Reading and Leading, Vol. I

As an avid reader and English teacher, I plow through hundreds of pages a week. So it made sense to me to post some book blurbs in this space. So, not beacause it's the best, but because it's the most recent, here we have the very corporate inspirational-branding-sounding title, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You, by John C. Maxwell.

O.K, it hurt to type that title, but I'm going to get over it because there's (surprise, surprise) 21 chapter titles where that came from, and they're coming our way.

1) The Law of the Lid, wherein we are told that leadership is the key to effectiveness. Our level of leadership ability is in fact the lid on how effective individuals can be.

2) The Law of Influence, in which Maxwell argues that leadership is not primarily Management, Entrepreneurship, Knowledge, Pioneering, or Position. It is Influence.

3) The Law of Process: leaders develop slowly through daily growth.

4) The Law of Navigation: leaders see the journey ahead and lead people through it well. Navigators draw on past experience, listen to others, and plan carefully to ensure success. And, hey, they can remember an acronym too!
Predetermine a course of action.
Lay out your goals.
Adjust your priorities.
Notify key personnel.

Allow time for acceptance.
Head into action.
Expect problems.
Always point to the successes.
Daily review your plan.

5) The Law of E.F. Hutton: real leaders are the ones others listen to, not necessarily the ones who hold titles. Positional leaders speak first, while real leaders speak later. Positional leaders need real leaders to get things done, while real leaders just need their own influence. Positional leaders only influence others with positions, while real leaders influence all those around them. Real leaders are listened to because of their character, relationships, knowledge, intuition, experience, past successes, and ability. So those would be seven things you'd want to accumulate to lead well.

6) The Law of Solid Ground: always earn and keep trust; it's the foundation of leadership.

7) The Law of Respect: people follow those whom they respect.

8) The Law of Intuition: leaders either naturally have, or must develop, informed intuition. Leader read their situations carefully, while also reading trends, resources, people, and themselves. Intuition, as Maxwell defines it, is paying attention to these things through our lenses as leaders.

9) The Law of Magnetism: leaders tend to attract people like themselves, in terms of attitude, generation, background, values, life experience, and life ability. There's some possibility here to cultivate those qualities in yourself that you'd like your followers to have, some acceptance of this reality, and perhaps some caution to try to move against this trend and gather others who complement the leader but wouldn't naturally follow that leader.

10) The Law of Connection: leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand. So reach out and feel that beating, pulsing blood. This is Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom territory, folks...

11) The Law of the Inner Circle: all organizations have an inner circle and leaders surround themselves with the best one possible, with people who raise up themse selves, people who raise others' morale, people who raise up the leader, and people who raise up and multiply other leaders.

12) The Law of Empowerment: leaders empower others, especially other leaders. If a leader is worried about job security, resistant to change, or lacking a sense of self-worth, it won't happen, but that will always, at best, be limiting for the leader and for the cause.

13) The Law of Reproduction: most leaders become leaders because of the influence of another leader. So leaders ought to attract and develop other leaders, making this one of their very highest priorities.

14) The Law of Buy-In: people tend to rally to a leader first, then to a vision. It's counterintuitive, but a leader can always change visions, but even a good vision requires a leader to succeed.

15) The Law of Victory: leaders find ways to achieve, to win. (And I thought leaders were all about endless searches for ways to lose....) Victory requires unity of vision, diversity of skills, and dedication to victory and helping others reach their potential.

16) The Law of the Big Mo: Just kidding. Momentum is hard to stop; it's a powerful change agent, but it's easier to steer than to start. So leaders prepare and motivate in order to build momentum, which then makes leaders look better and makes followers perform better.

17) The Law of Priorities: activity isn't necessarily accomplishment. So leaders prioritize what is required, what gives the greatest return, and what brings the greatest reward.

18) The Law of Sacrifice: leaders give up to go up. Sacrifice is an enormous part of leadership, and the path toward greater leadership is often greater sacrifice.

19) The Law of Timing: mistakes in timing can lead to resistance, mistake, lost opportunity, or disaster. The right action at the right time produces success.

20) The Law of Explosive Growth: leading followers produces incremental growth, leading leaders produces explosive growth. (Or it can, he should probably say.) Developing leaders takes wanting to be succeeded, focusing on strengths, treating leaders as individuals (and giving them greater attention than others), giving power away, investing time in others, and so impacting people far beyond their reach.

21) The Law of Legacy: leaders who want a legacy take a long view, create a leadership culture, make sacrifices, and value team leadership. Then they can walk away with integrity and watch others succeed, in both senses of the word.

Despite my snobbery of style and sarcasm, there's plenty of wisdom here to digest and work with.

Let their Fears Become your Fears

My school is undertaking a major change initiative that I am helping to push forward and last week, our school leaders discussed the climate of fear some of us have sensed in our school. I am convinced that much of the fear is simply fear of the unknown and have wanted to quickly respond with an information and marketing campaign of sorts.

"You don't understand? You're afraid. Let me help you see the light!"

In the midst of the meeting, my principal took a different tack and sought to validate the fears we were hearing. He said that as leaders, we need to let their fears become our fears. Even if we have more knowledge and more perspective, we need to see things from the perspective of those we wish to lead. Fears are always real, and the emotion behind fears should never be judged and always be validated.

Another moment earlier in the meeting connects for me. My colleague and friend who coaches wrestling at my school was talking about his sons' mimickry of his wrestlers' behavior. He has to deal with his third grader acting like an immature fifteen-year-old hormonal boy. And it's not always clear that's a plus.

My friend, though, is letting his wrestlers' issues become his issues. He hasn't insulated his family from his professional life but has let his own children feel the effect - for good or for ill - of his work.

Friends of mine who are very spiritual have a word for this: they call it incarnational ministry. That's a fancy way of saying service in the body. It means being with people to the extent that you let their issues become your issues, helping people out from up close, not at an arms length.

Of course, this notion has all sorts of risks to boundaries and personal sanity that need to be worked out. But it may just be the only way to really know the people we serve, and so the only way to lead.

"I'd Send My Kids to Your School"

I teach all of the freshmen in my school this year and have tried to really adopt them as a class and make an investment in their development. As part of that process, I've created an area of my classroom called "Going to College" where I post seniors' acceptance letters from colleges and universities.

Recently I was accepted into a university-based program myself, and I so I posted my own letter. Northeastern University and the Center for Collaborative Education accepted me as a member of next year's Principal Residency cohort, and I posted my acceptance in order to highlight my own desire to continue to further my education and professional life.

The letter has prompted a number of interesting conversations. In one heartening moment, a student of mine asked me about my desire to be a principal one day and told me, "I'd send my kids to your school." I felt honored by the moment but not surprised; she's been a fan for months. Just today, though, another student told me that if there could be a vote for his principal, he'd vote for me. This from a student who's been kicked out of my class three or four times in the past two weeks and I felt sure was fast becoming my enemy.

He made me think about what young people expect in a leader and what they see in me. My conclusions may be obvious, but as with much truth that we all know in our minds, it can take time to truly lodge itself in our spirits. Young people want their leaders to be involved in their lives, to have vision for their future, to be competent at what they do, and to demand the best for them. It's not much more complicated in their minds, and perhaps they're right.

As a professional leader, I want to keep this "amateur" spirit about me: the one who loves to lead, rather than the one who simply does it for a job. I want to always be involved in others' lives, I want to see hope for their futures, I want to manage competently, and I want to help people rise to their best selves. I want to lead.