Earlier this year I wrote a series of posts called “Cultivating a Leadership Culture.” You can read this series in it’s entirety here. That series developed out of the nine years that I have been learning along the way as Pastor at The Well. I love the challenge and opportunity of creating community and culture, especially in the area of leadership. I’ve become somewhat of a leadership junkie and nerd and I have grown to love the sociology of the leadership task.
That’s why the book ReWork by Jason Fried and David Heinemier Hansson, founders of 37signals, was such a refreshing book. This book is essentially a series of short reflections and essays on creating a healthy leadership culture.
It seems to me that in my time as a leader, the bottom line necessity in leadership is trust. Not only building trust in your leadership community, but the basic trust that people generally want to do good, make a difference in the world and be part of something special. I think that many leaders create environments where they assume (knowingly or not) that people will screw things up and therefore their job is to create an environment that will make sure they don’t, catch them when they do and punish them accordingly.
This book confirmed a lot of my ideas about leadership culture and it also helped me think through some things that I hadn’t thought of before.
No, I didn’t get this book for review, though I did get it for free at a conference. But I would have paid to have it in my library. If you are into this kind of stuff, this is a can’t miss kind of book. If you buy it here I’ll get a small kickback so I can buy more books! 🙂