Resonant Leadership by Richard Boyatzis

I finished this book in September 2026. I recommend this book 8/10.

Why you should read this book:

This is a great book for more senior leaders who are feeling the stress and, at times, overwhelmed. The book offers a fresh introduction to mindfulness and helps you identify your values and stress points. It also includes examples of leaders navigating the pressure of change while bringing hope to their teams.

Get your copy here.

🚀 The book in three sentences

1. Know yourself and understand your values.

2. Real learners don’t just listen; they genuinely try to understand others.

3. Create hope, be a coach, and focus on others.

📝 My notes and thoughts

• P22. If you wonder whether you or someone else is a resonant leader, ask yourself these questions:

  • Is the leader inspirational?

  • Does the leader create an overall positive emotional tone that is characterized by hope?

  • Is the leader in touch with others? Does the leader know what is on others' hearts and minds? Does the leader experience and demonstrate compassion?

  • Is the leader mindful—authentic and in tune with self, others, and the environment?

• P88. Longitudinal research studies in the last few years have shown that sustainable change occurs as we focus on five major discoveries:

  • The ideal self, or what you want out of life and the person you want to be—leading to your personal vision.

  • The real self, or how you act and are seen by others; the comparison of the real self to the ideal self results in identification of your strengths and weaknesses—leading to your personal balance sheet.

  • Your learning agenda to capitalize on your strengths and move you closer to your personal vision while possibly working on a weakness or two (or working to maintain the ideal current state of your life and work).

  • Experimenting with and practicing new habits or reinforcing and affirming your strengths.

  • Developing and maintaining close, personal relationships—resonant leadership—that enable you to move through these discoveries toward renewal.

• P98. For example, the coach once asked her to describe what others' feelings and thoughts were likely to be during an upcoming meeting, before she went into the meeting. She did this before each meeting for a week. At first, it seemed awkward and an interference in her tight schedule, but she kept repeating to herself that she had to tune into the others to be able to motivate them. Then Ellen visualized customers' thoughts and feelings through role play. Soon she felt confident enough to begin to use the new insights and techniques with her internal customers.

• P115. To be mindful, we must first wake up to our inner experience and attend consciously to these insights. But it doesn't stop there—mindfulness includes paying attention to what is happening around us; that is, being acutely aware and seeking deep understanding of people, our surroundings, the natural world, and events. Then, we must do something with our perceptions, feelings, and thoughts. John Studzinski does this through his work in human rights and homelessness, but also in the attentive, mindful way that he connects with the people he works with at HSBC. John is actually aware of the people in his world—coworkers at HSBC, clients, and colleagues in the arts and the social networks he leads. In fact, we believe a good bit of his success is due to his ability to tune into the needs of others. Take clients, for example. John spends at least half of his time reaching out to his key clients. He gets to know them as people, and he tunes in to their real business needs, constantly pushing himself to look beyond the obvious or the current situation. Surely, you might say, this is just common sense? Maybe so, but it is far less common in practice. In fact, many organizational cultures (maybe even society today) drive people to action, rather than reflection, which means that real listening is actually quite rare. So for John and other mindful leaders, it is not just a matter of meeting with clients. It is a matter of connecting authentically with them, listening deeply to them, to the point that they can read and understand their clients' subtle messages, even their unformed hopes. Reading between the lines—while in an authentic and trusting relationship with people—is behavior that defines mindfulness. And for leaders, it brings effectiveness and success. When we attend to ourselves holistically, and become more fully engaged with people, our communities, and our environment, it becomes much less likely that we will do harm and more likely that we will do good. Why? Because we are attending to balance, both inside ourselves and in the world around us.

• P119. When faced with this kind of turbulence, mindfulness becomes even more important. You need more, rather than less, information, and it is generally more difficult to get. You need to leverage your strengths and find those people who are succeeding despite the disruptions; you need to stay calm. Dan's response? He told us that he got very, very clear about those few core beliefs that had always guided his decisions and behavior, even in the midst of confusion and change. He also held onto the following tenets:

  • Build trust through clarity and consistency.

  • Make sure you never profess beliefs when people are watching, only to act differently when the temperature rises and the pressure is on.

  • Know that you will feel uncomfortable, even vulnerable, because in the midst of real change around you, the rules are not clear and politically expedient behavior is very tempting.

• P120. Mindfulness starts with self-awareness: knowing yourself enables you to make choices about how you respond to people and situations. Deep knowledge about yourself enables you to be consistent, to present yourself authentically, as you are. We trust—and follow—people who are real, who are consistent, whose behavior, values, and beliefs are aligned. We trust people whom we don't constantly have to second-guess. Honing the skills of mindful attention to oneself enables us to make better choices because we recognize and deal with our internal state—thoughts, physical sensations, and emotions. We are then better able to make sense of people and situations around us. Our perceptions are clear, not clouded by our own filters, biases, and unexplored or unacknowledged feelings. Through purposeful, conscious direction of our attention, we are able to see things that might normally pass right by us, giving us access to deeper insights, wisdom, and choices.

