Leadership: The First Step

    I actually started writing this book 20 years ago when I saw a car lot where the salesmen was upset about getting promoted to Sales Manager. I asked one of the other salesmen why the man did not want the promotion and he said they jokingly referred to it as “one step closer to the exit”.

    What was happening was fairly simple. A salesman would excel at sales and get promoted, but with no management or leadership skills, he would then fail as a manager and get fired. When I got to digging around I discovered that this was a fairly common phenomenon in many companies. Employees with a lot of dedication and job skill get promoted to become supervisors or managers and then discover that they just do not have the skills needed to lead and manage people.

    Something had to be done.

     So, I wrote a short book about leadership -because before you can manage people effectively you must first become a leader (thus the title: Leadership: The First Step).

    I wanted to cover the basics including personal example, handling problem employees, management by objective, problem solving, organization, and just what it takes to become a person people will trust and follow. It’s a kind of “poor man’s MBA” in 187 pages…

    In 2004 it was selected as the text for an introduction course in Business Management by a Business College (I was the first instructor for that course). But I never submitted it for general publication.

   

    It is now available in both eBook (download) and paperback versions and has had some nice reviews. You can find both versions @  http://amzn.to/ZTSoQd   or, if you like, you can read a preview with several excerpts at: http://bit.ly/16XIjqR

    So, if you’d like to improve your own leadership skills, this would be a great and easy way to get started. I hope you’ll check it out.

Gary's Reflection for today:

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. —Theodore Roosevelt

  

Live Long and Prosper...