The Best Book on Leadership

As I mentioned, last week, I have been reviewing a lot of leadership material. I have read quite a few books on the subject.

When asked which is my favorite book on leaders and leadership, I say it is a Peter Drucker book. The name of the book somewhat hides its true nature. My favorite leadership book is titled Managing the Non-Profit Organization.

Over the next two weeks I am going to share my notes from that illustrious book.

Here we go...

p8 – You need three things: opportunities, competence, and commitment.

p11 – Change is not a threat.

p16 – How to pick a leader. You need to first define the task which is why we start with the mission. You then identify the candidates' strengths and match the strengths to the needs of the task. Next, you look for character and integrity. Ask yourself, “Would I want one of my sons to work under that person?”

p21 – The truly effective leader doesn't feel threatened by strength.

p21 – Leaders are neither made nor born. They are self-made. Harry Truman is the best example.

p22 – Even though he was incredibly vain and had a tremendous contempt for humanity, General Douglas MacArthur built a magnificent team by putting the task first.

p22 – It's that willingness to make yourself competent in the task that's needed that creates leaders.

p24 – You need to find the balance between concentration and enough diversification. Also, the balance between being too cautious and too rash. You also need to balance opportunity and risk.

p24 – I've seen more institutions damaged by being too cautious than by rashness … Make sure you know your degenerative tendency.

p26 – Don't hog the credit. And, don't knock your subordinates.

p27 – Keep your eye on the task, not on yourself.

p31 – Don't worry about the non-believers. Move ahead with those who are ready.

p33 – Provide superior learning opportunities. The Girl Scouts consists mostly of volunteers, many of whom are leading for the first time. Yet they used Harvard Business School faculty to teach their people.

p33 – Make a determined, continued effort to find the right people. Never stop recruiting.

p37 – We're basically a volunteer nation … We have to deserve the people who work for us.

p38 – You develop people, not jobs … We're talking about building on what people are – not about changing them.

p39 – You also need achievement to grow.

p40 – A leader must have vision. It is natural for a leader to be a person who is primarily future-oriented.

p41 – I think it's better to err on the side of being more demanding of a person than of being less demanding.

p42 – I wouldn't waste my breath on people who don't try.

p42 – The best way to have a mentorship take place is to reward it visibly when it happens rather than to try to structure it.

p46 – The mission is always long-range.

p47 – The leader's job is to make sure the right results are being achieved, the right things are being done.

p48 – The leader represents not only what we are, but, above all, what we know we should be … A leader is not a private person; a leader represents.

p49 – Everybody is a leader.

p53 – You need four things: a plan, marketing, people, and money.

p53 – You need to market even the most beneficial service. Nobody trusts you if you offer something for free.

p55 – Non-profits who use high-pressure selling just don't do very well. You need to know your customers.

p57 – The person who runs the church or hospital or school should be enthusiastic. You don't want nay-sayers in those positions.

p58 – You appeal to the head but you also appeal to the head.

p59 – One prays for miracles but works for results … Action-focused.

p60 – You need a clear strategy for improving.

p61 – Set your objectives high because we always fall short. Shoot for the moon and you'll still end up in the stars.

p62 – You can set goals that are not measurable but can be appraised and can be judged.

p65 – Don't avoid defining your goals because it might be thought controversial.

p66 – With strategy, one always makes compromises on implementation. But one does not compromise on goals.

p66 – Refocus and change the organization when you are successful … If you don't improve it, you go downhill pretty fast. “If it ain't broke, don't fix it,” is crappy advice.

p67 – When you are successful is the very time to ask, “Can't we do better?” The best rule for improvement strategies is to put your efforts into your successes.

p67 – The change outside is an opportunity … Look at the unexpected successes.

p68 – Faced with a change, we should always ask, “How can this give us a chance to contribute?”

p69 – Don't go with what “everybody knows” instead of looking out the window. What everybody knows is usually twenty years out of date.

p69 – It's an old rule that everything that's new has a different market from the one the innovator actually expected … If it doesn’t work, don't blame the “stupid public.”

p71 – Let's not start out with what we know. Let's start out with what we need to learn.

p71 – If at first you don't succeed, try once more. Then do something else.

p74 – The aim of marketing is to make selling unnecessary … It is finding needs and filling them.

p76 – Reciprocity and exchange underlie marketing thinking.

