Richard Dillard

Having a well-designed Leadership Platform is the first step. But like any living document, it must be continually renewed to avoid stagnation. In Take Your Lead , this process of continual renewal and improvement is called the Leadership Enrichment LIFE-cycle (LEL-c) . The LEL-c is a solution to the "knowing-doing gap"—the common failure to take new leadership information and use it to improve performance. It provides a roadmap for transforming thinking into knowing, knowing into doing, and...

We've already distinguished "Real Leadership" from "Imaginary Leadership" (see Are You Leading? Uncovering Real Leadership! ). But how do you intentionally build the personal power required to be a real leader? The solution proposed in Take Your Lead  is to move beyond abstract ideas and construct a tangible Leadership Platform . A Leadership Platform is a framework that codifies what you understand, believe, and intend to do about leadership. It determines the difference between your...

In our last post, we established the critical link between leadership, culture, and performance. But what kind of leadership truly drives a healthy culture? In Take Your Lead,  we contend that our encounters with genuine leaders are rare, despite the abundance of leadership literature available and the growth of the "leaders are readers" movement in the last century. This scarcity stems from a common confusion between two distinct classes of leaders: Leaders-in-Position (Entitled):  These...