Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Leadership and the Art of Struggle

Leadership is becoming more and more difficult and problematic . . . unless you have the right tools and resources.


In Steven Snyder’s new book, Leadership and the Art of Struggle, he gives you the insights you need to transform your leadership pitfalls into opportunities. Struggle happens, and you can’t be afraid to bring it out into the open. And as Chapter 1 is so rightly named, “Struggle is not a four-letter word”.

Snyder’s book is broken down into 3 building blocks:
Part 1 – Becoming Grounded – makes sense of your chaotic world and helps you to regain your “balance”.
Part 2 – Exploring New Pathways – teaches you to “reimagine the situation” and to overcome your blind spots.
Part 3 – Deepening Adaptive Energy – helps you prepare, harness, and celebrate what lies ahead.

Especially interesting to me is his explanation of blind spots – “anything that can hinder or undermine your performance that you are either unaware of or have chosen to overlook”. There are five different types (you’ll have to get the book to find out what they are). Like many other parts of the book, this makes you stop and think about things that you normally would overlook, consciously or unconsciously.

This isn’t a book to just sit, read, and put away. It’s full of hands-on practice exercises to help you immediately adapt the tools into your own implementation strategies. If you’re serious about wanting to become a better leader, you need to pick up this book today and get to work.