p76 – Marketing is an STP process: segmenting, targeting, and positioning.

p77 – You cannot be all things to all people.

p78 – The mission may well be universal. And yet to be successful, the institution has to think through its strategy and focus.

p80 – Marketing really is spurred by the presence and the increase in competition.

p81 – Prayer is no substitute for right action.

p82 – The more specific the objectives, the more likely to be productive.

p83 – You have to start out with knowing what the customers really consider value.

p83 – Marketing in an organization is everybody's business.

p84 – Marketing is a way to harmonize the needs and wants of the outside world with the purposes and the resources and the objectives of the institution.

p86 – You want that donor to take ownership in your program.

p87 – Cultivating you as a donor means giving you a chance to make a difference … We might ask you to get involved.

p88 – Appeal to them in a very forceful, forthright manner.

p90 – You have to appeal to the rational in the individual as well as the emotional part of the individual.

p91 – They kind of say that you want to recruit new network marketers and not just steal them from other companies.

p94 – You have to go where the money is.

p96 – You need to give your people the right tools. p102 Which includes a description of who to call on and what to say. The script.

p100 – The most important person to research is the individual who should be the customer, the people who are believers but who have stopped going to church.

p101 – We have learned that attitude training is not very effective. The way to train people is behaviorally: This is what you do.

p102 – The tests of strategy are results.

p108 – It is not enough for non-profits to say: We serve a need. The really good ones create a want.

p108 – Performance means concentrating available resources where the results are.

p109 – Non-profits fail to perform unless they start out with their mission.

p109 – Businesses now have multiple constituencies just like non-profits do. It's the reason many business executives feel the world is coming to an end.

p111 – Non-profit institutions generally find it almost impossible to abandon anything.

p112 – Even if the cause itself is a moral cause, the specific way it is pursued better have results (i.e. fornication, results need to measurable and realistic)

p112 – Constantly be raising your sights/goals otherwise performance will start to go down.

p113 – Non-profits are prone to become inward-looking.

p114 – In every move, in every decision, in every policy, the non-profit institution needs to start out by asking, “Will this advance out capacity to carry out our mission? It should start with the end result, should focus outside-in rather than inside-out.

p115 – Don't tolerate discourtesy. Since the beginning of the world, young people have resented good manners as dishonesty.

p115 – The most important do is to build the organization around information and communication instead of around hierarchy … take information responsibility.

p116 – Trust is mutual understanding. Predictability.

p117 – Standards have to be set high; you cannot ease into a standard … If you start low, you can never go higher. Slow is different from low (He uses the example of how his teacher insisted on excellent handwriting. Though they never quite achieved it, they also never thought sloppiness was something to be proud of.)

p119 – Standards should be very high and goals should be ambitious.

p119 – One features performers … Nothing makes as much impact on a sales force as to have a successful salesman stand up before his peers and tell them, “This is what has worked for me.”

p120 – The ultimate test of any organization is to make human strengths effective in performance and to neutralize human weaknesses.

p120 – There are no results inside an institution. There are only costs.

p121 – Very rarely is a decision about what it seems to be about.

p122 – One doesn't make unnecessary decisions … Don't make decisions on trivia.

p123 – One starts out with the opportunity, not with the risk.

p124 – Use a very simple rule: If you have consensus on an important matter, don't make the decision … Important decisions are risky. They should be controversial.

p124 – You should never ask who is right. You should not even ask what is right … Assume that each faction has the right answer but is seeing a different part of reality.

p125 – Look upon dissent as a means of creating understanding and mutual respect.

p125 – Any organization needs a nonconformist.

p125 – When you bring conflicts out in the open, a good many disappear.

Not Enough Generals Were Killed

For the next little while, let us turn to the subject of leadership. Lately I have been reviewing a lot of leadership material. And, for my money, Peter Drucker is still as good as it gets.

A couple weeks ago I posted an article Drucker had written back in 1993. If you did not read the article, click here. In 1995, The Drucker Foundation published a book titled The Leader of the Future. What follows is the foreword to that book:

I have been working with organizations of all kinds for fifty years or more––as a teacher and administrator in the university, as a consultant to corporations, as a board member, as a volunteer. Over the years, I have discussed with scores––perhaps even hundreds––of leaders their roles, their goals, and their performance. I have worked with manufacturing giants and tiny firms, with organizations that span the world and others that work with severely handicapped children in one small town. I have worked with some exceedingly bright executives and a few dummies, people who talk a good deal about leadership and others who apparently never even think of themselves as leaders and who rarely, if ever, talk about leadership.

