Care to Dare: Unleashing astonishing potential through secure base leadership

George Kohirieser, with Susan Goldsworthy and Duncan Coombe

PM rating: 4.5/5

“Not another book on leadership?!”

How often do we hear that comment these days? Yet this is another one well worth reading. Kohireiser and Co begin by defining a “secure base” as: “A person, place, goal or object that provides a sense of protection, safety and caring, and offers a source of inspiration and energy to explore, take risks and seek challenge.”

Or, as Howard Schultz – Chairman and CEO of Starbucks – puts it: “Dream more than others think practical. Expect more than others think possible. Care more than others think wise.”

It is the “caring” side of the equation where too many managers come unstuck. “It is not just a set of skills,” this book asserts. “It is first and foremost a way of being.” That motto becomes the platform for organising results of an extensive research project into ten chapters. These take on a wide variety of issues, such as Building Trust; Delivering Change; Focus; Achievement; Becoming a secure Base for Others; Transforming Your Organisation Into a Secure Base; and last but not least, Humanising Your Leadership and Your Organisation.

Towards the end, those themes are repackaged into “The Four Ds of Success” – namely Desire, Discipline, Determination and Development.

Overall, the book is full of well-presented, readable and useful material. But it was surprising to find that the overlap with the concept of “values-based leadership” was not discussed more explicitly. Leadership is fundamentally a values-based activity, and a lack of focus on this critical issue in many management books of the past decade has caused – and will continue to cause – so many of our personal, organisational and societal problems.

Professor Bruce Lloyd, London South Bank University

Wiley, £18.99, ISBN 978-1119961574

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