I Studied Leadership for 6 Months. Here’s What I Learned-20 Lessons from 20 Books.

As 2020 approached, I looked back on my 2019 goals and evaluated what I wanted to focus on in the upcoming year. We were encouraged at the Cavs to make professional development a priority and so I thought deeply on the topic. I struggled to find the right workshop, class, event, or conference that I knew would have a lasting impact after researching and asking peers for a few weeks. While researching possible development areas, I was always curious on the topic of leadership and quickly found that there was no silver bullet for what I was seeking. My first thought was to leverage my network and openly ask for suggestions on this platform (Leadership Book Recommendations), which led to great recommendations to get me started.

I set out to read 20 books and over 180 days, I did just that. The list of books I selected are below. Many of them were suggestions in the post mentioned above along with some intensive research and all are referenced in the lessons discussed.

1. Team of Teams (Chris Fussell)
2. Leadershift (John Maxwell)
3. What You Do Is Who You Are (Ben Horowitz)
4. Onward (Howard Schultz)
5. Wooden on Leadership (John Wooden)
6. Primal Leadership (Daniel Goleman)
7. Profiles in Leadership (Walter Isaacson)
8. Art of War (Sun Tzu)
9. Leadership and Self Deception (Arbinger Institute)
10. Give and Take (Adam Grant)
11. Leaders Eat Last (Simon Sinek)
12. 5 Languages of Appreciation (Paul White)
13. The Effective Executive (Peter Drucker)
14. Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz)
15. Hit Refresh (Satya Nadella)
16. Ride of a Lifetime (Bob Iger)
17. Ego is the Enemy (Ryan Holiday)
18. High Output Management (Andy Grove)
19. Leadership Challenge (Kouzes & Posner)
20. Good to Great (Jim Collins)

+*One Academic Paper: On Leading and Managing:Synonyms or Separate (and Unequal)? (Professor Kevin Kniffin, James Detert, and Hannes Leroy)

Let’s dive into the lessons…

Leaders have a vision.

In his book, Hit Refresh, Satya Nadella writes that when he became Microsoft’s CEO in 2014, he realized that employees needed “a clear, tangible and inspiring vision.” He was determined to communicate his vision and worldview clearly and regularly. This email about Microsoft’s focus on a cloud-based future reflect how effectively he communicates his vision.

In the Leadership Challenge, one of the five practices of exemplary leadership is inspiring a shared vision. The data reveals that leaders who are seen as very frequently or nearly always showing people how enlisting in a common vision can help them achieve their long-term interests are evaluated almost sixteen times more favorably by their direct reports than those leaders who engage in this same leadership behavior rarely, if at all.

It is one thing to have a vision and another to share it freely and execute it.

Leaders ask (questions, the why, for inputs and ideas, for influencers to share)

In Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek says in strong organizations, people will break the rules because it is the right thing to do for others. Breaking the rules often involves challenging the status quo, asking why, asking is there a better way to do things, asking for feedback, or asking for others to share their thoughts.

Taking that a step further, Jim Collins acknowledges that leadership is about vision (lesson #1), but it is equally about creating a climate where truth is heard and brutal facts confronted. The Good to Great leaders (Level 5 leaders) create this climate by leading with questions, not answers.

Endless curiosity, 360 degree feedback, asking once, asking again, and then again are key qualities.

Leaders create confidence.

In Onward, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says: “I do think effective leaders share two intertwined attributes: an unbridled level of confidence about where their organizations are headed, and the ability to bring people along.”

When you exhibit confidence, it makes it easier for others to trust the leader and the leader feels more positive about their ability to lead people and deal with daily challenges.

Leaders possess a growth mindset and are lifetime learners.

Famed UCLA coach John Wooden stresses that you need to “constantly be awake, alive, and alert in evaluating yourself as well as the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and your competitors.”

In addition to his clear and inspiring vision, Satya Nadella references the growth mindset 24 times in Hit Refresh. As Nadella puts it, successful people are “learn-it-alls” and not “know-it-alls.” Nadella believes that a fixed mindset will limit your growth while a growth mindset will propel you and your organization forward.

Leaders are focused on getting better, constantly.

Leaders set clear goals for the future.

In Ride of a Lifetime, Bob Iger outlines his approach after taking over as Disney CEO. He takes the strategy set by the firm (assuming there is one), translates it into an actionable mandate for the team, and then draws out a broad map of how to get there. Or as Iger put it: “This is where we want to be. This is how we’re going to get there.”

According to Iger, this small but critical step is one of the most defining traits of good leaders. “You have to convey your priorities clearly and repeatedly. In my experience, it’s what separates great managers from the rest.” Setting clear goals allows the team to do what they do best with a clear purpose. “You can do a lot for the morale of the people around you…just by taking the guesswork out of their day-to-day.

