Occasionally I will read a book that has such a big impact on me that I

feel the need to outline and/or summarize it.  I do this for a couple of

reasons. It helps me to learn the material.  And, when a book hits me like this, I generally become its evangelist!  The summaries and outlines become ways that I can put the key ideas of a helpful book in someone else's hands

without them having to actually read the entire book (though if that

happens, that's all to the good).  

Recently, The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner was just such a book.  It's one of the top five best business books I've ever read (I rank it with Covey's Seven Habits, Senge's Fifth Discipline, Porras and Collins' Built to Last and Peters and Waterman's In Search of Excellence) and I can already tell it will be a resource for me for both my own leadership in faith and secular communities and for my teaching and facilitation on leadership for years to come.  (For those of you  in faith communities, I also plan to write a primer on leadership based on this book for small group leaders (with Scriptural correlation) and probably will develop a similar workshop as well).

 

So I've put both an outline and a Leadership Primer based on this book on

my website. One other thing I'd like to mention:  The January/February 2001 issue of the Harvard Business Review will have an article on the Level 5 Leader by Jim Collins (Built to Last).  I heard Collins speak on this topic in Denver in May of last year and this should be a wonderfully helpful article.  I mention the concept briefly in the Primer on my site.

I sincerely hope that this book helps you in your leadership adventure!

Please let me know if it does! http://www.shieldsplace.org/Books/leaderprimer.htm

 

Stephen Shields

stephen@shieldsplace.org

http://www.shieldsplace.org