• P131. Devoting greater mindshare to one aspect of our life or work may leave less room available to others. In our effort to be efficient, we are blind to anything unrelated to our focus. We often completely miss the creative solution; the new way of doing something; even the glaringly obvious, not novel, way of responding to a situation. When mindlessly concentrating, there is little room for subtlety. Slowly, over time, narrow focus and constant multitasking cause exhaustion: our mental processes are truncated and our emotional responses become unpredictable. Patrick Cescau, CEO of Unilever, is about as intensely focused as they come. He manages the downside well, however, because of his absolute passion for learning. As he puts it, "Learning causes your world to open up, so you can see things a little bit differently." But learning requires openness, opportunity, and time. Patrick hones the skill of learning by deliberately seeking new experiences and by consciously using life as a laboratory. He is passionate about exploration. Patrick applies this curiosity to the study of people. He watches people very carefully—their expressions and body language, what they say and how they say it. Then he tries to make sense of it: what they are feeling, what they are doing, and why they are doing it. He challenges himself to resist the urge to make quick judgments or assumptions about what people intend or want. He deliberately seeks multiple interpretations of people's behavior, weighing his interpretations against what he actually sees, not what he wants to see. In other words, he consciously manages how he takes in information, how he interprets it, and how he reacts.

• P139. "Allah created the desert as his garden, from which he removed all life so that he could take walks in peace and quietness." And as the caravan drivers tell it, "Allah has removed from the Sahara all that is unnecessary so human beings grasp the essence of things." Patrick actually goes to the desert whenever he can—a place for renewal and rejuvenation. But of course, like most of us, he cannot pick up and go away at will, and we need to find other ways to reconnect with the peace we feel in special settings. This has led him to learn how to calm his mind through imagery. During reflective times he will simply take half an hour, close his eyes, and imagine he is in those special places in the world that he loves. He will see the desert in his mind, feel the wind, smell the rich scent of hot earth. Using this kind of mental imagery can be a powerful tool indeed. In fact, research has shown how simply imagining a peaceful scene can actually change our physiology, calming us down. How else can reflection help us become more mindful? Rather than simply using it to look inward, at the self, Patrick often practices reflecting about the people around him and with whom he works. He describes the process this way: "I watch people very carefully. Then, I 'speak to myself' about what I see. Am I interpreting correctly? Are my own ideas getting in the way? Am I seeing the whole picture?"

• P144. Look, listen, and ask exercise for mindfulness.

• P152. Our experience in working with leaders who demonstrate the power of hope every day has led us to three key lessons:

  • The leader needs to have dreams and aspirations, but also be in touch with those of the people around him or her. This helps to form the desired image of the future.

  • The leader needs to be optimistic, and believe in his or her ability to make change.

  • The leader must see the desired future as realistic and feasible.

• P173. Exercise to connect with dreams and hope.

• P179. It is impossible to be free of all prejudgment—we simply could not live in the world without some assumptions. However, effective leaders are able to suspend automatic judgment, and can work to understand other people without filters. Effective leaders care enough to want to learn about other people, to feel what they feel and see the world the way they do. And then they do something with what they've learned. We define compassion as having three components:

  • Understanding and empathy for others' feelings and experiences.

  • Caring for others.

  • Willingness to act on those feelings of care and empathy.

• P189. Leaders can help grow a culture of compassion in many ways, and one is by fostering compassion through personal example. Another is by crafting a vision in which compassion is a central tenet. That was the approach taken by Thomas Strauss, President and CEO of Summa Health Systems in Akron, Ohio. After all, where more than in a hospital is compassion needed if the organization has any hope of succeeding? To help his hospital system develop a new level of compassion, therefore, Thomas used focus groups, interviews, and a series of discussions among staff to develop what they wanted in a compelling vision and powerful statement of their beliefs about themselves and the organization.

• P193. Coaching with compassion is likely to develop more effective leaders for the organization and enable the renewal of the leader who coaches. When leaders practice coaching with compassion and encourage it throughout their companies, three major benefits result:

  • Leaders are less focused on themselves.

  • They are more open and in touch with people and issues around them, thereby avoiding isolation and CEO disease.

  • They experience regular renewal, which they need to sustain themselves and their effectiveness, and to stem the effects of the Sacrifice Syndrome.

• P198. Who helped me exercise.

• P202. Resonant leaders live their values, and they truly care about people. They create a sense of hope about the future and excitement about the present, for themselves and others. So, how do you know if you are a resonant leader? Ask yourself these questions:

  • Am I inspirational?

  • Do I create an overall positive emotional tone that is characterized by hope?

  • Am I in touch with others? Do I know what is in others' hearts and minds? Do I experience and demonstrate compassion?

  • Am I mindful—authentic and in tune with myself, others, and the environment?