How to Be a Leader (School of Life) - Softcover

Bjergegaard, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250078733 ISBN 13: 9781250078735

Verlag: Picador Paper, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

What does it really mean to take a leadership role? In this book, learn how true leaders are made and how you can be one too

No one is born to lead. This is the idea at the heart of this thoughtful book on true leadership. While popular culture feeds us images of the stereotypical leader—charismatic, powerful, decisive—the truth is, with the right amount of self-knowledge and authenticity, anyone can be a good leader.

There are countless courses and books available on leadership technique, decision-making and public speaking, but How to Be a Leader by Martin Bjergegaard and Cosmina Popa aims to give you the tools to understand and bring out your own individual leadership style. With an in-depth look at what it really means to lead, and the differences between being a manager and being a leader, this book invites you to explore and learn about the unique leader in you.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MARTIN BJERGEGAARD is a co-founder of Rainmaking, a startup launching business which has built a portfolio of 8 startups with a total of 50 million dollars in annual revenue, 100 employees, and offices in London, Copenhagen and Berlin.

COSMINA POPA is an entrepreneur in the technology and sustainability sectors. In 2013, she, together with a team based in Washington DC, co-founded the Conscious Venture Lab, a start-up accelerator focused on developing socially conscious entrepreneurs. She holds an MSc in Environment and International Development from King's College London, and a BA in Liberal Arts from St John's College.

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How To Be A Leader

By Martin Bjergegaard, Cosmina Popa

Picador

Copyright © 2016 The School of Life
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-250-07873-5

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Introduction, 
I. You, 
1. Is There Something You Really, Really Care About?, 
2. Mind the Body, 
3. Unleash Your Curiosity, 
4. Infuse Your Leadership with 'Ecosophy', 
II. You + Others, 
5. Master the Art of Communication, 
6. Define your Riverbanks, 
7. Decision-making is a Team Sport, 
8. Grow Your Appetite for Altruism, 
III. Shadow, 
9. Leadership During Crisis, 
10. Welcome, Uncertainty, 
11. Double Your Failure Rate, 
12. On Ego and the Forces of Glamour, 
Afterword, 
Homework, 
Notes, 
Acknowledgements, 
Photographic Credits, 
Also by Martin Bjergegaard, 
About the Authors, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

Is There Something You Really, Really Care About?

If you visit Glenville National School's website you will find a lot of pictures of smiling children. At an Easter raffle, on a bus ride, during a school play. Under the Policies tab you can read an anti-bullying statement, outlining how the school secures a good environment for all children:

The school attempts at all times to foster a positive attitude in pupils towards fellow pupils and the education process in general. We also try to encourage a positive self-image in the individual child.

It's difficult to know whether the website is a fair representation of the realities facing the students at this school, in the southern part of Ireland, today. Back in the 1990s it surely was a very different experience. Former pupil John Sweeney and his mother have the court's word for it.

John was beaten most days at school. When it got too bad his mother kept him home for days or weeks, so he could heal emotionally and physically. She brought the matter to the school principal many times. He laughed at her. The principal was one of those doing the beating. As was his wife, the vice principal. From the age of seven, John was regularly hit with rulers, fists, or whatever was within reach. He was abused by the teachers who were supposed to educate, protect and inspire him. They repeatedly told him that he was 'thick, stupid and wouldn't amount to anything'.

Children learn fast and it didn't take long before everyone in the class knew that if you were angry, you could just beat John Sweeney. When he was in sixth class some of the kids from fifth class wanted to have their go as well. Being a year younger than John they decided to gang up, and attacked him from behind in a school corridor. One of them got free access to John's neck and hammered away. That day the eleven-year-old John nearly died.

The incident only met with mockery from the school leadership, so in the deepest despair a mother can face, unable to protect her son, Mary Sweeney pressed legal charges. It would take seven more years of injustice and suffering before the school had to give in and pay a symbolic settlement to John Sweeney, at that time an eighteen-year-old plumber.

'My mother did everything she could. She has always been very kind to me. But we were working class, and as she took legal action we lost the last few friends we had in the town. Everyone said that we were disgracing Glenville. Even our own family members believed that we brought shame on the family name,' John recalls.

Mary Sweeney's job was to drive the local school bus, and almost every morning during those years she would be greeted by a load of slurs written on the bus about her son, herself and the rest of the family.

'There was a period, in my first year of secondary school, where things had cleared up a bit, and I actually had some friends that I was really enjoying spending time with,' John tells. 'But on my thirteenth birthday there was a setback as a group of ten to twelve boys decided to beat me up again, as a sort of birthday present. They got me so bad that the school actually expelled a few of them. But that only made things worse since everyone at the school – students, teachers, parents – held me to blame for the misfortune of those expelled,' John continues. 'I literally didn't have a friend in the whole world.'

John tells me all this in a very kind, unapologetic, matter-of-fact way. Still, if it weren't for what John is doing today, and the genuine smile on his face, this wouldn't be much more than just another sad story. Instead, meeting John has been the most inspiring and empowering encounter I have had this year. It has also been living proof of the wisdom in the words of Holocaust survivor and bestselling author Viktor E. Frankl: 'What is to give light must first endure burning.'

* * *

Now, there was no quick fix for John Sweeney. He needed healing and it didn't come easy. Luckily, at age seventeen he met a girl who didn't know anything about his status as the local outcast. She saw John for what he was, as worthy of love as anyone, and the sweetest guy she had ever met. Erin and John are now married, and have four children. Their birthdays are on the exact same day, with Erin being one year older than John.

'When Erin saw how I was still being bullied, she urged for us to get away from Glenville. We did, and that saved me,' John tells.

John knew that he didn't deserve all the beating he had received, but the being 'thick, stupid and wouldn't amount to anything' part would prove especially hard to shake. He worked as a plumber, only because that was the occupation his abusive teachers had told him would be the one job he might be capable of doing.

The truth was, however, that John was a terrible plumber. He just wasn't cut out for it.

John of course knew that he was misplaced, and year after year he tried to get into college. With all the days away from school his academic record was far from impressive, and he was encouraged to demonstrate his determination by doing social and voluntary work. He joined the local Scouts, and worked with victims of bullying, helping them as much as he could. The effort was worthwhile for John and the children he supported, but no matter how hard he tried, John failed to get accepted into college.

Finally, after ten years, John gave up the plumbing profession, as well as the college dream. For two years he had random jobs, but then he ran into unemployment and didn't seem to be able to get going again. Closing in on his thirtieth birthday, feeling completely useless, depression caught up with him.

Then something unexpected happened.

John's own words from a recent article in the Huffington Post explain it best:

On 27 March 2013, I was stressed, unable to sleep, and worried about putting food on the table. I was an unemployed husband and father who had made it this far, through following the direction of others. Now I had responsibilities, no work, nobody to tell me how to make a change for the better and was terrified by the uncertainty. It was yet another night that I just couldn't sleep. It was then, at 2.30 a.m., that I first read about a tradition born in the working class cafes of Naples, Italy, where people would advance purchase a coffee for someone in need.

Mark Twain said that the two most important days in your life are the day that you are born, and the day that you discover why. In that moment, sitting at my computer in the dark, I had discovered my 'why'. In a moment of inspiration, I set up a Facebook page called Suspended Coffees, encouraging people to commit to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Picador Paper
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1250078733
• ISBN 13: 9781250078735
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland