Professional Development Bookshelf:
R eviews of books that teach us about our craft By: sgt. 1st Class Gerard Brown Public Affairs Office Georgia Department of Defense “9 Things a Leader must do” written by Dr. Henry Cloud, is an easy to read leadership roadmap broken down into 9 Chapters. This book is a good read for those that are in supervisory positions that want to become better leaders for those they supervise. As you read through this book, you may say to yourself that some of these are clearly common sense, but as we all know, common sense is not common. “Achieve big goals by taking small steps over time.”-Dr. Henry Cloud There is a clear difference between knowing a leadership style and then being able to implement that leadership style. As you read from chapter to chapter the writer takes you through each step with detail as well as gives you examples of best practices for each item a leader must do. One of the topics covered in this pocket sized leaders guide is “Play the whole movie” which discusses the importance of decisions based on the present and how they will affect the future. Another topic discussed is, “Put Superman out of a job”, which encourages leaders not to sit back and be disengaged, but to continue to improve a situation, mission or project. “Leaders do not strive to appear more than they really
are”-Dr. Henry Cloud The book is based on Dr. Henry Cloud’s psychological studies on the styles and methods of successful individual’s thoughts and behavior. Dr. Cloud’s studies showed that success in leadership was not a mystery, was not by chance, nor based on individuals college degrees, but something else. With the information obtained by his research, he was able to show that success was more tied to an individual’s thinking, ability to move forward and learning from ones mistakes while still staying focused on the desired outcome. “9 Things a Leader must do” is a good quick read that can actually be read over and over again, because the information obtained from the reading is worth it. If there is anything we know about serving in the military, is that we learn a lot through repetition. Once again, this book provides some sound and challenging principles for not only enlisted or officer level, but all levels of leadership. Each one of the principles in this small book is something that will take varying amounts of repetition to learn, implement and master. This book is also a good read for Soldiers and Airmen alike, because it breaks down a replicated leadership model that works for all levels in the military. Many of our Soldiers and Airman learn a lot about leadership through how we as leaders lead them and through the emulation of others. By using these 9 fundamentals, we would be able foster the development of our service men and women, being not only managers of people, but leaders.
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