Business Summaries - The Radical Leap

Like any sport, Radical Leadership challenges one to break free from the conventional, and makes you face your own mortality and imperfections in order to turn you into a leader people will follow to hell and back.

While some skeptics may view the LEAP as too touchy-feely and sketchy in principle, it cannot be ignored that they are principles that have inspired countless of others to follow people into wars, fanned religious flames, and built the empires of visionaries who had nothing going for them except vision and the ability to infect others with the same drive.

These principles are, in essence, the fuel that drives people to change the world.

The Extreme Leader

When Leadership is viewed as an extreme sport, anyone that practices it would be dubbed an “extreme leader”. These leaders are set apart from the posers of the industry by their willingness to take risks and make mistakes in order to lead by example.

Seeking the OS!M
Ever had the feeling, just before the big presentation or that inspirational speech that the butterflies in your stomach were going to take you away and carry you off where you’d never be heard from again? Or worse, have you ever wanted them to?

At the precise point that you feel that, you’re currently going through an “Oh, Shit! Moment.” These are the moments that scare you, thrill you to the bone. These are indicators that you’re at the brink of something big, like standing at the edge of a sheer drop and feeling that if you ever get out of it alive, you’d have accomplished something worthwhile. These moments produce fear and try to trigger your sense of self-preservation, something that extreme leaders have to learn to ignore.

The extreme leaders recognize the fear, befriend it, and actively seek it out, because they believe that only in risking themselves will they be able to show their followers that their goals are worthy of such sacrifice.

Failing Fabulously
OS!M seeking makes for some pretty tense situations. Fewer and fewer leaders are willing to screw up publicly as they are afraid that they will lose face and be made a laughingstock of the company. The very idea of having your failures documented and publicly reviewed will make anyone twist uncomfortably.

However, Leadership isn’t about being comfortable. After all, all leaders live under the constant scrutiny of their colleagues, their business associates, their subordinates, and their competitors. It only follows that the leaders’ own actions are the most powerful tools at their disposal. When they fail or make mistakes, the extreme leaders know better than to try and keep it under wraps. They flaunt it, they call attention to themselves, they put it up on the company bulletin board. Still, it doesn’t stop there. They make sure that whoever gets to see their mistakes will learn from them, adding to the database of how not to do things, and then challenge them to do it better than he or she did.

Book Summary Preview : The Radical Leap