An alarming pattern has emerged in our modern workplace: employees have little confidence in their leaders. The unprecedented overlapping and colliding of priorities, combined with fast and furious deadlines, have wreaked havoc and caused lack of engagement. Open Your Eyes and LEAD is a call-to-action, providing leaders with the development opportunity to make smarter decisions with better precision.
Conventional leadership is not enough to carry us into the future. More than ever, the world needs leaders who can hold true to their values when life escalates. Yet it has never been tougher to be a leader … or easier to mentally and morally check out. In workplaces across the globe, people are asked to deliver quicker, better and cheaper results. However, when we are rushed for results, we tend to skim-coat our actions, leading to diluted, lower-quality efforts and mediocre outcomes. Those who are perpetually involved in fast and high-pressure situations feel tired and stressed, and become disengaged. Some even compromise their values by taking the low road instead of the high road just to get ahead or to stay ahead.
No one responds well to being managed by fear, threats or reprimand. Yet authoritarian leadership is one of the most common and most destructive types of leadership, producing nothing but diminishing returns. This breed of abusive leadership releases toxins that injure our society. Our world is starving for leaders whose foundation is one of principle – whose primary objective is to build honest relationships in all aspects of their lives. Leadership is not just in our chosen field; leadership is a way of life, reaching far beyond how we manage our employees.
Leaders who model integrity, fortitude and nimbleness consistently create value and yield an impact that is far-reaching. Putting more emphasis on creating a positive culture allows for increased collaboration, creativity and efficiency. When people are excited, motivated and engaged in what they do – when they open their eyes as they lead – the result is a chain reaction of smarter decisions with better precision.
Open Your Eyes and LEAD shows readers how to become this kind of positive force in the world, and how to balance and manage the omnipresent tensions as we strive for leadership excellence. This book is not a memoir, although author Nancy Capistran does share first-hand inspiring stories and advice from her own life to help both seasoned and emerging leaders develop intentionality and maintain favourable values and beliefs – even when the heat is on and profits are at stake. She knows first-hand how extreme, abrupt and unpredictable life experiences can affect one both personally and professionally. Her now well-developed ‘reboundability’ has helped her craft tried and true novel approaches thriving despite intense challenges.
This book is uniquely situated to be embraced by three different audiences. The first is people who are searching to gain a higher level of self-confidence, understanding and personal advancement so that they can become mindful leaders in their own lives. The second is current and would-be leaders in the employer arena (including law, health care, finance, insurance, technology, government, etc.) who aspire to leadership excellence. The third is to be integrated into academic curriculums for both undergraduate and graduate students who are training to be our world’s newest leaders.
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“Nancy has been on the front lines of many of life’s most formidable challenges. Her remarkable ability to not only survive but thrive as a result of those challenges has given her a depth and breadth of skills that she shares with her readers in Open Your Eyes and LEAD. The book combines personal and professional stories from the trenches, along with Nancy’s unique brand of insight and wisdom that enables readers to identify and create their own profound ripple effect of change. This book is a must read for those who want to understand how to turn their life’s struggles into a positive outcome for themselves and the many people they touch.” – Dr. Jessica Erdmann-Sager, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and an Instructor in Surgery, Harvard Medical School
“Through Open Your Eyes and LEAD, Nancy Capistran has given us a true masterpiece of what ‘leadership’ is and should look like. Graciously sharing some real-life personal and professional challenges, as well as victories, she helps open her readers’ eyes to new leadership possibilities. Her book is comprehensive, but not complex, and will resonate with readers who seek to abandon status quo … a must-read!!!” – M.L. Carr, former two-time world champion Boston Celtics basketball player, Head Coach and General Manager
“Nancy Capistran’s Open Your Eyes and LEAD offers us a new way to embrace a strategic change in how we think about leadership and our leaders today. As an international law firm with a strong set of core values, Nancy’s straight talk on how to create a positive and diverse work culture mirrors our firm’s goals and, importantly, helps to set a path on how to achieve them. Drawing on her professional and personal experience, Capistran’s ‘in the trenches’ writing style is refreshing. I found myself underlining numerous passages that will help me become a better leader within my own practice group at the firm and advisor to my clients, and that I’m sure will aid me in my personal life as well.” – Lewis Segall, Corporate Partner and Leader of the Corporate/Mergers & Acquisition Group at Sullivan & Worcester
“Open Your Eyes and LEAD is a roadmap to better understand why we don’t always show up as our best selves in challenging circumstances. The author provides actionable steps to strengthen our resolve and to achieve better
outcomes. It’s a must-read for those who want to improve their leadership capabilities.” – Willie O’Reilly, Columnist, Sunday Business Post (Ireland)
“Capistran does amazing work and has captured the essence of leadership. Not only does she highlight her own personal and professional stories of managing through adversity, she shares the struggles of dozens of colleagues and clients who have overcome their own personal and professional gremlins. If you want to become a better, stronger and more empathetic leader, read this book.” – Ted Clark, Northeastern University; Director, Center for Family Business; Executive Professor Entrepreneurship & Innovation
