“Leaders are first and foremost humans. Being a human leader and leading other humans is a complex endeavor, one that doesn’t lend itself to easy answers and quick fixes.”
— Ronn Lehmann
Your initial response might well be, “Perhaps not.” I mean, geez, Amazon currently has nearly 60,000 books containing ‘Leadership’ in the title. That might seem plenty, right?
Yet, despite that, three plucky authors have created another. Under the banner of Success Authorities, Linda Ruhland, Peter Beaumont, and I wrote Conversations for Clarity: Critical Questions Leaders Must Ask Themselves.
Why would we do that? Well, let’s start at the beginning…
When the SA Trio joined forces, we each came from different backgrounds, experiences, and areas of expertise. Yet we connected on a shared view of what makes for a successful leader, and in turn, a successful business.
That shared view can be summed up as the intention, willingness, and ability to seek clarity through conversations, both with yourself and with others. Using critical questions, we invite leaders (and anyone else) to examine how they are working on the business, not just in the business.
Obviously, the clue is in the title. But beyond that, our book is an invitation for leaders to take the time to have a conversation with themselves about the Why, What, and How of their leadership and business, and then share that with everyone else in the organization.
It is a call for authenticity and connection, for conversation and communication, for intentional and beneficial decision-making. In Peter’s phrase, we emphasize the value of ‘Clarity Breaks’: a time for thinking about the business and yourself.
Does our book contain insights never seen in any book on Leadership? Probably not, given the derivative nature of the field. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before.
But I can say without fear of contradiction that how we have presented the information is unique…because each of us are. As are all Leaders, and all humans.
The ‘one-size-fits-all’, ‘the only book you’ll ever need’ notion is a sucker bet. There is no literary panacea for improving leadership. The best leaders we know take good ideas from a myriad of sources, wherever they can find them.
If you’re hoping our book is the silver bullet that provides everything you need to transform yourself into the greatest leader the world has ever known, spoiler alert: you’re going to be disappointed. If that’s your goal, I suggest taking the $18.99 you would spend on this book and investing it in magic beans.
Nevertheless, we believe this book has value for leaders running businesses that are starting, growing, or at a crossroads. We have tried to provide a path for reflection that will lead to clarity, and then to conscious, deliberate choices for how they will lead their business in the direction they want it to go.
Leaders are first and foremost humans. Being a human leader and leading other humans is a complex endeavor, one that doesn’t lend itself to easy answers and quick fixes. It is our hope that we can provide helpful questions and answers to allow leaders to discover what will work best for them. If it’s even one question or one idea, that’s a win for us. If it’s more than that, terrific.
If we didn’t believe we could make a difference in the crowded marketplace of leadership volumes, we’d never have written this book. But write it we did, and we hope that anyone who is looking for an authentic and profoundly human approach to leadership will give it a try.
In the end, we followed Toni Morrison’s sage advice:
““If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
Ronn Lehmann advises organizations and leaders on the human factors that determine their culture. Lehmann developed the Cultural Audit Process, which is designed to provide an outside perspective of an organization’s culture: what’s important, what’s rewarded and punished, what the rules are, and how people “show up.”
Success Authorities’ book, “Conversations for Clarity: Critical Questions Leaders Must Ask Themselves” is available now at Amazon!