Employees will be more motivated and work harder when they can tie their daily work and priorities into clear future goals to work towards. A leader continually brings up the future goals and how employees can achieve them.

Leaders motivate and inspire.

Renowned former Intel CEO Andy Grove in High Output Management says “a leader’s efforts and all they can do to improve the output of an employee is motivate and train. There is nothing else.”

On this lesson, Simon Sinek further adds that: “What makes a good leader is that they eschew the spotlight in favor of spending time and energy to do what they need to do to support and protect their people.”

How are you as a leader going to make your employees and team better? What can you do, big or small, to light a fire under someone to achieve their potential?

Leaders facilitate change.

A key point in Team of Teams that Chris Fussell expressed was the concept of our modern leaders needing to be more like “gardeners tending their patch rather than Patton-like Generals, executing chessboard moves.” This includes the importance of shared consciousness, broad participation in a centralized forum to facilitate information sharing, trust, and empowered execution.

Change does not happen overnight and at times if it is forceful, it may not be effective. Instead, as part of The Leadership Challenge, a key practice is to challenge the process. “To Challenge the Process, you must experiment and take risks by constantly generating small wins and learning from experience. This means you must: Create opportunities for small wins, promoting meaningful progress.”

Leadership expert John Maxwell describes a successful leader as one that can shift 7 things in his book Leadershift.

1. Learn, unlearn, relearn
2. Value yesterday but live in today
3. Rely on speed but thrive on timing
4. See the big picture as the picture keeps getting bigger
5. Live in today bit think about tomorrow
6. Move forward courageously in the midst of uncertainty
7. Realize today’s best will not meet tomorrow challenges

Change just not for the sake of change, but change that is fueled with confidence, substance, and the team behind it.

Leaders model the way.

In Ben Horowitz’s What You Do Is Who You Are, he simply states “Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in a company-wide meeting. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do.”

Part of modeling the way comes with challenges, as the “greatest challenge of leadership is to know when to be flexible and pragmatic, on the one hand, and when it is, instead, a moment to stand firm on principle and clarity of vision” (Profiles in Leadership)

The golden rule when it comes to leadership: only ask others to do something you are willing to do yourself.

If one is successful with this golden rule, leaders who were clear about their values delivered as much as five times greater returns for their organizations as did leaders of weak character.

Leaders get results.

Andy Grove continually emphasizes that “The output of a manager is the output of the organizational units under his or her supervision or influence.”

Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive makes a similar point to focus on outward contribution and effective executives gear their efforts to results rather than to work. They start out with the question, “What results are expected of me?” rather than with the work to be done, let alone with its techniques and tools.

They also tend to “concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results. They force themselves to set priorities and stay with their priority decisions. They know that they have no choice but to do first things first — and second things not at all. The alternative is to get nothing done.”

Leaders with lots of talk but no action either don’t last long or are not truly effective, or even worse, both.

Leaders enlarge and encourage the heart.

Howard Schultz sought to build and transform the Starbucks brand and deemed it essential that “creating an engaging, respectful, trusting workplace culture is not the result of any one thing. It’s a combination of intent, process, and heart, a trio that must constantly be fine-tuned.”

Kouzes & Posner state that “the secret to success is to stay in love. Staying in love gives you the fire to ignite other people, to see inside other people, to have a greater desire to get things done than other people. A person who is not in love doesn’t really feel the kind of excitement that helps them to get ahead and to lead others and to achieve. I don’t know any other fire, any other thing in life that is more exhilarating and is more positive a feeling than love is.”

If you don’t feel it in your heart, then your true leadership qualities cannot be unleashed.

Leaders enable others to do.

“The responsibility of leaders is to teach their people the rules, train them to gain competency and build their confidence. At that point, leadership must step back and trust that their people know what they are doing and will do what needs to be done.”

Simon Sinek- Leaders Eat Last

Leaders give autonomy to peers and don’t feel the need to micromanage.

Leaders are decisive and make effective decisions.

While leaders must enable others to do and trust, they must also know when they need to make decisions. Howard Schultz states that:

“the core capacity of leadership is the ability to make right decisions while flying blind, basing them on knowledge, wisdom, and the ability to stay wedded to an overriding goal. “

Is the right decision also an effective one? Yes says Peter Drucker and effective executives know “that this is, above all, a matter of system — of the right steps in the right sequence. They know that an effective decision is always a judgment based on “dissenting opinions” rather than on “consensus on the facts.” And they know that to make many decisions fast means to make the wrong decisions. What is needed are few, but fundamental, decisions. What is needed is the right strategy rather than razzle-dazzle tactics.”

Leaders are often compensated for having to make tough decisions and are rewarded when they are decisive.

