Leadership 101

On a recent call with a fellow senior executive, the conversation turned towards leadership philosophy, approach, etc. In these types of conversations, any worthy business leader or organizational manager will have several robustly formed opinions to share and debate.
“Power Down,” “Situational Leadership,” “Results driven,” “Managing by Walking Around,” or “Hands-On,” are just a few of the terms that would typically be part of one of these discussions.

As we spoke, my eyes wandered to my a book resting on in my bookcase called, “Leadership in Organizations” by G. Yukl (now in it's 5th Edition, original 19 Chapters have been revised to 15 Chapters). The two and a half inch thick original hardbound copy was issued to me at West Point in the early 1980’s. As we spoke about the different facets of leadership and leadership strategy, I thumbed casually through the pages.

What I found extremely interesting about the text and the topics covered inside this book was how accurate and useful they really were.I had a revelation. While it occurred to me that there was just no way--back in “Leadership 101” --that I could have ever truly understood most of the teachings contained in the book, how very useful it would have been to least have opened it once a year or so since then to refresh on a couple of chapters.

Then I had a second revelation. I have actually been practicing most of the key teachings from the book for years, both as an Officer in the US Army and up until now as an executive and business unit leader in corporate America –without even opening it!

Perhaps, more so than any other course I ever studied in college, the lessons I learned from this have actually been embedded in and have supplied me with unbelievable and highly relevant “daily usefulness” for over 20 years. What a gift!