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What I Learned About Leadership by Writing a Book About Leadership

by Kevin Eikenberry, Remarkable Author

When Robert asked me to write a “What I learned” story, I was honored and pleased. After all, I’m always asking my consulting clients and workshop participants to reflect on things that happened as a way to learn and improve. After thinking about it for a minute I decided to write about what I learned about leadership from writing a book about leadership (Remarkable Leadership: Unleashing Your Leadership Potential One Skill at a Time).

Some might think this idea is counter-intuitive – that I should know something about leadership before being so bold as to write about it. I did know some things about it before I began, but I know more now. Here are five of the things I learned:

I learned a lot about the publishing process. While I’ve been a contributing author many times and while I’ve written a book that was published by a small publisher, working with Jossey-Bass was a new experience. I learned that timelines matter (and yes, I met them) if you want to get your book to the market on time. I learned that my editor and everyone involved on the J-B team cares about books (which is comforting), and I learned that they like to think long-term, which also makes me happy.

I learned how to clarify my leadership values and beliefs. It is one thing to consult and training on things, writing them down is a more rigorous process than either of those other pursuits. Writing forces focus and drives clarity on what you really mean. All of us know that, but in this process it became even clearer to me. I now know at a much deeper level how all of the pieces of my beliefs about remarkable leadership are inter-related – more than I ever thought possible.

I learned about sharing responsibility, and not just delegating. When writing one chapter I asked a number of colleagues to tell me how they felt about the concepts of delegation and sharing responsibility. I asked them to consider their answers both from the perspective of the leader and the receiver/follower. The answers and the resulting conversations made it very clear that the difference is much more about the intent of the leader than anything else. Delegation feels like dumping work – sharing responsibility is about building competency. Which do you want to receive? Which do you want engender in your organization. This is a simple concept to type onto my screen, but I believe the implications of this difference for us as leaders are huge.

I learned the power of role modeling. If I write something that my team (or my clients or my kids) read, then I better be doing it! Do you think I hold myself to a higher standard in a variety of areas now? You bet I do. While I learned this through writing, I believe all highly effective remarkable leaders must be clear on what is important and share that with their team – even if it requires them to work harder to live up to those standards.

I learned that the line between personal development and leadership development is even finer than I previously believed. I’ve always thought there was a fine line between personal and professional development. I now realize that when we become better leaders we become better humans. 90+% of what I wrote applies to everyone, regardless of their job description. These skills make us better neighbors, parents and co-workers too. It is exciting to recognize this fact. As I allowed it to sink into my subconscious, it has improved my approach to learning and accelerated my progress in many areas of my life.

This certainly isn’t all I learned, but these are five of the most valuable lessons for me – all five of these lessons will help me be more effective (dare I say remarkable?) as both a professional and an individual.

Thanks for the chance to share, Robert!

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