Attached is part of a PowerPoint presentation presented by
weLEAD during a recent seminar in Akron, Ohio
This portion of the seminar program focused on 8 Traits of Effective
Leaders and some recommendations for leadership self-discovery.

It is  provided in both PowerPoint and Rich Text format.

You may download the files for later offline viewing by pointing to the file
and "right clicking" your mouse. Chose the menu option "save target as"
and then choose the directory you want the file to be saved in. Click on
the "save" radio button and in a minute the file will be saved on your hard
drive for later viewing. Two different files are available below. One is a
PowerPoint file You will obviously need Microsoft PowerPoint to see the
program. The other file is the basic text Outline to the program in Rich
Text Format (RTF) and can be seen in most word processors.

8 Traits of Effective Leaders (RTF)

8 Traits of Effective Leaders-Powerpoint presentation (PPT)

Author Garry Wills has a keen sense of the importance of followers to leadership. In the introduction to the book he states plainly “The leader most needs followers”. He goes on to explain that in reality followers “have a say” in what they are led toward! The theme of Certain Trumpets is that a successful leader doesn’t just trumpet or sound their own certain message, but instead they sound a specific call to others capable of following. He believes that leaders need to understand their followers more than followers need to understand them! What is Garry Wills basic definition of a leader? “One who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by the leader and followers”. In other words, coercion of others is not leadership, it is just power.

With this introduction in mind the rest of the book consists of Wills discussion of individuals who have possessed leadership in various ways. The author believes that different leaders should be considered notable because of their own goals rather than their personalities, which is the most common perspective. As a result of this perspective, Wills does not treat leadership as a single thing, but mentions sixteen various kinds of leadership within the book. He also goes on to discuss various subdivisions within the sixteen kind’s. Certain Trumpets attempts to define these distinctive types of leadership by using examples that range from Franklin Roosevelt (Electoral Leadership) to Dorothy Day (Saintly Leadership). To make this exploration interesting, and to provoke thought, he also provides an antitype character in contrast to each distinctive type of leader presented. It is Wills hope to exemplify the individual’s characteristics by providing this contrast. Wills doesn’t think we lack leaders today, but sufficient followers. He refers to this as the “real problem with leadership”. Certain Trumpets is easy to read, stimulating and creative enough to look at leadership from a different lens.

Certain Trumpets - The Call of Leaders

Simon & Schuster, 1994 (336 pages in paperback)

Author Garry Wills

ISBN 0-671-65702-X

weLEAD rating recommended

Buy This Book at a Discounted Price Here!

Ed Oakly and Doug Krug provide an understandable and clear definition of what they term "Enlightened Leadership." This type of leadership approach attempts to deal with real underlying problems within organizations rather than their symptoms. It is founded on an approach that leaders must first or concurrently deal with the "mindset" or spirit of their people as well as changing processes or structures. Without positively dealing with attitudes and thinking styles among the organization all efforts of changing structures, systems or processes will meet great resistance and potential failure.

They formally define Enlightened Leadership as "the willingness and ability to draw the vision from their people and inspire and empower those people to do what it takes to bring the vision into reality. Indeed, Enlightened Leaders nurture and encourage their people to be open, creative, and innovative and find what it takes to achieve their shared objectives." This type of leadership gets the "members of the organization to accept ownership for that vision as their own, thus developing the commitment to carry it through to completion."

Much of the book is devoted to asking thought provoking questions in the authors hope that the reader can discover their own answers to an enhanced leadership approach. Much of the content in the book is a result of their personal experience working with their own clients and using their own observations. It is obviously full of valid and helpful information presented in an interesting and easy to read style.

Enlightened Leadership - Getting to the Heart of Change

Simon & Schuster, 1994 (265 pages in paperback)

Authors Ed Oakly and Doug Krug

ISBN 0-671-86675-3

weLEAD rating highly recommended

Buy This Book at a Discounted Price Here!

Author Gary Yukl uses his expertise and credibility to write an outstanding book focusing on managerial leadership rather than social or parliamentary leadership. He attempts to include information on both the theory and practice of leadership in modern organizations. This valuable text also includes many recommendations and guidelines for improving the effectiveness of managers and leaders. Leadership in Organizations includes a number of cases in an attempt to help the reader understand real world organizational problems and applications. This is a book that is primarily written and mostly reads like a college text book and is indeed used by a number of universities in their managerial or leadership programs. However, it is easy to read and does an excellent job of including the most informative and relative literature, studies and theories available today.

