ader starts from the inside out. If you want to improve your career, job, family, team, company, or community, the improvement must first "take root" in your leadership behaviors. Our world is in dire need of inspiring leaders who by their example of integrity, courage,

and heart-driven purpose, cultivate the ground where dreams can sprout and grow. Your ability to turn dreams into reality is the ultimate leadership effectiveness measure.

Leading requires people to be engaged, influenced, and inspired - not directed and controlled. The ability to inspire is now a must-have competency for all leaders. As a leader, you must be collaborative and decisive; strong and humble; a listener and an advocate.

Being the real deal means you inspire others by courageously living the values of integrity, humility, and caring for others in your daily leadership behaviors. We inspire by "Being" a leader who by example calls up the best in others.

As a pioneer in leadership coaching, Dr. Vicky Gordon has spent the last 40 years helping thousands of individuals build their leadership capabilities. In this book, Vicky weaves together her real-life leadership coaching stories, leadership research, and personal leadership journey from the tobacco fields of

North Carolina to the ivory towers of academia to office cubicles and boardrooms to founding her firm. Her practical coaching paints a portrait of inspiring leadership.

Inspiration is in short supply. Leadership standards and trust in leaders are at an all-time low. Cynicism, conspiracy theories, and lying are at an all-time high. Can we make a leader's integrity and honesty an absolute minimum requirement? Can we hope again? Can we dream again? Can we be inspired and inspiring to others again?

We can and we must!

Gordon writes, "What do inspiring leaders have in common? They embody their values while leading transformations. Visible leadership behaviors rooted in integrity, passionate purpose, courage, humility, trust, respect, learning, and compassion are inspiring.

Never doubt you are powerful. Just as a single acorn can grow into a mighty oak tree, we each have the potential within us to grow into more inspiring leaders rooted in integrity. Inspiring leaders create hope-filled environments where they build a better world for all by Being The Real Deal."

Whether you are a front-line supervisor or a CEO, this book is for anyone who wants to be a more inspiring leader, mentor, or coach. Being The Real Deal provides a down-to-earth guide to developing yourself as a more inspiring leader.