The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller
This week I finished The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller. I was interested to read this book as I recently read Mark Miller’s The Heat of Leadership and The Secret of Teams. I am also a big fan of Ken Blanchard’s One Minute Manager.
This a fantastic business fable involving a struggling leader Debbie Brewster discovering some timeless leadership principles through the mentorship from Company President Jeff Brown.
The book starts with the Iceberg Analogy for Leadership. Leadership needs both skills and characters. Skills are like the top of the iceberg that we can see. It’s above the water, its the doing part. But a larger portion of leadership remains under the water, that we don’t see. It’s the being part that embodies values, character, beliefs, trusted relationships. To remember it clearly I drew the below picture some items of which are not directly from the book but rather my own understanding.
The book then dives deep into the SERVE Model for Leading. It describes that regardless of their formal title or position, people who want to be great leaders must embrace an attitude of service to others. The acronym is broken down into the following -
- S — See the Future. Create a compelling vision.
- E — Engage and Develop Others. Build the right team, engage and empower them to do their best work.
- R — Reinvent Continuously. Look for constant improvements, new ways of doing work.
- V — Value Results and Relationships. Find the proper balance between driving results and building working relationships.
- E — Embody the Values. Leaders must walk the talk, show integrity.
Originally published at http://ashikuzzaman.wordpress.com on July 4, 2021.