The lessons are unambiguous. The first is that there may be “born leaders,” but there surely are too few to depend on them. Leadership must be learned and can be learned––and this, of course, is what this book was written for and should be used for. But the second major lesson is that “leadership personality,” “leadership style,” and “leadership traits” do not exist. Among the most effective leaders I have encountered and worked with in half a century, some locked themselves into their office and others were ultragregarious. Some (though not many) were “nice guys” and others were stern disciplinarians. Some were quick and impulsive; others studied and studied again and then took forever to come to a decision. Some were warm and instantly “simpatico”; others remained aloof even after years of working closely with others, not only with outsiders like me but with the people within their own organization. Some immediately spoke of their family; others never mentioned anything apart from the task at hand.

Some leaders were excruciatingly vain––and it did not affect their performance (as his spectacular vanity did not affect General Douglas MacArthur's performance until the very end of his career). Some were self-effacing to a fault––and again it did not affect their performance as leaders (as it did not affect the performance of General George Marshall or Harry Truman). Some were as austere in their private lives as a hermit in the desert; others were ostentatious and pleasure-loving and whooped it up at every opportunity. Some were good listeners, but among the most effective leaders I have worked with were also a few loners who listened only to their own inner voice. The one and only personality trait the effective ones I have encountered did have in common was something they did not have: they had little or no “charisma” and little use for the term or what it signifies.

All the effective leaders I have encountered––both those I worked with and those I merely watched––knew four simple things:

1. The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers. Some people are thinkers. Some are prophets. Both roles are important and badly needed. But without followers, there can be no leaders.

2. An effective leader is not someone who is loved or admired. He or she is someone whose followers do the right things. Popularity is not leadership. Results are.

3. Leaders are highly visible. They therefore set examples.

4. Leadership is not rank, privilege, titles, or money. It is responsibility.

Regardless of their almost limitless diversity with respect to personality, style, abilities, and interests, the effective leaders I have met, worked with, and observed also behaved much the same way:

1. They did not start with the question, “What do I want?” They started out asking, “What needs to be done?”

2. Then they asked, “What can and should I do to make a difference?” This has to be something that both needs to be done and fits the leader's strengths and the way she or he is most effective.

3. They constantly asked, “What are the organization's mission and goals? What constitutes performance and results in this organization?”

4. They were extremely tolerant of diversity in people and did not look for carbon copies of themselves. It rarely even occurred to them to ask, “Do I like or dislike this person?” But they were totally––fiendishly––intolerant when it came to a person's performance, standards, and values.

5. They were not afraid of strength in their associates. They gloried in it. Whether they had heard of it or not, their motto was what Andrew Carnegie wanted to have put on his tombstone: “Here lies a man who attracted better people into his service than he was himself.”

6. One way or another, they submitted themselves to the “mirror test”––that is, they made sure that the person they saw in the mirror in the morning was the kind of person they wanted to be, respect, and believe in. This way they fortified themselves against the leader's greatest temptation––to do things that are popular rather than right and to do petty, mean, sleazy things.

Finally, these effective leaders were not preachers; they were doers. In the mid 1920s, when I was in my final high school years, a whole spate of books on World War I and its campaigns suddenly appeared in English, French, and German. For our term project, our excellent history teacher––himself a badly wounded war veteran––told each of us to pick several of these books, read them carefully, and write a major essay on our selections. When we then discussed these essays in class, one of my fellow students said, “Every one of these books says that the Great War was a war of total military incompetence. Why was it?” Our teacher did not hesitate a second but shot right back, “Because not enough general were killed; they stayed way behind the lines and let others do the fighting and dying.”

Effective leaders delegate a good many things; they have to or they drown in trivia. But they do not delegate the one thing that only they can do with excellence, the one thing that will make a difference, they one thing that will set standards, the one thing they want to be remembered for. They do it.

It does matter what kind of organization you work in; you will find opportunities to learn about leadership from all organizations––public, private, and nonprofit. Many people do not realize it, but the largest number of leadership jobs in the United States is in the nonprofit, service sector. Nearly one million nonprofit organizations are active in this country today, and they provide excellent opportunities for learning about leadership. The nonprofit sector is and has been the true growth sector in America's society and economy. It will become increasingly important during the coming years as more and more of the tasks that government was expected to do during the last thirty or forty years will have to be taken over by community organizations, that is, nonprofit organizations.

