The Mentally Strong Leader: Build the Habits to Productively Regulate Your Emotions, Thoughts, and Behaviors
By Scott Mautz
Peakpoint Press, 360 pp., $32.99

This book is for adult learning enthusiasts and business professionals intent on honing their knowledge and skills. The Mentally Strong Leader heralds a vital leadership domain and discipline for the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous working world.

Mautz describes a mentally strong leader as someone who "regulates their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to achieve exceptional outcomes, despite circumstances." He outlines six leadership tests and traits that necessitate self-regulation skills, or mental strength: fortitude, confidence, boldness, messaging, decision making, and goal focus. Those tests are unavoidable, as new and seasoned leaders alike endure them through change, innovation, setbacks, and success.

The book opens with an anecdote about a struggling worker, setting the stage for the power and presence of mentally strong leaders and priming readers for more relevant anecdotes from Mautz's career journey and research. The Mentally Strong Leader also draws upon familiar aspects of andragogy, which can supplement readers' talent development offerings.

Readers can take the Mental Strength Self-Assessment, which enables them to establish a baseline before reading subsequent chapters. Whether the assessment reveals individuals are a "beacon" or "source" of mental strength or states they are more "determined" or "novice," Mautz provides a treasure trove of habit-building tools to take his audience's leadership skills to the next level.

TD professionals will find valuable recall devices, including diagrams, memorable names, and real-life examples, in the text. For example, the Diamond Directive is a habit-building tool for fortitude, with each point of the diamond showing users how to perform under pressure. In addition, Mautz outlines "Your First Small Step" and "In Moments of Weakness" for each tool to encourage learning transfer.

The author concludes with the Mental Action Plan, further fostering an ability and willingness to achieve results with the book's skills and knowledge.

Mautz has endured the often tumultuous terrain of modern leadership, and he compassionately calls upon the audience to step up not only with tactical and technical prowess but also with mental strength.