The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread to discuss leadership and what leadership demands, its characteristics and qualities.

We will also discuss entrepreneurs who have exhibited great leadership qualities and some of the world's great "thought leaders.

The Inner Game of Tennis

by W. Timothy Gallwey

Synopsis:

This book was written to help tennis players who struggle in developing their game due to self-doubt, nervousness, and lapses of concentration, but the concepts that Gallwey developed for his tennis students apply to everyone.

The book inspired the 2016-17 world champion Golden State Warriors and NFL quarterback Tom Brady (). It is also popular among musicians, who rely on efficient daily practice and need to be in the right mindset for performances.

Gallwey's core concept is to suppress your ego and retrain the voice in your head to emphasize honest constructive criticism. The concepts and techniques are simple and immediately effective. Understanding them can make you a better performer and to lead and develop those around you to perform better.

Good add Douglass.

The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results

by Bob Knight (no photo)

Synopsis:

Bob Knight is one of the greatest coaches in college basketball history. No one has had a perfect season in Division I college basketball since Knight's Hoosiers did it in 1975-76.

Knight accomplished this through an emphasis on fundamentals, an obsession with not making mistakes that lead to losses, and a lack of concern for sentimentality, clichés, feelings, or anything else that wasn't productive toward the goal of not losing.

Knight demonstrates how an attitude of realism helped him win again and again. He was 100% honest with his players, even when that might mean hurting their feelings. His most important point is that optimism creates a false sense of security. It leads to letting your guard down and doing something stupid. Realism gets results.

Opposite points of view in some ways. Knight calls it realism - Gallwey calls it honest constructive criticism. Some folks emphasize seeing the shot the way you want it to be rather than focusing on what has happened in the past. Focusing on the positive and imagining the shot. Interesting views.

Having read and applied what both authors discuss, I think Gallwey and Knight are mostly talking about the same thing with different names for it. They acknowledge reality but maintain the will to continue working through it. There is an interesting example of this called the Stockdale Paradox.

Admiral Jim Stockdale was a POW for 8 years during the Vietnam War and was tortured 20 times. He and his wife wrote about it in a book called In Love and War. It is also discussed in Good to Great by Jim Collins.

"I never lost faith in the end of the story," Stockdale told Collins. "I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event in my life."

When Collins asked him who didn't make it out, he answered, "the optimists." This confused Collins and confused me because what Stockdale said sounds a lot like optimism. However, Stockdale defined the optimists as the people who said, "we're going to be out by Christmas," then–when that didn't happen–"we're going to be out by Easter." The optimists set arbitrary dates for when things would get better. Stockdale set benchmarks too, but only to achieve his own survival from one benchmark to the next, not to expect a miracle by a certain date. He just took it one day at a time.

You might say that the Stockdale Paradox shows the difference between optimism and will. You "retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be."

by Jim Stockdale (no photo)

by James C. Collins

Excellent post - so those who see the glass as half empty may have a leg up on the optimists - but the important message I guess is realism - dealing with what life sends you day by day. John McCain had a very interesting way of dealing with staying alive when he was captured - by focusing on making a symbolic mark each day that he was in captivity.

Some leaders may find they need to get organized or they may need to inspire stress-free productivity in their environment - this book might assist:

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

by David Allen

Synopsis:

In today's world, yesterday's methods just don't work. In Getting Things Done, veteran coach and management consultant David Allen shares the breakthrough methods for stress-free performance that he has introduced to tens of thousands of people across the country.

Allen's premise is simple: our productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we achieve effective productivity and unleash our creative potential. In Getting Things Done - Allen shows how to:

* Apply the "do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it" rule to get your in-box to empty
* Reassess goals and stay focused in changing situations
* Plan projects as well as get them unstuck
* Overcome feelings of confusion, anxiety, and being overwhelmed
* Feel fine about what you're not doing

From core principles to proven tricks, Getting Things Done can transform the way you work, showing you how to pick up the pace without wearing yourself down.

Leadership and Self Deception

by The Arbinger Institute

Synopsis:

The "disease" of self-deception (acting in ways contrary to what one knows is right) underlies all leadership problems in today's organizations, according to the premise of this work. However well intentioned they may be, leaders who deceive themselves always end up undermining their own performance.This straightforward book explains how leaders can discover their own self-deceptions and learn how to escape destructive patterns. The authors demonstrate that breaking out of these patterns leads to improved teamwork, commitment, trust, communication, motivation, and leadership.