Home
Lead Well

Lead Well

5 Mindsets to Engage, Retain, and Inspire Your Team

by Paula Davis

Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.

Imprint: Wharton School Press

8 simple tables

EPUB
9781613631904
Published: February 2025

Description
Authors
Praise

A holistic, research-backed framework to future-proof your leadership and unlock the full potential of your team
In the wake of the pandemic and on the cusp of the generative AI revolution, the world of work has undergone a seismic shift. Chronic stress, burnout, and employee disengagement have reached crisis levels, and leaders are struggling to keep their teams motivated and inspired amid relentless change and uncertainty. Conventional management approaches are no longer sufficient, demanding a new leadership framework to address the root causes of these challenges.
To meet this moment, Lead Well: 5 Mindsets to Engage, Retain, and Inspire Your Team provides a timely and practical blueprint for a new era of leadership. Drawing on extensive research and workshops with thousands of leaders, Paula Davis, CEO and founder of the Stress & Resilience Institute and author of Beating Burnout at Work, offers a transformative approach to building high-performing teams that can adapt and grow, even in the face of relentless change.
Lead Well offers actionable tools and insights to help you and your team today:
+ Discover the 5 Lead Well mindsets that can transform your team’s well-being at work;
+ Explore research-backed strategies to foster a greater sense of purpose, meaning, and values alignment at work;
+ Gain techniques to improve workload management, work-life integration, and sustainable productivity;
+ Develop skills to build team cohesion and a culture of trust and support;
+ Cultivate practices that boost systemic resilience and help teams adapt to disruption; and
+ Implement Tiny Noticeable Things (TNTs) that can be quickly adopted by teams.
Davis’s first book, Beating Burnout at Work, addressed individuals and teams experiencing significant stress. This new book offers a method for addressing the factors that can lead to counterproductive stress and disengagement.
Whether you’re a seasoned leader or an emerging manager, Lead Well provides a holistic, research-backed framework to future-proof your leadership and unlock the full potential of your team. Navigating today’s turbulent work landscape has never been more critical—or more achievable.

"Paula Davis has crafted one of the most practical and action-packed books on leadership that I have read in many years. Lead Well is a brilliant review of the best ideas and thinking on leadership today!" ~Tom Rath, Bestselling Author, StrengthsFinder 2.0 and Life's Great Question

"At a time when the rates of overwhelm and burnout are high, when workers and leaders are searching for meaning, yearning to make work better and still have time for what matters most in life, Paula Davis has produced the perfect companion for the moment. Lead Well is enormously helpful, with practical, actionable, and evidence-based strategies on every single page. It is an essential guidebook for leaders at all levels who seek to create cultures of high performance and human well-being." ~Brigid Schulte, Award-Winning Journalist; Author, Over Work and the New York Times bestselling Overwhelmed; and Director, The Better Life

"This is the book I was desperate for when I began leading workplace well-being—a guide that finally addresses why so many of our well-intentioned programs fall short. Paula Davis's Lead Well offers something radically different: a systems-first approach that gets to the heart of why people struggle and what truly enables them to thrive. Through both compelling research and vulnerable storytelling, she shows leaders how to move beyond quick fixes to create workplaces where both people and performance can flourish." ~Jen Fisher, Chief Wellbeing Officer, Bestselling Author, Podcast Host

"Lead Well is a must-read for every leader. A human-centered leadership approach is critical in today’s world of work, and Paula Davis’s book sets itself apart by offering simple, yet impactful, research-backed strategies leaders can implement to create and support a work environment that helps teams perform well during change and stress." ~Dr. Malissa Clark, Professor and Author, Never Not Working

"In Lead Well, Paula Davis examines the leadership mindsets that help address the systemic nature of stress at work. I have led organizations for more than two decades, and I continuously lean on a human-centered approach, driven by my values, as the basis for creating thriving cultures and making critical decisions. Davis expertly weaves together both the business case for this approach and why now is the time for leaders to drive this conversation. This will be a valuable guide for leaders now and in the years to come." ~Jay Shah, C-Suite Executive