Elements of Leadership

One day in 2000, I was reflecting on almost 29 years of experience in the petrochemical industry, and I asked myself, “What had I learned working in two refineries and four chemical plants? What could I teach young supervisors and engineers that would keep them from repeating the mistakes of my past? What sense could I make of the countless revelations (“Ah, Ha!” moments) I had experienced and remembered?” After all, in addition to learning from my mistakes and observing the mistakes and successes of others, I had read countless books about management theory, gleaning bits and pieces from each. However, I was frustrated by the lack of a single leadership model that brought all of this together.

I soon realized that as much as we talk about it, leadership tends to remain an ambiguous commodity. And, we in industry tended to treat people as either possessing this rare commodity or not. We cherry picked those blessed with the inherent talents we desire and overlooked the rest. Seldom had I observed anyone attempting to teach leadership skills to people in their charge. I concluded that this had to stem from either our lack of understanding of what constitutes effective leadership or a belief that the skills could not be learned.

So, I began to list those elements of leadership that could be learned. The first list only contained seven elements, but at least it was a start. Over the next few years, the list grew to approximately 13 elements, some were things to do and some were how to do them.

My next step was to use this list of elements as a model to teach these essential skills to people in my charge, those for whom I had the responsibility to develop. My initial attempt was not too successful. This was partly due to ineffective communication on my part and partly due to an unreceptive audience. However, with continued use I soon found that the list of elements could serve as an effective communication tool to provide other direct reports feedback on activities on a weekly basis. As my skill level increased with communicating these critical elements, they began to appreciate the counsel and actually encouraged me to provide more. Soon, I found that I was able to not only use the elements with direct reports, but also able to use them to guide members of other groups with whom I worked.

That was when I realized this list of critical elements might be the basis for a book. My goal was to write a relatively short book (no longer than 100 pages) to encourage easy reading. I also wanted it to be structured so that specific elements were easy to access for an easy refresher on an individual basis.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do believe the following captures at least 80% of the necessary skills to be a good leader. I also want to note that much of this knowledge was gleaned from the countless books referenced herein. I don’t believe any single book contains all the answers or all the knowledge on any subject, especially about Leadership or Management theory. And, the reason for writing this book is to make sense of a lifetime of learning; to put this knowledge into a useable form that will allow me to share the experiences with others; in short, to chronicle my journey. In the pursuit of knowledge, you will find elements that begin to weave a patchwork like a quilt that increases your understanding and makes you a better person. Take pride in your personal patchwork of knowledge.

Read and enjoy.