Awaken, Align, Accelerate:
A Guide to Great Leadership by MDA Leadership Consulting Beaver's Pond Press
book review by Mihir Shah
"Awaken, Align, Accelerate—a simple but elegant framework (our ‘secret sauce’) to help leaders develop themselves and coach others."
Awaken, Align, Accelerate transcends the multitude of self-help leadership tools available to the market. Thoroughly informational, the text is ideal for leaders to help themselves and others achieve their maximum potential. Essentially, a prospering company features effective leadership at all levels, from front-line managers to senior executives. At its core, Awaken, Align, Accelerate emphasizes the need to develop a practical framework for productive leaders in an uncertain, and ever-changing corporate world. Leaders, the text states, not only excel in inspiring, but are adept at implementing leadership practices that positively correlate with employee effort, customer satisfaction, organization performance, and bottom-line results.
While this guide can benefit aspiring leaders, coaches and human resource leaders will benefit the most from this fresh model of core leadership skills based on a set of well-researched behavioral competencies. The book offers leaders the opportunity to conduct self assessments, enabling them to identify their strengths and weaknesses. As a leader, there is a wealth of information at your fingertips: thousands of valuable coaching tips, case studies, sample real-world development plans, etc; you decide what your developmental priorities may be leaders at every level will find this guide beneficial. In a simple, step-by-step process, leaders will identify their top priorities (a list of competencies is available), assess ones strengths, review developmental suggestions, create a development plan, and ultimately put the plan into action.
In the 21st century, clarity is a key element in effective leadership. Simply put, development is a crucial aspect of successful leadership, which can be broken down into the Awaken, Align, Accelerate framework. In the Awaken phase, leaders will invest time and effort in conducting self assessments and reaching a comprehensive understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. Leaders will reflect upon their purpose as a leader.
Personal development as a leader is critical; however, acknowledging what your organization needs from you to achieve optimum short and long-term performance is mandatory. This understanding is realized during the Align phase, where a link is formed between awareness (in phase I) and a focus on the desired outcomes from the business side of things.
Not surprisingly, the Accelerate stage of the framework simply designs and deploys the developmental strategies compiled from phase I and phase II analysis. The Accelerate phase is the how and when of development. Ultimately, employing this basic Awaken, Align, Accelerate framework will build effective leadership skills and train tomorrows leaders to cope with the myriad challenges of the 21st century.