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There are countless personal and leadership development books full of jargon, fads, and buzzwords flooding the market. A bestseller, this is a book of "profound simplicity" that cuts to the essence, while being easy and fun to read. Although highly applicable to readers of Jim's previous bestselling books with roles and titles like manager, supervisor, or executive, Growing the Distance is written for a much broader audience. This book is written for "seeker's on the grow" - anyone constantly looking to change and improve.

At home or in the workplace, change is an inevitable fact of life. How we choose to respond to it - as leaders or as followers - determines our personal and professional growth. Growing the Distance is about developing the leader within all of us. This helps us to continue "growing at the speed of change." A central theme of the book is that leadership is action, not a position. We all need to be leaders regardless of our formal title or role. This starts with inner self leadership and moves outward to influence, guide, support, and lead others. Leadership ultimately shows itself in what we do "out there," but it starts "in here."

This enchanting book entertains, inspires, and moves readers to action. Growing the Distance is a browser's delight. "I hope readers find this book as fun to read as it was to write," Jim says. In 192 pages, he weaves together many humorous quips, light-hearted stories, and charming tales with "growing points" intended to "drive you to thinking." This is done with both original and ageless fables, current situations, pithy quotations, whimsical illustrations, and personal examples.

Growing the Distance is not a conventional book with large, dense blocks of text to plow through. Rather, it has a unique and distinctive, three-tiered structure and magazine-style. One level is made up of inspirational, humorous, or thought-provoking quotations. A second level consists of timeless fables, tales, and current stories. The third level is Jim's core text with his observations, personal examples, reflections, illustrations, application ideas, and key learning points. Each section is headed by a short "lead line", introductory sentence, and title or sub-title.

The depth and authority of this captivating book comes from the research and writing of Jim's three previous bestselling books, specific research for this book, decades of training and consulting with hundreds of organizations, and over 25 years of applying these timeless principles to his own personal, career, and family life. "One of North America's leading transformation and improvement thinkers," Jim is the author of three other international bestsellers: The VIP Strategy: Leadership Skills for Exceptional Performance, Firing on All Cylinders: The Service/Quality System for High-Powered Corporate Performance (Canada's all time bestselling management book) and Pathways to Performance: A Guide to Transforming Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization.

At the center of Growing the Distance (and the hub of the "leadership wheel" model in the book) is Focus and Context: The Core of My Being. This timeless principle is built around three central questions of vision, values, and purpose. Focus and context provides the central core for the six remaining timeless principles:

  • Responsibility for Choices: If It's to Be, It's Up to Me
  • Authenticity: Getting Real
  • Passion and Commitment: Beyond "Near-Life" Experiences
  • Spirit and Meaning: With All My Heart and Soul
  • Growing and Developing: From Phase of Life to Way of Life
  • Mobilizing and Energizing: Putting Emotions in Motion


Growing the Distance
makes a great gift for:

  • young people getting started in life
  • someone contemplating career changes and choices
  • people wrestling with major change or a crisis
  • someone who's lost their job or had it dramatically changed
  • people feeling unfocused and listless
  • managers, entrepreneurs, and executives looking to increase their leadership effectiveness
  • anyone "on the grow" always looking for personal development
  • customers, suppliers, distributors, dealers, and other partners


Growing the Distance
is an ideal guide to be distributed in quantity by executives, managers, and training professionals attempting to help people throughout their organizations:

  • embrace personal growth and development as a key to dealing with continuous and unpredictable change
  • provide a strong base for leadership development programs
  • build a common foundation of values around its timeless principles
  • establish a broader "context of being" for training programs teaching technical, process, or behavioral "skills of doing"
  • bring teams together with a common language and set of values
  • help everyone in the organization become leaders
  • nurture ongoing personal growth and development
Growing the Distance Reviews

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Related Material
Growing the Distance: Personal Implementation Guide

The Personal Implementation Guide builds upon Growing the Distance and moves from inspiration to application. In this very practical handbook, Jim condenses and shares over twenty-five years of experience helping thousands of people apply the timeless leadership principles and practices, catapulting them to peak personal and professional performance. Personal application ideas, self-assessments, implementation exercises, and suggestions for action planning provide the opportunity to journal thoughts, guide reflective learning, set improvement goals, vision for the future, clarify core values, identify key strengths, check life balance, measure personal growth, plug energy leaks, reframe pessimistic thinking, and make concrete plans to improve personal, career, and family success.

Order now for only $31.50!


Growing the Distance: Self-Study System

Now you can have Jim as your personal coach.

The Growing the Distance: Self-Study System features an audio track and synchronized slides with Jim coaching you through each page of the Growing the Distance: Personal Implementation Guide. This CD is formatted for either Windows or Mac users. You are in complete control. You can run the program in the order and process that it’s designed. Or you can pause wherever you want, skip ahead, return to sections, or skim through the program and pluck out those sections most relevant and useful to you.

Includes:

  • Multimedia CD
  • Growing the Distance
  • Personal Implementation Guide

Order now for only $64.95!

Save 25% when you purchase Growing the Distance: Self-Study System software download.

Leading in Turbulent Times audio CD

Leading in Turbulent Times is a condensed, executive overview of how the leadership principles of Jim Clemmer's book, Growing the Distance, apply to leading organizations in turbulent times. This timely presentation was recorded with an audience of business leaders.

Order now for only $14.95!

 

 


 
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    "Very dynamic workshop with abundance of examples to support key points."
    Jason Rodgers, Coordinator Marine Services, The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation

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    "Great balance between the personal and professional."
    Lorna MacPhail, Instructor, College of the North Atlantic, Doha, Qatar

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    "Balances his practical experience with extensive and rigorous research energized with Jim's enthusiastic and engaging presentation skills."
    Jack Zenger, co-founder Zenger Miller