After many years of observing leadership habits, we wanted to offer a view of leadership that highlighted character, communication, empowerment, positivity, growth and other successful leadership skills.  Character is important in every corner of life.

Leadership skills affect our personal life, family, community relations, businesses, and management.  Unfortunately, it is all too easy to forget good character and leadership.  Our book can stimulate thought and remind us of interaction methods and skills that work.

As an energetic and creative person, I spent much of my life seeking avenues of personal growth.  Classroom knowledge did not appear to be the key ingredient in most successful leaders.  My goal was to learn true leadership qualities.  That included observing the growth and leadership of other successful people.  Many of those observations are in my book, What Is Leadership?.

Changes occurred in my life that brought me out of youthful confusions and lead me through years of progress.  Working my way through various low level positions, serving in the Air Force, college education, serving many years in public education, operating in many various curricular and extracurricular leadership positions, experiencing successful athletic competition, working as a leader during many years of summer occupations, leadership at several volunteer positions and raising two children are among the duties that shaped me and forced me to strongly consider leadership qualities.

I learned the personal traits that generate leadership skills and organizational loyalty that college education and theoretical skills could not reveal.  During my years of work, I spent significant time writing about the good management skills I observed.  I believe those skills are important for all people, and may assist their personal growth and leadership.

My book, What Is Leadership?, is not a text book or how-to book for leaders.  It is a reflection on the character traits, mannerisms, habits and growth qualities of managers.

From Chapter One, “All I wanted to do was get through the class with a good grade and move on to my major.  There I was, sitting in a group with four strangers.  We had no directions for group structure.  We were only told to choose a topic, and that each person would speak for three to five minutes on that particular topic.

Quickly other students in the group began to voice opinions and concerns.  I spoke very little because it became obvious that a couple of voices were vigorously competing.  It took about twenty-seconds to get a read on the group.  A tall man in his late twenties who sat opposite me appeared very sure of himself, and energetically expressed his opinion.  One girl in her mid-twenties appeared to quickly find her voice and desired to be heard.  Another girl appeared to want to speak, and express her opinion, but could not seem to work up the courage to offer more than a brief phrase.

I realized that caution and listening were the way to go.  I could not listen for too long, or any opportunity would be lost.  Rather than add another opinion, I asked a few questions.  I began asking about their topic desires, and how their ideas could be grouped together as one topic.  An interesting calm came over the group when they noticed someone was actively listening rather than competing for stage time.  By questioning the various opinions I was able to encourage a group direction.  Questions assisted everyone to give an opinion without forwarding my own opinion.  At least it appeared that I was not advancing my own opinion.  I was questioning to gain their input and to weave a common direction.  Within minutes they had elevated me to team leader.”

My book includes discussions on many topics such as: developing appreciation, boundaries, changes and affecting change, closure, communication, confusion and difficult times, extremely difficult days, empowering staff, encouraging leadership development, evaluation, failures, finding agreement, functional blindness (my term - it is an interesting concept), grounded stability, hard work, healthy emotions, humility, integrity, laughter, manners, mentoring, opposition, orchestrating or facilitating operations, personality traits, professionalism, public speaking, questioning and listening, readiness, respect, shepherding, simplicity, giving space, teaching, unique differences and individual importance.

From the back cover: “What have you learned from people with whom you have disagreed?  How often have you treated your opposition with courtesy and friendship?  Have you won the hearts of those who think differently, or have you merely laughed and attempted to nullify them?”

‍    What Is Leadership?, is an important book for all people.  The observations I describe create an open window into lifestyles, mannerisms and traits.  They can renew any person as a positive and effective leader.

This book would also work to assist discussion groups or mentoring sessions.  A reader may want to periodically return to the topics so that they may enhance their own lives.