The Leadership Mirror

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Leadership   ProjectsAtWork  

If those who aspire to greater leadership heights spent more effort looking within for direction — and less time absorbing the regurgitated, cliché-ridden advice of external "experts" — they just might become better leaders. It starts with asking some hard questions that require your own honest answers. But there is still a role for role models.

Why do we always seek leadership guidance from outside sources? I’m not suggesting there aren’t role models we can learn from — and there actually are many very good leadership books and articles available to provide guidance. However, there is also a lot of very bad leadership advice out there — countless books that simply regurgitate stale, generic practices. They are providing a huge disservice.

I want to urge all of you to do something different — to look inside yourselves for leadership inspiration. In an act of mild hypocrisy though, I’d like you to finish reading this article first to find out why!

You’ll be amazed at what you know

Anyone who has been in a work environment for more than a couple of years will have experienced good leadership, bad leadership, and all variants in between. More importantly, they will have learned to recognize the good and the bad, and will have figured out how to succeed with all forms of leadership.  This alone is enough of a foundation to …

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