Should you care about developing your leadership skills? You should care. By developing your leadership skills, you are assured a more rewarding and successful career. You will make a greater difference in every organization in which you work. You will lift the performance of everyone who works with you. If you aspire to greater responsibility and the rewards that follow, then learning how to be a better leader is a necessary step to getting there. Opportunities and rewards in your organization will surely increase if you are an effective leader.
Your organization (whether a hospital, a government agency, a business, or a school) needs you to be a strong and effective leader. Research presented in this book proves there is a high correlation between leadership effectiveness and the results that leaders produce. Developing an adequate cadre of leaders to perpetuate their organization is the number one preoccupation of CEOs in today's large corporations.
What's more, your organization needs you to be more than "adequate” in your leadership. While those who learn to lead get better results than those who don't, one startling conclusion presented in this book is the huge difference between the merely good and the extraordinary leader. Unfortunately, the concept of leadership continues to be shrouded in misunderstanding. Ask 100 people to define leadership, and you are sure to get 100 different responses. So one objective of this book is to provide a simple and practical definition of leadership. It is not based on the subjective impressions of the authors, but comes from solid empirical research.
Based on analysis of over 20,000 leaders, this book describes the 16 behaviors that differentiate the best leaders from the least effective. These are the behaviors that subordinates, peers and bosses notice. These are the behaviors that you should work on developing.
Many leaders mistakenly believe that the path to greatness lies in finding their least effective traits or skills, and then bring those so-called "weaknesses" up into an acceptable range. These leaders believe that by removing these lower scores, they will then be perceived as much more effective leaders. This book argues that this is a grave misconception.
Great leaders are defined by having a small number of real strengths. Exceptional leaders don't get there because they are flaw- less. And, conversely, they are not exceptional leaders because they do 180 things remarkably well. This book describes how the acquisition of certain strengths help make you an extraordinary leader. These strengths can catapult leaders into the 90th percentile. Those people then make enormous contributions to the success of their organizations and their employees. The following lessons are stepping stones you can follow to become an extraordinary leader.