Leaders possess self-awareness.

Above all else, John Wooden says “before you can lead others, you must be able to lead yourself.”

A simple start to assessing this is to take an emotional intelligence test as well as a personal values test based on the Barrett Seven Levels of Consciousness Model. These are merely two free things amongst many other resources in this space that can prove to be valuable.

Leaders build and model trust.

In the Eastern Zhou period of ancient China, military general Sun Tzu wrote on this lesson in “The Art of War”, as he describes the Commander advantage: “because he fusses over his men as if they were infants, they will accompany him into the deepest valleys; because he fusses over his men as if they were his own beloved sons, they will die by his side.”

This trust does not happen overnight, as Simon Sinek says: “We cannot tell people to trust us. We cannot instruct people to come up with big ideas. And we certainly can’t demand that people cooperate. These are always results — the results of feeling safe and trusted among the people with whom we work. When the Circle of Safety is strong, we naturally share ideas, share intelligence and share the burdens of stress. Every single skill and strength we have is amplified to better compete and face the dangers in the world outside and advance the organization’s interests vastly more effectively.”

When there is not trust with leaders, everything else around it falls apart.

Leaders possess emotional intelligence.

Daniel Goleman helped to establish the concept of “emotional intelligence” as an essential part of a good leader in his book Primal Leadership. The four areas of emotional intelligence (self-awareness, emotional self-management, social awareness, relationship management) stress that a leader’s primal task is an emotional one that seeks to articulate a message that resonates with their followers’ emotional reality.

Improving your emotional intelligence will undoubtedly have a positive impact not only on your performance, but for those you help lead as well.

Leaders minimize self-deception.

While a majority of these lessons focus on what you should do, there are a few dangers (amongst many) to minimize or avoid as part of a good leader.

In Leadership and Self Deception, the Arbinger Institute states that most personal and organizational problems are the result of self-deception, the first danger discussed herein. We deceive ourselves into evaluating situations and individuals in such a way to justify our own actions and belittle those around us. The authors use a fictional story of a new manager and his respective leaders to articulate what self-deception is, how individuals get trapped into it, how it undermines one’s performance and relationships, and the way to avoid it.

Leaders don’t let their ego become the enemy.

Danger #2: Author Ryan Holiday of Ego is the Enemy, describes “The ego we see most commonly goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition.”

How do we let ego not become the enemy? Ryan argues that “The way through, the way to rise again, requires a reorientation and increased self-awareness. We don’t need pity — our own or anyone else’s — we need purpose, poise, and patience.”

He further adds: “Every day for the rest of your life you will find yourself at one of three phases: aspiration, success, failure. You will battle the ego in each of them. You will make mistakes in each of them.”

One’s ego can get in the way of being an effective leader.

Leaders are givers, not takers.

Renowned social psychologist Adam Grant articulates the differences between givers and takers in his book Give and Take and says that givers are different in that “they get to the top without cutting others down, finding ways of expanding the pie that benefit themselves and the people around them. Whereas success is zero-sum in a group of takers, in groups of givers, it may be true that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. As Simon Sinek writes, “Givers advance the world. Takers advance themselves and hold the world back.””

Further, givers develop prestige in four domains of influence: presenting, selling, persuading, and negotiating.

What can leaders give? The next lesson may answer that…

Leaders recognize and appreciate their peers.

Great leaders give praise, recognition, and appreciation immediate and often. The 5 Languages of Appreciation stresses that leaders must recognize that their peers each have preferred ways of receiving this appreciation. Within the 5 languages (words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, tangible gifts, and physical touch), the more leaders understand how to use them, the more likely employees are to be motivated, satisfied with their job, and be committed. Sixty four percent of employees leave because they feel underappreciated.

Taking the time to first understand each employee’s language of appreciation and then to take act on that with proper recognition and appreciation will go a long way to develop the leader and the organization.

Leaders lead, they don’t just manage.

Aren’t leading and managing the same? Professor Kevin M Kniffin of Cornell University (my former college professor) sought to further examine the distinctions between leadership and management in three studies in “On Leading and Managing”. Within the studies, the words inspires, encourages, motivates, guides, and teaches were rated as significantly more central to being a leader, whereas the word supervises, fires, bosses, oversees, and budgets were rated as more central to being a manager. In Study 2,it was confirmed that leader activities are typically evaluated more positively than managerial activities, even in situations that are specifically designed to favor managerial skills.

Not all managers are leaders.

There you have it — -20 leadership lessons from 20 books.

I hope you enjoyed reading the post and can apply at least one tidbit that you didn’t know before about the topic of leadership. Not in a leadership position or don’t think you are in a position to lead? Think again and look to apply these lessons and principles into not only your career, but your daily life.

JR