Boundary Spanning Leadership

Six Practices for Solving Problems, Driving Innovation, and Transforming Organizations

By: Chris Ernst, Donna Chrobot-Mason

Narrated by: Randal Schaffer

Praise for Boundary Spanning Leadership:

"Fostering a culture of teamwork among business units and partners is crucial for bottom-line success. This groundbreaking book, packed with practical examples and based on solid research, shows us how to get started." (Marc Noel, chairman, Noël Group LLC)

"In this deeply insightful look at the demands on 21st-century leaders, Ernst and Chrobot-Mason outline six boundary spanning leadership practices derived from case studies and research with thousands of participating managers. This work is bound to be one of the most important management books of the decade." (David A. Thomas, PhD, H. Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of business administration at Harvard Business School)

"Boundary Spanning Leadership draws on rigorous global research and real-world experience to help leaders move into new frontiers where they can find answers and practices for creating success." (Jack Stahl, former CEO, Revlon, and President/COO, Coca-Cola)

Catalyze collaboration, drive innovation, transform your organization - with Boundary Spanning Leadership, you can put it all together!

We live in a world of vast collaborative potential. Yet all too often, powerful boundaries create barriers that can splinter groups. And this can lead to uninspiring results. To transform borders into frontiers in today's global, multistakeholder organizations, you need Boundary Spanning Leadership.

Powered by a decade of global research and practice by the top-ranked Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), this book takes you from rural towns in the United States to Hong Kong's skyline and from a modernizing South Africa to the bustling streets of India, showing you how to build bridges across boundaries.

Through compelling stories and practical tools and tactics, you'll learn how to apply the six boundary spanning practices that occur at the nexus where groups collide, intersect, and link:

• Buffering defines boundaries to create safety
• Reflecting creates understanding of boundaries to foster respect
• Connecting suspends boundaries to build trust
• Mobilizing reframes boundaries to develop community
• Weaving interlaces boundaries to advance interdependence
• Transforming cross-cuts boundaries to enable reinvention

Together, these practices combine to create what authors Chris Ernst and Donna Chrobot-Mason call the Nexus Effect. The Nexus Effect allows groups to be more agile in response to changing markets; be more flexible in devising and deploying cross-functional learning and problem-solving capabilities; work with partners in deeper, more open relationships; empower virtual teams; and create a welcoming, diverse, and inclusive organization that brings out everybody's best.

Boundaries exist. What matters most is how you work to bridge these divides and transform your organization's wide-ranging talents and knowledge to deliver value. With Boundary Spanning Leadership, the possibilities are limitless.

©2019 McGraw-Hill Education (P)2010 McGraw Hill-Ascent Audio