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If you just requested the chapter 1 download, check your inbox - it's on its way. 

Rooted to Rise: The Leaders We Become Reflect the Lives We Have Lived

For leaders who sense that the pressure isn’t only external.

You may be the leader everyone turns to when something goes wrong. You carry the difficult decisions, step in when the team is struggling, solve the problems that keep coming back, and somehow keep everything moving even when you are tired of being the one who holds it all.

You may wonder why capable people still wait for you to decide, why you keep getting pulled into things you thought you had delegated, or why a room sometimes feels different the moment you enter it. From the outside, it can look like leadership pressure, staffing problems, culture, workload, or a system that asks too much of you. And some of it absolutely is.

But there may also be something happening beneath the surface that is harder to see while you are standing inside it. The moment you become willing to notice what you may be bringing into the pattern is not a moment of blame. It is the moment you regain choice, because we cannot choose differently until we can see what has been choosing for us.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

Rooted to Rise is for the leader who has ever wondered:

  • Why am I carrying so much?
  • Why do I respond differently under pressure than I want to?
  • Why is it so hard to stop fixing everything myself?
  • Why do I know how I want to lead, but still fall back into old habits?
  • Why do people go quiet, hold back, or wait for me to decide?
  • How is the way I lead affecting the people around me?

Whether you became a leader last year or have held the title for a decade, you may still be leading from patterns you have never had reason to examine.

The leaders we become reflect the lives we have lived.

SPECIAL OFFER FOR FOUNDING READERS

Before Rooted to Rise is publicly released in 2026, you can reserve your Founding Signed Harcover Reader copy.

For this pre-sale window only, Founding Readers can receive a signed first-run hardcover edition.

This signed first-run hardcover is only available during the pre-sale window. It will not be part of the regular public release.

​If this book is already speaking to something in you, this is the time to reserve your copy.

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The Moment That Changed How I Saw Leadership

I had cared for Mr. Hendrick the day before, so when I walked into his hospital room and looked at him, I knew something had changed.

His skin was pale. His breathing was different. His blood pressure was dropping, and his kidneys were beginning to fail. I had been a nurse long enough to recognize that this was not something we should simply watch and wait on.

I called the physician and explained what I was seeing.
I was told I was overreacting.
I tried again. I gave him the facts. I explained why I was concerned and why I believed Mr. Hendrick needed to be reassessed.

He did not come while I was there.
The nurses who followed me saw the same changes. They called too. They raised the concern too.
Two days later, I learned that Mr. Hendrick had died.

For years, that story stayed with me, but not in the way you might expect. I kept turning the responsibility back onto myself.  Should I have pushed harder? Should I have called someone else? Should I have gone over the physician’s head? Was there one more thing I should have done that might have changed what happened?

I had seen the problem. I had spoken. Other nurses had spoken too.
And somehow, I still wondered whether I had failed him.

It took me years to realize that there was another question hiding underneath all of those questions.

What happens when the person closest to the truth sees something important, speaks clearly, and still does not have enough power to change what happens next?

That question changed the story for me.

Mr. Hendrick had taught me something about advocacy, but he had also taught me something much bigger about leadership. Knowledge and authority are not always held by the same person. The person who sees the problem first may not be the person with the power to decide what happens next.

And that means the way people with power respond matters enormously.

Do we become curious when someone brings us information we did not expect? Do we slow down long enough to look again? Do people learn that it is worth speaking up around us, or do they slowly learn to keep what they know to themselves?

Years later, when I became the person with more authority, that question became much more personal.

It was no longer only, Why didn’t they listen to me?

I had to be willing to ask:  What happens when someone is trying to tell me something I may not want to hear?

That is one of the questions at the heart of Rooted to Rise.

Because leadership is not only about what we know or what we intend.

It is also about what becomes possible for other people when we are the person in the room with more power.

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You Became the Leader Long Before You Got the Title

Long before anyone called you a leader, life was already teaching you how to respond.

You were learning what happened when someone was disappointed in you. What conflict felt like. Whether it was safe to ask for help. Whether being strong meant speaking up, staying quiet, taking over, fixing the problem, protecting everyone else, proving yourself, or carrying more than your share.

Then you entered healthcare.

Clinical practice strengthened many of those responses. You learned to act quickly, take responsibility, notice what others missed, solve problems, stay calm, and keep going when the stakes were high.

Those qualities may have become some of your greatest strengths.
Then one day, you were given more responsibility. A team. A title. More authority.
And without realizing it, you brought all of it with you.

Not only your education, experience, and clinical knowledge, but also the beliefs and habits you had been practising for years.

That is why leadership can surprise us.

We may know exactly how we want to lead, yet under pressure find ourselves taking over, avoiding the difficult conversation, carrying too much, needing to have the answer, or becoming quieter around someone with more authority.

The title did not create those responses, it just gave them a new place to show up.

