Book Summary Preview : Summoned To Lead

The Big Idea

Leaders are neither born nor made. Leaders are summoned. They are called into existence by circumstances. Only those who successfully rise to the occasion can be referred to as real Leaders.

In leadership, hearing a vision is more important than casting one. Leadership is a “calling” – a call you respond to, not a position you assume or a role you train for.

The summons could come when you least expect it. But you must be ready for it.

Are you listening?

Why You Need This Book

This book attempts to correct misconceptions regarding leadership that the author explains have persisted for years and have brought about such corporate scandals as Enron, Arthur Andersen, and World.com. The understanding of leadership needs to be turned upside down, and in this book it is discussed and promulgated in the hope that it will help form better leaders.

The Power of Voice – Finding Your Personal Soundtrack

Leadership is not a position or office or appointment. Leadership is a function of voice, a process of discourse and discovery. The best thing you can do is to create a leadership experience through a distinguishing personal soundtrack.

There are four keynotes, four “tones at the top” of a distinguishing personal soundtrack:

KEYNOTE # 1: TELLING THE TRUTH

A leader’s job is to rise to the occasion, to imagine the best possible future, and to tell the truth about how to get there.

KEYNOTE # 2: PROMOTING SOCIAL JUSTICE AND SPIRITUAL VIBRANCY

Leaders make decisions, not according to what’s in their best interest, but according to what’s in their best values.

KEYNOTE # 3: GENERATING ORIGINAL SOUNDS

True originality is homecoming. Find me a “new idea,” and I’ll find you an existing idea genetically engineered, an “already said” in an antique package.

KEYNOTE # 4: SOUNDING FROM EXPERIENCE

A leader is someone who has kept faith with the finest spirits of the culture into which one is born without losing “the common touch.”

Lend an Ear – Hear a vision, See the sound

The key to leadership is making the inaudible become audible and the invisible become visible. The initial mode of leadership is receptivity: hearing, not speaking. A hearing heart picks up signals rather in the way radio receivers pick up waves from the ether.

Managers see into sound. Leaders hear into speech and sight.

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