical steps and learn to thrive.
Now you too can benefit from the Re4 Coaching Model as this book contains exercises with guiding questions you can use to navigate your paradoxes. It’s time to grow and thrive.
“The 8 Paradoxes of Leadership Agility provides many relatable, true-to-life anecdotes. Chuen Chuen’s Re4 Coaching Model is simple and easy to apply.I highly recommend this book to anyone who acknowledges the challenges of leadership and want a practical guide to effective, agile leadership.”
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A useful manual on how to become an agile leader
We all have the tendency to resist change. But change is inevitable in the real world. This book describes the Re4 Coaching Model and provides some good advice on how to become an agile leader. Useful examples make it easy to understand that not everything has to be “black and white”. By applying this model, the book provides guidance on how to achieve balance when faced with the paradox of two equally desirable but conflicting choices.
Interesting Ideas But Execution Off
I think this book has a fascinating topic, but I don’t quite agree with the execution of it. The author first discusses what leadership agility means. In the first part of the book especially, before we get to the paradoxes, I think the author injects herself into the book too often. Her spin on these eight paradoxes and her personally developed coaching model make this an expertise book, but there’s always the danger of the expert making the book about himself or herself rather than the reader, and I think this happened in the first part of the book.
The chapters on the 8 paradoxes themselves weren’t logically organized. She uses a simple “this vs that” model to summarize each paradox, like top-down vs. bottom-up or enforcing vs. empowering. As what she means may not be readily apparent, I think she should have started each of these chapters with an explanation of them. Instead, she starts with a story of one of her clients that embodies the particular paradox. The explanation follows this. I think it would be easier to see her point about the paradox if the explanation about it came first. One paradox itself made me do a double-take, and I think she should have changed the name of the first part of it, which was Executing. As soon as I saw that word, I thought of its usual meaning: killing. Of course, that was not what she meant here! Perhaps she could have chosen a different word that didn’t have that additional denotation, like Completing, which she used to help define what Executing meant.
Nearly half the book is answers that her clients have filled out during her coaching sessions as they explored their particular paradox. That is a lot of space to give to this; I think it should have been condensed somewhat. I also think these just should have gone into the particular chapters themselves rather than as a group at the end.
I have an issue with the graphics in these books. I typically read books on either my Kindle or my Kindle PC app. The first graphic (about her Re4 coaching method in general) especially was so small that I couldn’t read it even with my PC app. I had a little easier time reading the other ones. I also didn’t think that she really explained or defined what her Re4 coaching model is. We see it in action as her clients use it in those examples Q&A’s that I mentioned before, but I didn’t see any place where she really talked about it. And each of the four Re’s themselves has a somewhat figurative title, like Refresh Your Lens. Without her explaining her model, it’s hard to know what that truly means and how it is precise and actionable. You could infer somewhat from the Q&A’s, but it would have been much easier if she had just laid it all out within the text of the book early on. Now that I’ve warned you of some of the pitfalls of the execution of this, if this book’s topic interests you, you’ll have a better idea of how to navigate it.
I received a free copy of this book, but that did not affect my review.