Gary Yukl has written perhaps the most comprehensive work ever covering virtually every aspect of modern organizational leadership. It can rightly be considered the students “bible” for the study of modern leadership principles and theories. It is highly recommended for anyone interested in the study or organizational leadership, leading teams, leading change or studying follower-based approaches toward leadership.

Leadership in Organizations, 4th Edition,

Prentice Hall, 1998 (564 Pages in hardbound)

Author Gary Yukl

ISBN 0-13-897521-3

weLEAD rating highly recommended

Buy This Book at a Discounted Price Here!

Leadership Unbound is a unusual book because of its format and the diversity of its two authors. Larry Corbett is a pastor and religious leader with experience serving in 6 congregations. His experience working in a nonprofit organization gives him a distinctive perspective of leadership. Jerre Stead has experience as a CEO and board member.

Previously he served in executive positions with the Square D Company, AT&T’s Global Business Communications, the Legent Corporation and Ingram Micro. His experience working in the free market business environment also gives him a distinctive perspective of leadership. Together these two authors from different backgrounds and business cultures have written a book to compare and expound on their experiences.

The purpose of the book is to guide the reader to “Begin a successful enterprise, whether in business or the church, to guide success”. In eight chapters, Leadership Unbound attempts to take the reader through the steps a leader must navigate, beginning with a vision, values, planning, building and maintaining. It also outlines how the role of leadership changes as the organization grows.

The format of the book is simply a series of statements or ideas presented to initiate discussion. Each statement is answered individually by Larry and Jerre. Often the discussion goes back and forth as they build on each other’s personal examples and career perspective. Each chapter and discourse ends with a group of planning questions designed to stimulate your thinking and strategy. It is interesting to note that not only do they have some different approaches to successful leadership; they also share some common practices and principles. One of these is the knowledge that everyorganization needs superior leadership to flourish and grow strong. Leadership Unbound is a solid publication that looks at leading from a different angle. Sometimes the interaction between the authors on certain subjects seems disconnected. However, if you have a special interest in the distinctions between for profit and nonprofit leaders (or secular and religious), this may be the book you are looking for.

Five Star Publications - 2005 (185 pages in paperback)

ISBN 1-58985-010-6

weLEAD rating – recommended

Buy This Book at a Discounted Price Here!

Leading Change
- Overcoming the Ideology of Comfort and the Tyranny of Custom
Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1995 (282 pages in hardback)
Author James O’Toole
ISBN 1-55542-608-5

Author James O’Toole is definitely not afraid of creating controversy. His book is a refreshing approach to leadership in many ways. Stylistically and philosophically, Leading Change is a different kind of book about leaders and the natural resistance of the change process. O’Toole left a comfortable 20 year university chair in academia to begin working with the Aspen Institute. This experience was a major inspiration in writing this enterprising book.

Perhaps the most daring aspect of Leading Change is O’Toole’s clear repudiation of the contingency theories so prevalent today in leadership research and coaching programs. He obviously did not come to this conclusion frivolously. This work includes his observations and experience from over two decades of working with both corporate leaders and with respected mentors such as Bennis, Drucker, Gardner, DePree and others! O’Toole loudly proclaims that the contingency theories so revered today simply don’t work in the long run. He maintains that by their very design they typically destroy trust between leaders and followers. He then offers a values-based alternative, which is a primary focus of the book.

Leading Change begins with O’Toole drawing a number of deep analogies from a painting by James Ensor. He immediately draws you into the books theme by probing a number of profound leadership questions and scenarios analogous to paintings theme. As an author, he seeks to answer three related questions:

1. What are the major causes of resistance to change?
2. How can leaders effectively and morally overcome that resistance?
3. Why is the dominant philosophy of leadership, based on contingency theory, neither an effective nor a moral guide for people who wish to lead change?

To answer these questions O’Toole divides the book into two halves. The first half deals with leaders and the second half with followers. The main theme of his work is to seriously question the validity of contingency theory and propose the alternative of value-based leadership behavior. O’Toole writes, “Instead, values-based leadership is an attitude about people, philosophy, and process. To overcome the resistance to change, one must be willing, for starters, to change oneself. In essence, then, values-based leadership is “unnatural.””

If you want to read and digest a book that will challenge both you and much present thinking about leadership, this book is definitely for you!

weLEAD rating highly recommended

Buy This Book at a Discounted Price Here!

