In my last post, I shared several reasons why you don’t have to wait until later to be a leadership expert. You can begin right here, right now, no matter who you are. If you’ve bought that idea, then let me share several practical ways you use your leadership expertise to benefit others.
The more time I spend with military and national security leaders, the more I’m convinced of the magnitude of a certain leadership quality: courage. That might not surprise you; everyone knows military service members need courage to put their lives on the line every day. There’s no debating that, but the courage I’m talking about applies to all leaders everywhere, whether your organization is made up of hundreds of thousands of people, or just a handful. Let me explain.
In my previous posts, I explained why reading is crucial to growth and development and listed my favorite leadership books – the ones that inspire me or provided the most insight. But choosing the right book to read next can be tricky sometimes, especially given there are literally hundreds of thousands just a click away. With so many choices and so little time to read, how can you be sure you are picking the “right” one?
Here are a few strategies I’ve had a lot of success with:
I came across an alarming statistic awhile back from Dan Miller that college graduates on average will spend more money on soft drinks than on post-graduate education. Right then and there, I resolved that this would never be true of me. I heard Dave Ramsey say that the average millionaire reads one non-fiction book a month. So I committed to read two a month. And I heard Charlie “Tremendous” Jones used to say that you’ll be the same person in five years that you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read. So I decided I would never stop reading.