The Leader of the Future is a book for leaders in all sectors: business, nonprofit, and government. It is written by people who themselves are leaders with proven performance records. It can––and should––be read as the definitive text on the subject. It informs and stimulates.

The first section of this book looks at the future of organizations and examines the role of leaders in the emerging society of organizations. The second part of the book gives vivid accounts of today's and tomorrow's leaders in action. It then turns to look at leadership development strategies, and it concludes with some powerful personal statements from effective leaders.

This is a book about the future. But I hope that it will also be read as a call to action. I hope that it will first challenge every reader to ask, “What in my organization could I do that would truly make a difference? How can I truly set an example?” And I hope that it will then motivate each reader to do it.

The 10 Dumbest Mistakes - Conclusion

We have done it! We have arrived at the conclusion of the book The 10 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make and How to Avoid Them.

This process has taken several weeks because this book has had a lot of memorable passages. The mistakes Dr. Freeman is talking about are thinking mistakes. Otherwise known as cognitive distortions.

As noted, this blog is intended to be about effectiveness and entrepreneurship. And, cognitive distortions tend to be the epitome of ineffective. We are well-advised to remedy these mistakes.

In conclusion, to wrap up this discussion of cognitive psychologist, I figured I would post a summary of the ten mistakes. Personally, I reviewed this list until it was completely committed to memory. And it has served me well.

The 10 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make are:

1. The Chicken Little Syndrome. In the children's story, Chicken Little is bopped on the head by a nut falling from the tree, and immediately thinks the sky is falling. In the same way, people jump to all sorts of catastrophic conclusions without a second thought. And this can be paralyzing.

2. Mind Reading. One of the most dearly dearly held illusions is that we know what others are thinking, and that others should know what we are thinking. “I don't have to tell him–he knows,” is an all-too-common remark, and one that has a way of leading to disappointment when it turns out that he is not only doesn't know, he doesn't even know you think he should know.

3. Personalizing. Some people seem to take everything personally. They assume responsibility for others' bad moods, even for bad weather, and as a result tend to feel either angry or guilty much of the time.

4. Believing Your Press Agent. This is a common failing of the famous, but quite ordinary folks who don't have press agents to glorify them in the media fall victim to it too. It involves, among other things, believing that success in one area automatically translates to success in every area without a need for the same effort that led to the first success.

5. Believing (or Inventing) Your Critics. This mistake is the direct opposite of believing your press agent. It can be just as troublesome, if in a different way, to accept without debate anyone who criticizes you about anything, or to assume that others are criticizing you, without bothering to determine how qualified those critics are to judge you or whether those critics even exist.

6. Perfectionism. This is the desire to be perfect in all things. It sounds quite admirable, and no one would deny that it's smart to set high standards for yourself. However, perfectionism becomes dumb when the standards you set are so high you can never meet them, nor can anyone else. It's dumb when the desire to be 100 percent perfect leads to zero accomplishment.

7. Comparisonitis. To compare and contrast is a respectable way of analyzing differences, but people often get into trouble by focusing only on negative comparisons of themselves to others, or by accepting negative comparisons of themselves made by others. This is very discouraging and usually inaccurate.

8. What-If Thinking. Worry. Worry. Worry. That's what what-if thinking is all about. It's worrying about things that don't exist or are highly improbable in addition to worrying about those threats to health and happiness that are of real concern. And it is worrying about those real threats to a degree that diminishes your power to deal with them instead of increasing your coping power.

9. The Imperative Should. Should is an ordinary, everyday word, except when it is used to indicate an order that may not be refused. Then should becomes a finger waving under the nose. The imperative says: “Don't you dare deviate by as much as a millionth of a millimeter or you'll be sorry. You'll feel guilty; you'll feel ashamed.” Should users build prison cells for themselves. They are so focused on what they should do, or should have done in the past, that they cannot think about what they can do, what they might do in the future.

10. Yes-Butism. The yes-but person always manages to find a negative that outweighs any positives. Or dreams up improbable rationalizations to excuse an obvious negative. Yes-but people get in their own, and others', way.

The 10 Dumbest Mistakes - Part Eight

Chapter Thirteen – Beyond Insight

It's not enough to merely gain insight into your mistakes. It's also important to stop making them.

Insight is very important (but) insight is not enough. All your new knowledge will not help you unless you put it to work. As any scientist would admit, the true benefits of knowledge do not occur until that knowledge is used in practice.

Solving your own problems requires both knowledge and action … You must move beyond insight to action.

Scheduling Time … A written schedule can help you gain control of your life. If you are going to take an action, any action, you must make time to do so … Systematic use of schedules has proven a particularly effective tool for people who are victims of the Chicken Little syndrome of the what-if block … If you write down how you now spend your time, you may find that you spend a great deal of it worrying … Planning more effective use of your time forestalls or minimizes thinking mistakes … Schedules are particularly useful in times of crisis and extra stress, because when you are going through a difficult period, like divorce or illness, special responsibilities are added to your normal chores, duties, and activities. This can make you feel overwhelmed to the point where you don't even do the most routine things well … (If you are out of work) report for job hunting just as you would report for a job. Job hunting becomes the new job.

If you are overly stressed by an upcoming event it may be wise to schedule some preparation time.

Don't forget to schedule social time. Especially if you are a workaholic or a perfectionist. Sometimes people hesitate to throw a party for fear things will not be perfect enough.

Planning Experiences for Mastery or Pleasure

Planning pleasure – Planning a structured way to increase your pleasure can be especially beneficial to people who would like others to read their minds.

Building self-esteem – Success builds self-esteem, and so investing time in activities in which you know you will have success is worthwhile … Anything that you have handled successfully, no matter how small it is, is worth repeating.

Planning practice – The most talented actor needs rehearsal. Nobel Prize winning scientists try first this and then that until they find the formula that matters. And so it is with every human endeavor. Even the gift of gab is found most often in those who have practiced talking to others … If you tend to ask what if, the answers will come with practice.

Problem Solving … One of the most useful strategies in dealing with real problems is to ask: “What will it take to solve this problem?” instead of: “Can this problem be solved?”

Seeking solutions – When you are feeling stressed, you often reject a solution that occurs to you simply because it has occurred to you … Ask: “Has anyone, anywhere, ever succeeded in solving this problem?”

Breaking Your Goal Into Small Steps … Possibly the greatest single barrier to reaching any goal is the feeling that the action required is too big, too difficult, too costly, or too threatening … A technique for dealing with this is to think about a first step rather than the final goal.

Role Playing … Most people play more roles than they are aware of. They act stern with a child to enforce needed discipline even though they are inwardly amused. They act concerned about a customer's complaint even though they really think this customer is a crank. Etc … Role playing is a very powerful action technique. If you want to behave differently, you can play a different role.

Writing a script – It can be helpful to write a script in advance for the role you intend to play. Role playing works in all kinds of situations. If you are going to make a telephone call to sell something, you might pretend to be a salesperson who loves to make telephone calls, who is not at all bothered by fifty rejections because the fifty-first call might be successful.

Trying Out New Behavior … A related technique to role playing is trying out new behavior. That just means practicing a role. Teenage boys practice looking cool. Teenage girls practice looking glamorous. You can practice looking calm. You can practice a smile. You can practice just saying hello. You can practice a job interview with a friend.

Relaxation … You might not think that relaxation belongs in a list of action technique. But consciously making yourself relax can be very helpful action … Your aim is to take your mind away from whatever is causing tension and fixing it on something that will bring about relaxation. So the more deeply you think about, visualize, and describe to yourself that calming place, the calmer you will be.

Chapter Fourteen – Living Better

“One kind of happiness is to know exactly at what point to be miserable,” wrote seventeenth-century epigrammatist Francois duc de La Rochefoucauld.

Here's a simple and easy way to remind yourself of the therapy described in this book:
Think of the word IDEA as an acronym for:

I – Identify the thinking mistaking you are making. (Review those automatic thoughts flitting through your brain.)

D – Define the mistake. (What does it mean to you? How is it affecting you life? What evidence do you have that it exists?)

E – Evaluate your course of action. (Think of alternatives. Consider advantages and disadvantages.)

A – Act. Remember insight is only the first step. Now you must take action.

Life is like dust–constantly having to be cleaned up and cleaned off.

When it comes to a solution, you have to say: “It's up to me.”