Leadership
- Thread starter Dave John
- Start date
My list of transformative Leadership Books...
Not your typical leadership book list but it has worked for me...
The Goal - Goldratt
Getting Things Done - David Allen
Good to Great - Jim Collins
The Leader's Handbook - Scholtes
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
also, you should read Peter Drucker...
James
Not your typical leadership book list but it has worked for me...
The Goal - Goldratt
Getting Things Done - David Allen
Good to Great - Jim Collins
The Leader's Handbook - Scholtes
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
also, you should read Peter Drucker...
James
Character, virtue, integrity
I certainly can not disagree with any of the recommendations listed above, but let me take a little different tack and begin with the premise that true leadership—the kind of leadership to aspire to—has nothing to do with techniques or tricks or guile. It's not something to be learned as much as something that arises from attributes of character that need to be fostered and nurtured.
Drucker almost always seems to have said it first and said it best. So I would suggest beginning with a short essay he wrote called “Leadership As Work”, published in the Wall Street Journal in 1988, where he writes:
“Leadership.... is something different from what is now touted under this label. It has little to do with ‘leadership qualities’ and even less to do with ‘charisma’. It is mundane, unromantic, and boring. Its essence is performance.
“In the first place, leadership is not by itself good or desirable. Leadership is a means. Leadership to what end is thus the crucial question.”
I believe there are two parts here. The first is personal competence and effectiveness (GTD, etc.) If you can’t lead yourself, how can you hope to lead others? Develop the appropriate skills, disciplines and habits.
Learning to lead others, becoming an effective leader of the kind one should aspire to become—and not a misleader, as there have been far too many in the history of humankind—means developing and nurturing attributes of character, principle, virtue and integrity. This is no simple or easy task, but should become a life-long quest. I would suggest modeling admirable leaders by reading their biographies and I find it no accident that effective leaders tend to be voracious readers of biographies. Even some fictional biographies. Anton Myrer’s “Once An Eagle” has been very popular reading among military officers, has been recommended reading at the academies and was published in one edition by the US Army War College Press. Does this perhaps strike some as odd?
Several years ago, at a Manhattan dinner party attended by Peter Drucker and Jack Welch (the “widely admired CEO of America’s most admired company”) the subject of discussion was: “Who does the best job developing leaders?”
“To my surprise, the usual suspects so often cited for finding and training leaders didn’t figure—not the Harvard Business School, or Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey & Company, or General Electric, or IBM, or Procter & Gamble. The enthusiastic choice of both of these management legends was the United States military.”
No leadership challenges any of us are likely to face will rise to the level of leading troops into combat. The U.S. military cannot recruit its leaders from outside. They must be developed from within. Thus, the military has two constant and ongoing tasks: training personnel to fight, and training personnel—at all levels—to lead. They are quite effective at this.
One might do well to study the “U.S. Army Leadership Field Manual,” or a civilian adaptation “Be-Know-Do”, from which I excerpted the above quote. There are some remarkable books about West Point leadership training. I would also highly recommend taking just a few minutes to read “Leadership Under Fire” posted last week at Michael Hyatt’s blog “From Where I Sit.” There, you can see a video clip in reference to a few leadership prescriptions from Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, considered by many the finest combat commander from the war in Viet Nam. The movie “We Were Soldiers”—highly recommended!—was based on Moore’s book of that name, also highly recommended. (Michael Hyatt, CEO of book publisher Thomas Nelson, and no stranger to these forums in the past, has been blogging regularly as of late and at least from his writings exhibits admirable leadership attributes himself. Treat yourself to his near-daily posts.)
I certainly can not disagree with any of the recommendations listed above, but let me take a little different tack and begin with the premise that true leadership—the kind of leadership to aspire to—has nothing to do with techniques or tricks or guile. It's not something to be learned as much as something that arises from attributes of character that need to be fostered and nurtured.
