Author: Phillip Santillan

And so the beginning of my arduous adventure into tackling the plethera of books I received for my birthday. Thanks Mom and Dad Beron. I started with Jim Collin’s book entitles “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t” I’ve seen it on the shelves and hear a lot about it, being touted as a #1 best seller. Being that leadership and such has been a subject of study that interests me immensly, I decided to place this book on my list of, “Must Reads” This 300 page book (of which 100 pages includes an extensive appendix and notes) was a really good read. I’m no fortune 500 company owner, but I was intrigued to find that the principles which governed success for great companies are the principles that govern successful lives. Here are a couple of quotes:

• Few People attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.
• …the type of leadership required…self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy – these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
• You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit – Harry S. Truman
• Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce results.
• Level 5 leaders set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation, whereas egocentric Level 4 leaders often set up their successors for failure.
• The good-to-great leaders began the transformation by first getting the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.
• Concerning people decisions:

1. 1. When in doubt, don’t hire – keep looking.
   2. When you know you need to make a people chance, act.
   3. Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.

• Charisma can be as much a liability as an asset, as the strength of your leadership personality can deter people from bringing you the brutal facts.
• Spending time and energy trying to “motivate” people is a waste of time…if you have the right people, they will be self-motivated.
• The transition (from good to great) begins not by trying to discipline the wrong people into the right behaviors, but by getting self-disciplined people on the bus in the first place.
• “Anything that does not fit out Hedgehog Concept, we will not do.”

In short, I feel that a lot of the principles that Covey brought to us in “7 Habits…” were wonderfully purported in this scientific analysis of what made companies leap and others not. I know that there were a lot of things I read that I am chewing on…things that I wonder would affect my ministry, my pool business, my life. It’s a fun read and it would be a great addition to your library of great leadership books. It’s also just a really great informational book with tons of history and revealing interviews.

Today I “threw down” on a book that was given to me last night by one of the members of our church. He noticed that I was on a Leadership Book kick and tossed me a book that impacted him in the arena of his “secular profession.” I have read MANY leadership books, and I make it a habit to continually do so, because leaders are learners and learners are readers. With that said, I’ve read many leadership books that I like and dislike, but then every once in a while a I’ll find a book that nails me right between the eyes. This book was one of them.

I’ll be honest, there were some things that I didn’t agree with theologically, but the author had a lot of great things to say about mistakes leaders make. As I read this book, I felt as though he was writing about me. The encouraging point is that this book is a definition of the author’s experience or personal observations of these mistakes. That’s why he says right from the beginning of the book (in fact it’s just the introduction) that,

“Top-Flight leaders really aren’t born, they learn by trial and error.”

Here are some other quotes worthy of mentioning from this book:

• “There is nothing in my organization that anyone does that I should not be willing to do myself if it promotes the good of us all.”
• “My job is to help those I lead release as much of their potential as possible. I do not do the work; others do it under my leadership…to equip them to do the work that must be done.”
• “It is almost necessary to be a workaholic to make it as a Christian leader. Unfortunately, many leaders are poor listeners because of this very problem.
• “Every person who aspires to be used by God in His service must have as a prime objective the same passion: to see people’s lives changed into Christ’s likeness.”
• “It’s a big mistake to stifle your brightest stars with the harness of endless committees, procedures, and paperwork.”
• Leaders should lead, not just implement consensus.”
• “Very often, how a project is done doesn’t really matter. If it is done differently but accomplished effectively then the job gets done-which is all that matters.”
• “I’d rather get ten men to do the job than to do the job of ten men. – D.L. Moody”
• “Delegation means giving people the freedom to decide how jobs will be done.”
• “As organizations grow…communication must be given more attention and must become more formal.”
• “The higher you go in leadership, the more sensitive you have to be about everything you communicate.”
• “The more people you lead, the more you must listen.”
• “Disrespect for authority should not be tolerated in a Christian corporate culture.”
• “If we hold to the standards of biblical Christianity, don’t we all believe the same way? The answer is a resounding no! Christians differ dramatically in both beliefs and values, and can best serve their Master if they yoke themselves with Christians in the body of Christ who see things in roughly the same way as they do.”
• “If you are a leader, lead those who, as closely as possible, value and believe what you do.”
• “Success without a successor is failure.”
• “Growth comes from change.”
• “I’m an eternal optimist…’expect great things, attempt great things.’ “

There is so much in this book that I WILL be rereading it. I’ve learned so much about my personal weaknesses through this book. Readers beware…reading this book will be like looking into the “leader’s mirror…you’ll see yourself in previously unrevealed ways and learn what it takes to ‘get presentable’ for effective leadership for His glory.” (quote from Joseph M. Stowell, President of Moody Bible Institute concerning this book.)

I totally recommend this book to anyone interested in guarding themselves from the top ten mistakes leaders make or preventing previous mistakes from happening again.

I’m on a leadership book reading kick, so what you’ll see happening in the next posts is a barrage of books that I have read, or am reading that I have yet to review. I’m going to start with a book I pulled off my Pastor’s book shelf called, “Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership.”

The book is only 233 pages and it was an easy read. I did find myself feeling like I was in my general psychology class back in college except the class was taught by Obi-Wan Kenobi. From the multiple references to psycho-analysis and Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs to the repetitive reference to the “Dark Side” I had a hard time taking this book in the beginning seriously.

This book was intended to help encourage those in leadership to avoid the traps that led to the fall of people like Jim Bakker and such. The only problem is that the view from which they have analyzed “what went wrong” was that it was from a psychological stand point. I was amused by the 5 different types of “Dark Sided Leadership”

1. The Compulsive Leader
2. The Narcissistic Leader
3. The Paranoid Leader
4. The Codependent Leader
5. The Passive-Aggressive Leader

While there were probably a lot of “practical” things this book may have for combating the “Dark Side of Leadership”, I would not recommend this book. I may be wrong, but it felt as thought this book did little to name the root cause of what causes leaders to fall. It doesn’t takes professional psycho-analysis to understand what the root cause is. It’s sin. I personally feel there are plenty of other books that deal with effective leadership and tackle the issues of sin that leaders deal with much better than this book.