While writing her bestselling book, What Happy Working Mothers Know, Dr. Cathy Greenberg was also a partner at two of the world’s leading consulting firms. In working with and managing 1,000 people across three continents, she found that The Science of Happiness was a means for her to reframe her life.
“Studying happiness was a way for me to look at things that had happened to me and try to understand them in a traditional, Eastern, spiritual way,” Dr. Cathy Greenberg says. “It was a Buddhist way of looking at the world: That things happen for a reason and they lead you to where you need to go.”
Through this process, Dr. Cathy Greenberg began to realize that the work she was doing on happiness was also leading to a new understanding of leadership.
Then, about a decade ago Dr. Cathy Greenberg began working with the U.S. Armed Forces, and several other groups of First Responders. Dr. Cathy also began volunteering at the U.S. Army War College, speaking on decision-making.
This exposure to both the highly trained special operations forces (which are often filled with future hard-charging entrepreneurs) and culture-forward, highly-innovative companies, helped her see new connections between mindfulness, courage and inspired work.
For Dr. Cathy Greenberg this helped precipitate a new understanding and clarity of her previous work. Dr. Cathy's work with these special operators, and specifically her close work with those operators who would become the Fearless Leaders Group Coaches, resulted in the development of the Fearless Leaders Coaching Model.
It was clear to Dr. Cathy Greenberg that Emotional and Social Intelligence, moral courage, transparency, and accountability were the basic qualities that set every truly exceptional leader apart, whether an executive or a military operator.
More importantly, the cumulative scientific and psychological knowledge gained from Positive Psychology made it increasingly clear that these essential leadership traits could be not only identified, but trained and strengthened.
Courageous companies are almost always happy companies, and vice versa, regardless of the kind of company (or other organization) or field of work.
“I started to look at it,” Dr. Cathy Greenberg says, "and I realized this: happiness equals profit, fearless equals freedom.” High-performing cultures need both parts of this equation to determine their own futures and stay in front of their fields and industries.
“Among my bigger clients have been national insurance organizations, logistics organizations and pharmaceutical companies,” Dr. Cathy Greenberg says. “They practice the same level of readiness, of teamwork,” as do elite members of the armed forces. There’s a lot about what our best military units do professionally that I find that the best companies also do, or that they very quickly see the value of once introduced."
The great thing about the Fearless Leaders Coaching Model is that it incorporates the whole picture: happiness and courage, military and civilian, operational excellence and innovation.
Best of all it provides a pathway to move from here to there, wherever "here" is for you.
The Fearless Leaders Group has a range of custom consulting and coaching engagements to fit most any organization's needs.
In fact, every engagement begins with a Fearless Focus Assessment, because we believe that prescription without diagnosis equals malpractice.
If you'd like to get started individually, we recommend you take our What Kind of Fearless Leader Are You? Quiz.
How you manifest fearlessness will depend on your natural leadership style. This quiz will give you your three biggest leadership strengths to accelerate your future progress.
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Fearless Leaders grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go. It’s the most practical book I’ve read on how to heighten mindfulness and ignite personal courage. It’s a powerful book, tough at times, tender at others. From her own fearless experiences, and those of leaders she’s studied, Dr. Cathy Greenberg offers revealing self-assessments, intimate first-person examples, and engaging applied exercises. Follow the steps she outlines and they will enable you to achieve higher levels of performance and greater awareness of yourself and your environment. With Fearless Leaders as your guide you’ll make better decisions and lead a more passionate life. You can’t ask for more than that from any book!
—Jim Kouzes
Fearless Leaders tackles (and teaches) one of the most complex attributes of outstanding leaders throughout history, moral courage.
—Amy Edmondson
That's a tough one, moral courage is hard to teach and it's such an important quality for leaders. If we could get more people to step up to use moral courage more often - we would see better results.
—Jerry Boykin
After having the pleasure of recording an On Demand Seminar with Dr. Cathy Greenberg, I was astonished by her ground-breaking perspective on leadership, and the role she takes herself as an inspirational leader. Not only did I learn to sharpen my focus, she also showed me how to achieve greater confidence and courage to become an inspirational leader myself. She was truly a pleasure to work with, and I am thrilled that she accepted to be a faculty at the Gazelles Growth Institute.
—Daniel Marcos
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