This is the final guest blog post from our finalists in this year’s Best of Leadership Blogs competition (make your pick for best blog here)
John Baldoni is an exceptional leader in the fields of leadership and communications. Inaddition to being a leadership consultant, he is a coach, motivational speaker, and author. John has written six books that deal with leadership and how leaders use proven methods to create results. John was recognized in 2007 as one of the world’s top 30 leadership gurus by Leadership Gurus International.
Sum Up Your Leadership in Six Words
By John Baldoni (July 9, 2009)
Once upon a time Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a story using only six words. Impossible, some thought. Not for Papa, as Neal Conan explained on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. The next day Hemingway produced this: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
Clare Booth Luce, according to columnist Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, once told President John Kennedy that “a great man is one sentence.” Noonan writes that Lincoln’s life could be summed up as “He preserved the Union and freed the slaves.” My colleague, Scott Eblin, adapted the concept to summing up one’s leadership legacy. “It takes time and effort to boil down the essence of what you’re trying to do to a short and memorable idea.”
Reducing one’s life to a handful of words is a mighty challenge. Creating a six-word memoir, a concept inspired by a project conducted by Smith College’s magazine, can be a useful exercise in self-analysis, particularly if you apply the process to reflecting upon your goals and your results. Did we achieve what we set out to achieve? Did I help them and the team to succeed? Did our results stand the test of time?
I strongly urge you to think about and do this exercise for yourself.
This is just the start of this post, you can read the rest here, or find it through HarvardBusiness.org, along with a variety of other blogs.
John’s post is thoughtful, as they all are, and suggests one of the most useful leadership activities you could try – or share with others in your ongoing leadership development processes.
Kevin Eikenberry is a recognized world expert on leadership development and learning and is the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group. He has spent over 30 years helping organizations across North America, and leaders from around the world, on leadership, learning, teams and teamwork, communication and more.
Twice he has been named by Inc.com as one of the Top 100 Leadership and Management Experts in the World and 100 Great Leadership Speakers for Your Next Conference. The American Management Association named him a “Leaders to Watch” and he has been twice named as one of the World's Top 30 Leadership Professionals by Global Gurus. Top Sales World has named him a Top Sales & Marketing Influencer several times, and his blog has been named on many “best of” lists. LeadersHum has named him one of the 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership in 2023.
. Inaddition to being a leadership consultant, he is a coach, motivational speaker, and author. John has written six books that deal with leadership and how leaders use proven methods to create results. John was recognized in 2007 as one of the world’s top 30 leadership gurus by Leadership Gurus International.
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