Some were shaped through years of clinical practice. Others began much earlier. Most of us were never taught to notice the difference.

But once we do notice, something changes.

We can begin to ask whether the response that once helped us is still the response this moment needs.

That is where awareness becomes choice.

​And that is where Rooted to Rise begins.

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Before I Ever Held Leadership Power, I Learned What It Felt Like to Have Almost None 

Years before I began thinking seriously about leadership, I had an experience as a patient that changed the way I understood power.

I knew something was wrong. I said so repeatedly. My husband said so too. I was already a nurse, and I understood both what was happening clinically and what I was feeling in my own body.

But the people with more authority in the room made the decisions about what happened next.
I did not have language for what that experience taught me at the time.

Years later, when I became a leader myself, I finally understood why it had stayed with me.

Power changes what is possible in a room.

In the Introduction to Rooted to Rise, I share what happened that day, what it taught me about being unheard, and the harder question I eventually had to face when I became the person with more authority:

What happens when someone with less power is trying to tell me something I may not want to hear?

​That question became one of the foundations of this book.

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You May Already Have More Leadership Strength Than You Realize

Some of the qualities that made you an excellent clinician may also be some of your greatest leadership strengths.

The challenge is that leadership may ask you to use those strengths differently.

Rooted to Rise explores what you may have carried with you from clinical practice, what still serves you beautifully, and what may need to evolve now that your decisions affect more people.

​What if some of your greatest leadership strengths are already inside you?

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What Rooted to Rise Will Help You See

  • The leader you became
    How your life, work, relationships, and early experiences helped shape the way you lead today.
  • What pressure reveals
    Why old patterns often become louder when the stakes rise, people disappoint you, or things feel uncertain.
  • The weight you carry
    How caring, responsibility, and being dependable can quietly turn into carrying too much.
  • The clinician-to-leader shift
    Why the strengths that made you excellent at the bedside may need to be used differently when you are responsible for people.
  • The gap between values and behaviour
    Why good leaders can still respond in ways that do not match the leader they want to be.
  • The ripple effect
    How what happens inside a leader can influence trust, communication, team climate, and eventually the experience of care.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Diane Gudmundson is a healthcare leadership strategist, author, and former nurse practitioner with more than 25 years of experience inside healthcare.

Her work was shaped by years at the bedside, in community care, and in rural Manitoba, where she saw how leadership decisions travel through teams, systems, and ultimately to the people receiving care.

Earlier in her career she created and operated a mobile nurse practitioner clinic, travelling into rural communities to bring care closer to the people who needed it. She retired from clinical practice in 2021 and now focuses on helping healthcare leaders understand the deeper patterns that shape how they lead, especially when pressure rises.

Her work is grounded in a simple belief: the leaders we become reflect the lives we have lived, and the patterns we carry into leadership can shape far more than we realize.

She was recognized as Best Healthcare Leadership Strategist in Canada, 2026 by the Evergreen Awards.

Rooted to Rise is her first book.

FOUNDING READER SPECIAL - SIGNED HARDCOVER

I still think about a charge nurse who left her resignation letter on her manager’s desk after nearly twenty years.

Later she told me:

“I didn’t leave because I was tired, Diane. I left because nobody listened.”
That sentence captures something at the heart of this book.
How we lead matters.

How we listen matters.

And how we use our power matters.

Rooted to Rise will be publicly released in 2026.
Until then, you can reserve your (pre-sale offer) Signed Hardcover copy at Founding Reader pricing.

DIGITAL

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$24.95 USD

FOUNDING READER PRICE

  • Complete digital edition - all chapters and leadership tool.
  • Delivered immediately on release 
  • All future digital updates included
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PRINT

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FOUNDING READER PRICE

  • First print-run signed hardcopy
  • Your name in the founding readers acknowledgement
  • Free shipping
  • The ONLY pre-sale offer that exists before the public release
Reserve my Signed Hardcover Copy

MOST SELECTED

Reserve my Signed Hardcover Copy + Digital Bundle

$35 USD

FOUNDING READER PRICE

  • Executive signed hardcover edition with founding reader acknowledgement
  • Complete digital edition, including the audiobook when released
  • Free shipping
  • Everything in one place before the 2026 public release
Reserve Signed Hardcover Copy + Digital Bundle

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NOT READY TO RESERVE YET?

Start with the opening chapter of Rooted to Rise.

You will begin exploring the experiences and patterns that shape the way leaders respond, communicate, and lead under pressure.

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I will return to buy book when the timing is right

 2026 Diane Gudmundson, BScN, MN, MBA
Founder, CEO.  SEENALO Inc.  Roots of Change  |  Healthcare Leadership Strategist
Author:  Rooted to Rise

Rooted to Rise is the individual-leader foundation of a larger body of work exploring what is
happening beneath the surface in healthcare leadership and organizations.

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