Leadership Lessons from Abraham Lincoln, General Patton, and more.

Following up on Friday’s nugget about Leadership Development, wanted to recommend a great Leadership Read.

Leadership Excellence: The Seven Sides of Leadership for the 21st Century. Author Pat Williams has been aggregating, applying, and sharing Leadership Wisdom for 30 years.

Of all the leadership books, I really like this one because Williams takes a story-telling approach. He’s pulled the best leadership stories from some 500+ books and years sharing the podium with modern-day leaders from Colin Powell to Richard Branson.

Selected nuggets:

• “Leadership is about the future, so all true leadership begins with vision.”
• “There is no such think as an emotionless vision.” – Andy Stanley, founding pastor of Atlanta’s North Point Community Church
• “Great leaders rally people to a better future.” One of my favorites from Marcus Buckingham (with stories about Jobs, Disney, and Henry Ford)
• “Never mistake a productivity target for a vision. Numbers don’t excite anyone.” We see a lot of people grabbing onto the Jim Collins BHAG concept and mistaking ‘the big number’ for a vision.
• “Management is about the present. Leadership is about the future.”
• “Walt Disney once said, “I resent the limitations of my own imagination.” Disney would cast a vision and if everyone went along with it too easily, he knew he wasn’t thinking big enough.