The Secure Leader: Discover the Hidden Forces that Shape Your Leadership Story — and How to Change Them
Jaime Goff
Amplify Publishing (September 2025)

How positive emotions can help you achieve and then sustain high-impact leadership 

As I began to read this book, I was again reminded of Sean Connery’s portrayal of Captain Marco Ramius in the film version of Tom Clancy’s novel The Hunt for Red October. This Russian nuclear submarine commander personifies what Jaime Goff means when explaining how to become and then remain a “secure leader.” Another example that comes to my mind is Atticus Finch in the novel and film, To Kill a Mockingbird.

In this book, Goff begins her narrative “by showing you how important stories are put to our brains. Our brains need stories to make sense of the world around us. These stories help us to predict others’ behavior, sometimes inaccurately, and identify how to respond. We’ll then explore how our earliest experiences carved a story into our minds and bodies about how the world and people in it operate. We’ll see how these early stories shape us and impact us as leaders.

“As we gain understanding and clarity about our early stories, we’ll begin to deconstruct, identifying themes within those stories that are still helpful and constructive in directing our lives as well as those that need to be discarded or rewritten.

“Finally, I’ll provide strategies to help you write a new leadership story that honors the past, provides you with more power and choice in the present, and creates a meaningful story framework for your future.”

Now you have this superb briefing on HOW, Goff can then help you to accelerate your personal growth as well as your professional development. Over time, you will be better prepared to help others do so.

Whatever their size and nature may be, organizations need high-impact leadership at a time when many (if not most) executives never learn how to discover the hidden forces that shape their “leadership story” and HOW to “rewrite” it. Jaime Goff provides in The Secure Leader just about everything you need to know.  That said, the real-world value of the material ultimately depends on how effectively you and your colleagues apply it to your organization’s needs and interests to achieve the given goals and ambitions.

Those who read this book and complete various exercises will have their own key points. That is, they will realize which of Goff’s suggestions, comments, and insights are of greatest relevance to them and thus are of greatest interest and value.

When you are pursuing a goaI or responding to a challenge (e.g. answering a question or solving a problem), I suggest that you keep in mind what Henry Ford said years ago: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right.”

I commend Jaime Goff on a brilliant achievement. She can help you discover the hidden forces– both positive and negative —  that shape your leadership story and then explains how you can manage them in ways and to an extent most appropriate to the given circumstances.

Better yet, she will also help to prepare you to adjust to unexpected challenges as well as opportunities that are certain to occur in months to come.

Bravo!

* * *

Here are two other suggestions while you are reading The Secure Leader: First, highlight key passages. Also,  perhaps in a notebook kept near-at-hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). It will also be handy when completing various exercises to deconstruct your leadership story, rewrite it, and then maintain/sustain it as a secure leader. You may prefer to download a “companion journal” from the website identified on Page xxi.  Pay special attention to various self-assessments as well as to the “Figures” that Goff strategically inserts throughout her lively narrative.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.