In the forward of this book Tom Peters says, “If you take time to read only one business book this year, I strongly encourage you to read NUTS!”  We wholeheartedly agree! Between the covers of this entertaining book Kevin and Jackie Freiberg have captured the essence of the “Southwest Spirit” that has made Southwest Airlines one of the top companies in America. Although Southwest served over 90 million bags of peanuts in 1999, there is nothing “nuts” about the way they run their company. Southwest topped the list of Fortune magazine’s Best Companies To Work For in 1998, and since then has been in one of the top four slots every year.

This book is a must read for anyone who wants to see how the concepts of servant leadership are actually put into practice in a real company of over 30,000 employees. You will learn about a company that practices the golden rule as corporate policy—and has paid quarterly dividends for 97 consecutive quarters doing it! The “Southwest culture” described at length in the book gives this company its strategic advantage. This culture genuinely cares about the welfare of the Southwest employees—which are approximately 82% unionized. Southwest Airlines has turned a profit every year since 1973, yet it maintains the lowest fares in a highly competitive industry. It is one of the most admired airlines in the world, regularly ranks best in customer service, and has a consistently high safety record. Southwest was the first airline to establish a home page on the Internet, and was named by BusinessWeek as a “Web Smart 50” company.

Some of the book’s statistics about the airline are now out of date due to incredible growth. More recent statistics are readily available at Southwest’s web site (www.southwest.com). However, the principles discussed in this book that are used to guide this most admired airline are timeless.

NUTS! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success

Bard Press, October 1996 (363 pages in hardbound)

Bantam Doubleday Dell Pub, March 1998 (362 pages paperback reprint edition)

Authors: Kevin and Jackie Freiberg

ISBN 0767901843

weLEAD rating highly recommended.

Buy This Book at a Discounted Price Here!

The Baron Son, authored by Vicky Therese Davis, William R. Patterson & D. Marques Patton, is a book written by three innovative entrepreneurs who have surely approached the teaching of leadership and business achievement from an exceptional perspective. Most books written about leadership are penned in a non-fictional format. What you read is what you get. Little is left to the imagination as the writers directly impart their ideas from one paragraph to another. The Baron Son uses a different approach. It is written as a fictional story about a wise baron who acts as a revered tutor and slowly imparts knowledge to three young disciples. The end result of this approach is that the reader is left to glean from the visionary wisdom and teachings of the baron. The longer you ponder on each major “supreme principle” as revealed by the baron, the more you personally benefit from his insight. 

The three authors weave a large number of moral and successful business principles in this interesting allegorical fable. As you read The Baron Son you come to learn that hard work and effort of itself will not ensure the achievement of goals and personal fulfillment. It is hard work combined with wisdom and proper actions that make it all possible. In this mythical story the wise baron imparts eleven “supreme principles” to his young pupils. The authors don’t break new ground with these valid principles, but they present this knowledge in a fascinating way.

The Baron Son is truly distinctive and will appeal to readers who enjoy fiction. It is a book that can be read in just a few sittings and one that continues to reveal wisdom long after the book is closed and you ponder upon its contents! If you primarily read and enjoy non-fiction, this may not be your cup of tea. But, if you want to learn some sound principles about business, wealth and leadership through a fictional narrative, The Baron Son will make your cup runneth over.

The Baron Son

Vade Mecum 7

Long & Silverman Publishing - 2004 (190 pages in hardback)

Authors Vicky Therese Davis, William R. Patterson & D. Marques Patton

ISBN 1-59575-357-5

weLEAD rating – recommended

The Future of Leadership-A Book Review

Today's Top Leadership Thinkers Speak to Tomorrow's Leaders

Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 2001, (316 pages in hardback)

Edited by Warren Bennis, Thomas Cummings, and Gretchen Spreitzer

ISBN 0787955671

This interesting work is a collection of essays by some of the world’s most respected leadership thinkers. Contributors include Charles Handy, James O’Toole, Thomas Stewart, Tom Peters, Barry Posner and James Kouzes. These essays were first presented at a special conference held to honor Warren Bennis. Organizers labeled the conference a festschrift, a German word for a volume of essays assembled by colleagues to be a tribute to a renowned scholar. The essays were edited and divided into five parts:

1.               Setting the Stage for the Future.

2.               The Organization of the Future

3.               The Leader of the Future.

4.               How Leaders Stay on Top of Their Game.

5.               Insights from Young Leaders.

The result is an insightful examination on the state of leadership today and the challenges it can expect to experience in the future. For example, Bennis writes the first essay and presents a number of challenging issues, including the widening disparity of talent among income levels, growing demographic changes between young and old and balancing the demands of work and home. James O’Toole looks at the organization of the future and remarks that leaders should view their tasks “as creating the systems under which others would be encouraged to do all the things that typically end up on the desk of the do-it-all leader.”

