Nothing's changed since yesterday when I wrote you - I am still a devotee of Peter Drucker and his management and leadership writings. Yesterday I passed along a quote from The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done. Today I have another entry to pass along, this time from April 8:
All the effective leaders I have encountered--both those I worked with and those I merely watched--knew four simple things: a leader is someone who has followers; popularity is not leadership, results are; leaders are highly visitble, they set examples; leadership is not rank, privilege, titles or money, it is responsibility.
When I was in my final high school years, our excellent history teacher--himself a badly wounded war veteran--told each of us to pick several of a whole spate of history books on World War I 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 generals were killed; they stayed way behind the lines and let others do the fighting and dying." Effective leaders delegate, but they do not delegate the one thing that will set the standards. They do it.
I've known some generals who stayed way behind the lines, have you? I watched them and learned how not to lead. If I ever got to lead, I promised myself, I would be with the people while I led the people. How about you? What kind of a leader are you? What kind do you want to be? I hope you will take these Drucker words to heart and apply them in such a way as to be a more effective leader today than you were yesterday.
Technorati Tags: leadership, Peter Drucker, A Daily Drucker
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