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.

Another approach in leadership books is to focus on empowering one’s staff. This is the topic of Alister Esam’s The Dirty Word (2021), the “dirty word” of the title being “process.” Gordon similarly discusses the importance of empowering employees but takes a wider view of “process,” which, for Gordon, goes beyond workflows to embrace Establishing a Positive Culture. Leaders Eat Last (2014) by Simon Simek also focuses on respect for one’s staff; indeed, like Gordon’s book, it argues that leaders must focus on the people they lead not just by creating strong visions and cultures but by building trust and inspiring their teams.

Books that stress the importance of defining an organization’s goals and visions and inspiring one’s employees also overlap with Gordon’s vision. These include Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage (2012), which focuses on what the author calls “organizational health.” Lencioni’s background as a consultant to a wide variety of organizations is similar to Gordon’s.