What It Takes to Lead

  Career Development   Leadership   New Practitioners   ProjectsAtWork  

Leaders are made, not born. Here, leadership development expert Al Bolea discusses the two crucial “gateways” into leadership mastery … the importance of aligning your message and performance metrics … and the problem of “serial reorganizers” who create “zombie syndrome.”

One is not born a leader — it's something you become. So how do you become a great leader? Al Bolea and Leanne Atwater provide some answers in their new book, Applied Leadership Development: Nine Elements of Leadership Mastery, which is set for release in December 2014. Written to help practicing managers and executives realize their leadership potential, the book dispels the notion that leaders are “natural born.”

"The ultimate manifestation of a great leader is the team that surrounds them," Bolea says. "A talented, intelligent and capable group of people doesn't become a team — a leader makes them one.”

Using the J-curve model, Bolea and Atwater outline nine critical elements for adopting the necessary skills for leadership mastery. The combination of Bolea's personal, practical experience and Atwater's research guide readers on a path of exploration and self-reflection toward leadership mastery.

Bolea — a corporate leadership trainer and speaker, the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Leadership at the University of Alaska, and a guest leadership lecturer at the University of Houston — …

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