Finding Your True North,
A Personal Guide

Book Synopsis:

Something ignited in my soul . . .
And I went my own way, deciphering that burning fire.
       - Pablo Neruda

Why is it important for you to become an authentic leader?

   There are many leaders who get ahead in organizations who are anything but authentic.  You have certainly met them.  They may be domineering people who use their power to rise up the ladder and are willing to take advantage of less powerful people to get ahead.  They may be constantly directing, controlling, and dealing with others aggressively.  Often they seem incapable of accepting honest feedback.  Sometimes they willingly use other people to hit their numbers.  They might stretch the truth or seize political advantage if it makes them look good.  They are likely to make a lot of money on their way to fame and glory.

   You could be this kind of leader. 

   “What’s wrong with that?” you ask.

   Plenty.  Leaders like these cannot motivate people toward a common goal.  They are incapable of building trust within organizations.  In short, they are ineffective as leaders.

   Worse than that, leaders like this destroy good people.  They destroy great organizations.  While they may be successful in the short-term, over time their behavior catches up with them.  Then they either move on or watch their organizations steadily decline. 

   Do you want to be an effective leader who can sustain success over an extended period of time?  Then it is essential that you discover your authentic leadership.  This Personal Guide will enable you to become an authentic – and effective – leader.  It will help you understand your True North and develop a plan to stay on course, no matter how difficult challenges that you may face.

A Personal Guide to True North

   Leadership matters.  It matters a great deal – to our organizations, institutions, the people who work in them, and the people who are served by them.  To enable our society to function effectively, we need authentic leaders who can encourage people to perform at their best and step up and lead themselves.

   I wrote True North because I have a passion to see more people in all walks of life lead authentically and because I wanted to work with people like you to discover your authentic leadership.

   This Personal Guide to True North will enable you to take the ideas and lessons from the book True North and apply them to your personal leadership development.  This will enable you to become a highly effective – and authentic – leader who knows your True North and stays on its course.

Discovering Your Authentic Leadership

   Becoming an authentic leader takes hard work.  It is not much different than becoming a great musician or a great athlete.  To become great in any endeavor – whether it is in your career, your family, or your community – you must use the unique strengths you were born with and develop them to the fullest, while acknowledging and learning from your shortcomings.

   In my case I had to work very hard to become a leader, enduring disappointing defeats and rejections in high school and early college years and searching for many years to find the right place to flourish as a leader.  I had to make that “leadership journey into my own soul” that GE’s Jeff Immelt describes in order to find out who I am, where my real passions lie, and how I could become more effective as a leader.  I didn’t have a personal guide like this one to help me, so I made up my development plan as I went along, with the help of my wife, close friends, and some important mentors along the way.

   After searching for a role model for many years, I learned that I could never become a great leader by emulating someone else or by minimizing my shortcomings.  As “Director of the Year” Reatha Clark King told me, “If you’re aiming to be like somebody else, you’re being a copycat because you think that’s what people want you to do. You’ll never be a star with that kind of thinking. But you might be a star—unreplicatable—by following your passion.”

   Many leadership books offer a quick fix to becoming a leader, or provide you with seven easy steps to leadership.  Unfortunately, leadership development doesn’t work that way, any more than you can become a great athlete by reading a book.  To realize your potential as a leader, you need a detailed development program that will enable you to become an excellent leader.  That’s the purpose of this Personal Guide: to enable you to develop a clear and detailed program for your personal leadership development.

   I encourage you to have as many leadership experiences early in life as you can.  Don’t sit back and wait for these experiences to come to you.  Seek them out!  After each experience, you should process them by going back to your development plan to see what changes you need to make or further experiences you should have. 

   Recall the fundamental messages from True North: