Book Summary: Launching a Leadership Revolution by Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady
Everything goes up and down in leadership. The destiny of our country in the coming years will be determined by employment and small and medium-sized enterprises. To manage these organizations effectively, you need leadership. Orrin and Chris do an excellent job outlining the five stages of leadership.
Why is this important to me?
I don’t want to waste your time and I want you to get actionable insights from this summary. With that said, there are a couple of components that I want to point out in relation to influence. Leaders sell the difference between their vision and current reality. If the vision is compelling and the leader has character and integrity, people will follow.
People need to be skilled, honorable, and hungry to become leaders. Leadership takes effort. I can personally tell you that leading people is not easy. I am also a beginning leader with a lot to learn. To win part of people’s minds, you have to influence them and force them to the cause.
Launching a Leadership Revolution looks at 5 levels of influence on the leadership ladder. For the sake of time, I will describe each part in summary. Leadership can be like herding cats because people are different. To that end, the leader’s goal is to unite people toward common cause.
1. Learning: Continuous learning is now required for any especially leading field. You have to be committed to learning every day. This must be a habit. You can’t influence people en masse if you’re not willing to take the hit and get the job done. Learning leads to better performance and lighting. Without it, you cannot lead. The world today is too sophisticated for ignorance. You need to be a lifelong learner.
2. Performance: it is not the amount of hours that you dedicate to an effort, but the effort that you dedicate to the hours. Leaders have to act. NFL coaches have a three-year lifespan. If they don’t perform and create a winning team, they are fired. People expect performance and want to follow winners. Everyone remembers Muhammad Ali and George Forman. Do you remember Ernie Shavers or Jerry Quarry? These two fighters were good but they weren’t the champions. There are a couple of keys to performance: 1. 80/20 rule – focus on what matters and discard what does not matter and 2. Parkinson’s law – focuses on effectiveness and states that a task is expanded until its allotted time . Shorten homework deadlines and they’ll be done. In college, how many of you finished your final assignments in the last week before the deadline? This is Parkinson’s Law in its negative effect. Term work could be done in one week instead of 15 weeks.
3. Leading – “Serving is ruling” – Leaders know they have to serve others to get the job done. Selfish and selfish leaders will typically be stuck in positional leadership, which is the lowest rung on the leadership ladder. Lee Iacocca was a good leader but not a great leader. He lost his focus and began to focus on his ego after the Chrysler change. His approach became too “focused.” To be a great leader, you must be humble and have the collective ahead of you. If you look at truly great leaders, you will see this trait: Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and George Washington.
4. Develop Leaders: Developing other leaders is the true key multiplier effect. Having great people leading allows organizations to scale. In business, this is the difference between being self-employed and owning a business that doesn’t require your full attention. Do you have a local dentist? Typically what you see in these internships are very successful people doing all the work. They make an excellent living but cannot scale beyond a certain point because THEY can only do a set amount of work and there are only a limited number of hours in a day. Compare this to Warren Buffett. Warren owns several businesses and does not run any of them. He buys them with excellent management and leadership. Provides additional leadership and capital to expand the business and scale. That is one of the benefits of developing leaders.
5. Develop leaders who develop leaders: This is the holy grail of leadership. Orrin gives a great example in the book. Christianity is 2000 years old and it is mainly that way thanks to the Apostle Paul. His ability to develop leaders who developed leaders was unparalleled in history.
Launching a Leadership Revolution is a good book worth studying. Orrin and Chris do a good job outlining the key aspects of influence and leadership.
I hope this short video summary has been helpful to you. The key to any new idea is to incorporate it into your daily routine until it becomes a habit. Habits are formed in just 21 days. One thing you can take away from this book is learning. The main ingredient for your leadership skills to take off is learning. Make it a daily habit to read a few pages, watch educational videos, and access associations outside of your comfort zone.
