A reading list to improve work life
By Amy Lindgren, St. Paul Pioneer Press

“Fearless Leadership: Conquering Your Fears and the Lies That Drive Them” by Bruce E. Roselle, Leader Press, 2006.  Despite the title, this book by a Minneapolis psychologist and executive coach is not exclusively for people who consider themselves leaders.  Rather, it is directed to those who would improve their leadership qualities by overcoming unproductive reactions to real and perceived insults.

It’s a difficult book to summarize, but here goes:  We all carry within us irrational fears born of early events in our lives.  Ranging from rejection to being caught unprepared, these fears then engender in our minds harmful lies and faulty beliefs that combine to create unhelpful trigger responses such as perfectionism and defensiveness…

Roselle is a leader in the discussion about fear and its impact on our work lives.  If you’re ready for an intellectual challenge, and want to conquer those fears, this is the right book for you.

Enthusiastic 5-Star Review for Fearless Leadership
Taken from the Amazon.com webpage:

Enthusiastically recommended. December 9, 2006
Reviewer: Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)

Written by psychologist Bruce E. Roselle, whose specialty lies in helping organizations hire and develop great leaders, Fearless Leadership: Conquering Your Fears and the Lies that Drive Them is a self-help guide written for readers from all walks of life. Everyone must serve as a leader in some capacity, whether of thousands, dozens, a few friends or family members, while parenting one's own children, or simply leading oneself. Fearless Leadership teaches the reader how to control unconscious fears and doubts that erode the ability to lead. Chapters explore faulty beliefs that drive irrational fears, such as fear of rejection, and the harmful or self-sabotaging behaviors that can spring from fear, such as excessive perfectionism or exorbitantly costly overpreparation, and methods for nurturing healthy beliefs to counter negative tendencies. Enthusiastically recommended.