Moving Towards your Leadership Destiny
Moving Towards your Leadership Destiny
Adriaan Groenewald
9781920143282
R115.00
Softback: 198 x 130mm
128pp
April 2008
£11.95 Delivered
During Adriaan’s extensive career as a leadership trainer and consultant, a radio and television host on business and leadership programmes and regular writer for The Star, the Argus, Business Day and the Sunday Times, he has learned certain principles on leadership that are unshakeable and practiced by the top leaders he has interviewed over the years.
According to Adriaan, great leadership is “the art of moving people and situations profitably”. To this end he has written a book which simply yet profoundly sets out those principles, with clear and current examples of their implementation:
- Confidence: true confidence stems from a knowledge of life, people and the technical aspects of all spheres of a situation/business. Confidence can be gained by acquiring an attitude of acceptance of the universal laws and processes that profitably empower you and those around you The more you practise these principles the more you boost your capacity to feel in control and, thus, confident.
- E-Do factor: people are complex beings, yet life is simple and comprises only two processes—evaluating and doing. There are of course obstacles to this factor such as ignorance, anger and urgency. Adriaan clearly sets out how these can be overcome in order to revert to the processes of evaluating and doing effectively.
- Do-Done principle: this must be one of the oldest teachings around—do to others as you’d have done to you. However, practically this is not always possible. Adriaan has thus adapted this principle to include one’s personal standards. He clearly defines how it is possible to treat someone as you’d expect to be treated without compromising your personal principles.
- Law of movement: since great leadership is the art of movement it is necessary to look at what factors make for effective movement. He believes they are motivation (energy needed), direction and structure (tools necessary to achieve the desired task). These three factors are inseparable and cannot work in isolation of the others.
- Adjustor: no plan or task, whether corporate or personal, is ever without its obstacles. It is necessary for one to learn to adjust to new situations in order to retain movement.
- Resistance to movement: learning that resistance is not necessarily your enemy, but rather a worthy opponent. It is not possible to grow or learn without resistance. Resistance determines your character and confidence, it tests and refines your aspirations and helps you build effective structures from which to move in your chosen direction, with motivation.
- Attitudinal modes: this is not simply about positive thoughts reaping positive rewards. This section concentrates on the effect people with negative expectations have on others and on situations and the damage a negative aspirant can do. It also teaches how to handle negative expectations, turn them into positive ones and then, in turn, into positive aspirations, which is what great leaders aspire to.
- Confrontation: this is a biggie. Most people avoid confrontation altogether while others innately believe it will be unpleasant so launch into any confrontational situation in defence-mode. Adriaan tutors his readers, step by step, in dealing with confrontation effectively and constructively.
These are just a few of the principles set out in this book. It is logically and simply constructed and makes use of examples that a parent can apply to a home environment as well as a CEO to the boardroom.