Category: Leadership Skills

Happy National Simplicity Day 2021!

National Simplicity Day honors author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who was born on July 12, 1817 (see last year’s post here).  In his book, Walden, he reflected upon simple living in natural surroundings, “In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.”

Today, let’s simplify our lives as leaders and turn to Bill Farrel’s book The 10 Best Decisions a Leader Can Make.

The biblical view of leadership says that your influence is an extension of who you are, not just what you do.

As Jesus put it in Matthew 7:16-17, “By their fruit you will recognize them…every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.” Our leadership influence is the evidence of who we have become.

As Howard Hendricks says, “We cannot pass on what we do not possess.”

Click here to learn more from Farrel

Leading Leaders by Mickey Addison

On this Memorial Day 2021, it’s time to pause and reflect on military heroes who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms.

I chose to highlight Mickey Addison’s book Leading Leaders: Inspiring, Empowering, and Motivating Teams because he describes it as a distillation of his experience leading people over a lifetime, in sports, Scouts, volunteer work, and 26 years as an Air Force officer.

Addison points out that only leaders who understand the relationship between them and their team, and then step up and lead, will ever be able to produce high performance in their organizations.

He points out that the foundation of any excellent organization is an excellent leader or leadership team.  As the late Tom Landry, former Dallas Cowboys’ head coach, once put it, “The art of leadership is to get people to do what they don’t want to do to achieve what they want to achieve.”

Good leaders get all their people, resources, and partners moving in the same direction.

Character—or who a person truly is as a human being, what he values, and how he approaches life—is the foundation of a leader’s success.  Character is composed of five elements, or “bricks,” that, assembled from that foundation, a leader can use to get his team to the next level. The “bricks” in this solid foundation are (1) Integrity, (2) Respect, (3) Leaders Lead, (4) Teamwork, and (5) Little Things Matter.

Click here to learn more from Mickey Addison on inspiring, empowering, and motivating teams