Drucker almost always seems to have said it first and said it best. So I would suggest beginning with a short essay he wrote called “Leadership As Work”, published in the Wall Street Journal in 1988, where he writes:
“Leadership.... is something different from what is now touted under this label. It has little to do with ‘leadership qualities’ and even less to do with ‘charisma’. It is mundane, unromantic, and boring. Its essence is performance.
“In the first place, leadership is not by itself good or desirable. Leadership is a means. Leadership to what end is thus the crucial question.”
I believe there are two parts here. The first is personal competence and effectiveness (GTD, etc.) If you can’t lead yourself, how can you hope to lead others? Develop the appropriate skills, disciplines and habits.
Learning to lead others, becoming an effective leader of the kind one should aspire to become—and not a misleader, as there have been far too many in the history of humankind—means developing and nurturing attributes of character, principle, virtue and integrity. This is no simple or easy task, but should become a life-long quest. I would suggest modeling admirable leaders by reading their biographies and I find it no accident that effective leaders tend to be voracious readers of biographies. Even some fictional biographies. Anton Myrer’s “Once An Eagle” has been very popular reading among military officers, has been recommended reading at the academies and was published in one edition by the US Army War College Press. Does this perhaps strike some as odd?
Several years ago, at a Manhattan dinner party attended by Peter Drucker and Jack Welch (the “widely admired CEO of America’s most admired company”) the subject of discussion was: “Who does the best job developing leaders?”
“To my surprise, the usual suspects so often cited for finding and training leaders didn’t figure—not the Harvard Business School, or Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey & Company, or General Electric, or IBM, or Procter & Gamble. The enthusiastic choice of both of these management legends was the United States military.”
No leadership challenges any of us are likely to face will rise to the level of leading troops into combat. The U.S. military cannot recruit its leaders from outside. They must be developed from within. Thus, the military has two constant and ongoing tasks: training personnel to fight, and training personnel—at all levels—to lead. They are quite effective at this.
One might do well to study the “U.S. Army Leadership Field Manual,” or a civilian adaptation “Be-Know-Do”, from which I excerpted the above quote. There are some remarkable books about West Point leadership training. I would also highly recommend taking just a few minutes to read “Leadership Under Fire” posted last week at Michael Hyatt’s blog “From Where I Sit.” There, you can see a video clip in reference to a few leadership prescriptions from Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, considered by many the finest combat commander from the war in Viet Nam. The movie “We Were Soldiers”—highly recommended!—was based on Moore’s book of that name, also highly recommended. (Michael Hyatt, CEO of book publisher Thomas Nelson, and no stranger to these forums in the past, has been blogging regularly as of late and at least from his writings exhibits admirable leadership attributes himself. Treat yourself to his near-daily posts.)
C
Constant
Guest
smithdoug;46164 said:
Doug makes a well articulated point about the military as a model of leadership---something also covered in the grand daddy of all military leadership books – Sun Tzu's "The Art of War", written by the Chinese military leader in ancient times but still holds true today.
Many books have been written re-interpreting the book as a model of contemporary business management -best to seek these out first to get the flavour of what the old warrior is all about before reading his literally translated book, which may seem irrelevant at first, but it's definitely not.
TesTeq
0
U.S. Army Leadership Field Manual link
You can find U.S. Army Leadership Field Manual here https://atiam.train.army.mil/soldierPortal/atia/adlsc/view/public/9502-1/fm/22-100/toc.htm
smithdoug;46164 said:
You can find U.S. Army Leadership Field Manual here https://atiam.train.army.mil/soldierPortal/atia/adlsc/view/public/9502-1/fm/22-100/toc.htm
epilog
Two days ago Bruce Crandall, who commanded the helicopter lifeline that sustained the aforementioned Lt. Col Hal Moore's troops in the field during the Ia Drang battle, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions during that battle.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110009726
Two days ago Bruce Crandall, who commanded the helicopter lifeline that sustained the aforementioned Lt. Col Hal Moore's troops in the field during the Ia Drang battle, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions during that battle.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110009726