The Future of Leadership is a comprehensive examination of leadership today and tomorrow provided by a number of insightful modern day thinkers. It asks some judicious questions and dares to look into the future with assurance and confidence. Some essays are better written than others, but every reader will find some valuable material and learn a new perspective from its pages.

weLEAD rating recommended

Peter Senge, MIT professor and author of The Fifth Discipline, said:

 “No one in the past 30 years has had a more profound impact on thinking about leadership than Robert Greenleaf.” 

 Robert Greenleaf, author of the classic series of essays on the theme “the servant as leader,” was a powerful advocate of mentoring.  In The Power of Servant Leadership, edited by Larry Spears, Robert Greenleaf proposed that there are psychic rewards to be gained by oldsters who take the time and trouble to mentor the young to become servant-leaders.

  He stated, “What could bring more satisfaction to oldsters than helping some of the young to become servant-leaders?” (page 54)

As an oldster himself at the time of his writing, he saw the need for a more caring society, but had little confidence that many of the leaders of his generation would actually meet the challenge.  He was definitely not persuaded that much progress toward a caring society would “be initiated by those who are now established as leaders.”  He stated that he did “not expect much” from his contemporaries. (page 53)

Robert Greenleaf saw that once an individual rose to a position of power and influence with a nonservant mindset, it would probably take a metanoia (a profound transformation or conversion) to change such a leader into a true servant-leader.  He stated:

“For the older ones among us who are ‘in charge,’ nothing short of a ‘peak’ experience, like religious conversion…seems to have much chance of converting a confirmed nonservant into an affirmative servant.” (page 23)

Although many influential leaders consider themselves effective mentors and servant-leaders, the fruits often do not bear this out.  Often the person who is energized and inspired to be an able mentor of the young is not a person of great formal power and influence.  In fact, a very successful mentor is likely to be one who has not risen to the top within his or her organization, but has remained in a lower level position in order to have greater access to young people.

Superiors may consider these effective mentors as oddballs.  This is because such persons may not want to conform to the organization’s culture and rise to a position of prominence.  Many organizational cultures place little value on truly growing people and helping young people internalize a lifestyle of service.  You can see this in academia, where senior faculty may pay lip service to mentoring junior faculty and students, but in reality there is a spirit of competition and a “scarcity mentality” driven by self-interest.  Institutional rewards often go to those most driven by such self-interest, rather than recognizing and rewarding those who are highly effective mentors.

Able mentors often prefer to spend their time and energy preparing and inspiring the next generation to become effective mentors and servant-leaders.  They see their mentees as those who will become the builders of more serving institutions in the future.  These visionary mentors are often very talented at growing people.  They are driven by a vision of the future.  They believe that there is tremendous psychic reward in giving themselves to make a difference in the lives of others.

Robert Greenleaf provided this striking example in an address he made to a gathering of university students: (page 102– The Power of Servant Leadership)

“Thomas Jefferson had such a mentor in George Wythe, the Williamsburg lawyer under whom Jefferson apprenticed.  Without the influence of George Wythe, there might not have been a Jefferson to write The Declaration of Independence or draft the statutes in Virginia that shaped the Constitution.  He might have settled for the role of eccentric Virginia scholar.  Find such a mentor if you can.”

Comments to: hbaker@leadingtoday.org

About the author:

Dr. Howard Baker is Director of Education for INSPIRE! Learning Systems.  He holds a B.S. in Management from Samford University, a Master of Accounting (MAcc) from the University of Southern California and a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Texas at Arlington.  He has been a Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) since 1989.  He is an adjunct professor in both Business Administration and Public Administration at the University of Texas at Tyler.  Dr. Baker is a lifetime charter member of weLEAD and the founding editor of the weLEADInLearning web site’s E-Journal of Organizational Learning and Leadership located atwww.weleadinlearning.org.  His weLEAD email address is hbaker@leadingtoday.org.