Bookshelf: Top Performance Leadership

What quickly became clear to him was a lack of confidence by people in their leaders to take advantage of the upturn – 40% believe that the leaders in their organisations simply do not have what it takes to make the most of the opportunities presented.

And as Top Performance Leadership shows, this is largely because too many businesses promote people to leadership positions because they are good at what they do, rather than being good leaders. To become a top performance leader, says Jones, you must start with perfect clarity on the performances aspired to, define and create the environment that will deliver the performance help your people to thrive and then lead accordingly.

The book is full of practical guidance around how to do this. The value of Top Performance Leadership is difficult to define for any one individual reader, as everyone will find something for them in this book. But it’s manifestly clear in three particular areas:-

1. Why would anyone want to be a leader? Living with the consequences of leadership;
2. The difference between real and safe leadership; and
3. Transitioning to a top performance team – and in particular Jones’s Create/Unite/Perform model, which gets to the essence of building teams, getting them to work together and maximising their impact.

The concepts in the book are weaved skilfully alongside a mix of personal and business stories. This book is one to read and is set to be very influential in understanding top performance in leadership.