Book Review: Great Leaders Grow
Ordinary: Read a book for professional development (I do this often)
Extraordinary: Reading a book that enables you to be a more confident mentor to others and gives you specific tools and suggestions to pass along (and some for yourself, too!).
The book Great Leaders Grow is a quick read. No big words, and no big, new ideas. However, it's just SO simple it's lovely. It tells of a young man, Blake, having recently lost his father, finding his first job, and being mentored by one of his fathers friends (Debbie). His relationship with his father seems to grow deeper through this process as he discovers what his father meant when he said his last words to his son "you can be a leader". Blake chews on these words for weeks, trying to understand why his dad would say this. What did he mean? Could he really be a leader?Did he even want to?
My favorite parts of the book were the conversations Blake and Debbie have at the coffee shop. Debbie takes this opportunity to impart the wisdom about leadership that she learned from Blake's father. She doesn't sugar coat it. She says leadership is hard; you have to know you want to be a leader. It's not for everyone. On one hand, leadership is influence, so we all have it to some degree, but to be a leader in a business involves responsibility and commitment. You have to have a passion for others' success in order to ensure your own. Anyways, she wries an acronym on a napkin: G. R. O. W., and in four mentor-ship sessions, she goes through all of them, one by one.
G- Gain knowledge. Read books, watch videos, listen to books, watch educational TV, talk to people and ask questions. Gain knowledge about yourself (strengths, weaknesses, passions, etc), coworkers (fears, passions, family info, hopes/dreams). Gain knowledge about your industry (trends, changes, truths, etc). Gain knowledge about the field of leadership. Best practices, skills required? What books do you need to read ON leadership? Trends?
R- Reach out to others. Be proactive about helping others grow and learn. This may be a challenge for some of us, but we need to be stretched. One of the best ways to learn is to teach. Help people draw new lessons from life experiences by the questions you ask them. Ask probing questions. Tell a story (parables?). Don't press it- just be on the lookout for opportunities.
O- Open Your World. The more life experiences we have, the broader our frame of reference, and the more we have to bring to the table. Travel. Have a hobby. Watch sports (at least a little). Read fun books. meet new people.
Ideas to open your world at work:
Shadow another department
Work at a client's facility for a day
Listen in on customer calls
Serve on a cross functional operations team
Collect best practices from top performers
Have lunch with someone difference every day until you run out of people, then do it again
Find a mentor
lead anything you can
How to open your world outside work:
Travel
Volunteer
Hobbies
Foreign Language
Home projects
Arts, plays, museums
get involved in a local political campaign
Adventure experiences
W- Walk towards wisdom. Knowing the truth (the right thing to do), and actually doing it is a different story. Always try to put into practice what you know to be right and true. It's the ONLY way to keep moving forward. If you aren't going to do things RIGHT with integrity you need to get out of the way. Wisdom is the application of knowledge, discernment, insight, experience, and judgment to make good decisions when the answer may not be obvious. Often, we need to perform a self evaluation. Keep yourself open to feedback and request it from others. Isolation impedes honest self evaluation. Search for truth! Ask people what you should start doing, keep doing, and stop doing.
Overall, this book gets 5 stars! Servant leadership is one of the themes, and that's the only way I roll, so I dug it.
Another good acronym on the appendix:
See the future
Engage and develop others
Reinvent continuously
Value results and relationships
Embody Values
Hoping this encouraged you to think about leadership, and how you influence others,
Tink
Extraordinary: Reading a book that enables you to be a more confident mentor to others and gives you specific tools and suggestions to pass along (and some for yourself, too!).
The book Great Leaders Grow is a quick read. No big words, and no big, new ideas. However, it's just SO simple it's lovely. It tells of a young man, Blake, having recently lost his father, finding his first job, and being mentored by one of his fathers friends (Debbie). His relationship with his father seems to grow deeper through this process as he discovers what his father meant when he said his last words to his son "you can be a leader". Blake chews on these words for weeks, trying to understand why his dad would say this. What did he mean? Could he really be a leader?Did he even want to?
My favorite parts of the book were the conversations Blake and Debbie have at the coffee shop. Debbie takes this opportunity to impart the wisdom about leadership that she learned from Blake's father. She doesn't sugar coat it. She says leadership is hard; you have to know you want to be a leader. It's not for everyone. On one hand, leadership is influence, so we all have it to some degree, but to be a leader in a business involves responsibility and commitment. You have to have a passion for others' success in order to ensure your own. Anyways, she wries an acronym on a napkin: G. R. O. W., and in four mentor-ship sessions, she goes through all of them, one by one.
G- Gain knowledge. Read books, watch videos, listen to books, watch educational TV, talk to people and ask questions. Gain knowledge about yourself (strengths, weaknesses, passions, etc), coworkers (fears, passions, family info, hopes/dreams). Gain knowledge about your industry (trends, changes, truths, etc). Gain knowledge about the field of leadership. Best practices, skills required? What books do you need to read ON leadership? Trends?
R- Reach out to others. Be proactive about helping others grow and learn. This may be a challenge for some of us, but we need to be stretched. One of the best ways to learn is to teach. Help people draw new lessons from life experiences by the questions you ask them. Ask probing questions. Tell a story (parables?). Don't press it- just be on the lookout for opportunities.
O- Open Your World. The more life experiences we have, the broader our frame of reference, and the more we have to bring to the table. Travel. Have a hobby. Watch sports (at least a little). Read fun books. meet new people.
Ideas to open your world at work:
Shadow another department
Work at a client's facility for a day
Listen in on customer calls
Serve on a cross functional operations team
Collect best practices from top performers
Have lunch with someone difference every day until you run out of people, then do it again
Find a mentor
lead anything you can
How to open your world outside work:
Travel
Volunteer
Hobbies
Foreign Language
Home projects
Arts, plays, museums
get involved in a local political campaign
Adventure experiences
W- Walk towards wisdom. Knowing the truth (the right thing to do), and actually doing it is a different story. Always try to put into practice what you know to be right and true. It's the ONLY way to keep moving forward. If you aren't going to do things RIGHT with integrity you need to get out of the way. Wisdom is the application of knowledge, discernment, insight, experience, and judgment to make good decisions when the answer may not be obvious. Often, we need to perform a self evaluation. Keep yourself open to feedback and request it from others. Isolation impedes honest self evaluation. Search for truth! Ask people what you should start doing, keep doing, and stop doing.
Overall, this book gets 5 stars! Servant leadership is one of the themes, and that's the only way I roll, so I dug it.
Another good acronym on the appendix:
See the future
Engage and develop others
Reinvent continuously
Value results and relationships
Embody Values
Hoping this encouraged you to think about leadership, and how you influence others,
Tink
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