The Power Of Positive Leadership: How and Why Positive Leaders Transform Teams and Organizations and Change the World

Rooted in principles of positive psychology, The Power of Positive Leadership advocates for a leadership approach that emphasizes optimism and gratitude. It overlaps in message and structure with other books on leadership, yet Gordon’s personal acquaintance with positive leaders and his wide-ranging experience as a consultant give it a distinct stamp.

More specifically, the book shares many ideas with Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 The Power of Positive Thinking, one of the mainstays of 20th-century self-help books. Peale also promoted positivity as the key to success, including in leadership. However, his philosophy was more faith based and had a broader application to all walks of life. Likewise, while Gordon’s book stresses the importance of compassion and communication, it is not strictly focused on those issues as some how-to/self-help books are—e.g., Kim Scott’s 2017 Radical Candor.

The Power of Positive Leadership has more in common with leadership books that take a similar “checklist” approach to conveying their ideas. Popular titles in this vein include The Checklist Manifesto (2011) by Atul Gawande, a surgeon who writes about how professionals can use well-crafted checklists to deal with increasingly complex responsibilities. Gordon’s framework, presented in Chapters 3-11 of The Power of Positive Leadership, is similar, although he leaves it to individual leaders to craft and communicate their own vision by keeping his principles in mind.