A Blog about Leadership

Great Book

I’ve added another book to my collection that I am quite excited about. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I have great love for books. I picked up The Daily Drucker which is a compilation of the best of Peter F. Drucker that was put together with Joseph A. Maciariello.

The Daily Drucker is “366 DAYS of INSIGHT and MOTIVATION for GETTING the RIGHT THINGS DONE” (leap year included). I intend to go through this book as the writer intended – one day for one passage of the legendary Drucker. What prompted me to buy it was a paragraph in the preface written by Drucker, “But the most important part of this book is the blank spaces at the bottom of its pages. They are what the readers will contribute, their actions, decisions, and the results of these decisions. For this is an action book.

Action

Action is the key. All thoughts, plans, concepts, and ideas are empty without action. You can spend all your time reading and discussing the finer details of leadership, but it will be all for nothing without action. Leadership requires you to go and do. You can only be and become a leader through doing leadership.

There is a famous quote that is a bit controversial because it may be misappropriated to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (read about it here). Nonetheless I like this quote, so I am going to share it with you.

Quote about action from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
 “What you can do or think you can do, begin it—boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

Failure

Don’t let the fear of failure hold you back. Even if things don’t work out quite as you expect, you can still gain a great deal from experience and always remember the 3 Steps for How to Respond to Failure.

Be bold, be a leader, and take action.

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Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady who spent over twelve years in the White House, was an impressive leader.  She was able to overcome so many obstacles and confront so many stumbling blocks that the end result was a sharp mind for leadership.

 Leadership quote from Eleanor Roosevelt:
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Experience more than any other factor contributes to one’s leadership potential.  Experiences with conflict and experiences with change are the schoolhouses for leaders.  Conflicts are the grindstones that sharpen the leader’s mental edge, change is the practice field, and practice, practice, practice improves leadership like any other artist’s skill.  Remember: Leadership is an art in sublety.

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