The Secret: What Great Leaders Know--And Do by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, $19.95 Hardcover

ReaderStrength Rating:
Focus 4
Build 4
Adapt 4
Overall Rating as a leadership resource 4
(Please see "How Do We Evaluate Resources?" in right column)

When people in leadership positions don't achieve desired results, they have an opportunity to reflect and re-evaluate their leadership skills. The Secret: What Great Leaders Know--And Do, by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller, is a book that acknowledges this reality and presents a story that shows how mentoring and coaching can improve leadership skills.

Blanchard and Miller’s short (124 pages), easy-to-read business book will be familiar to readers who know Blanchard’s other titles such as Whale Done! and The One Minute Manager.

Briefly, the story begins with Debbie Brewster, the protagonist. We learn that the year before, because of her success as a project manager, she was promoted to the director of corporate client services for the Southwest region of her company. After just one year as a leader, she is stunned to discover that her team is the worst performing team out of seven in her company. Eventually, she has the good fortune to be mentored by Jeff, the company president. Events happen quickly, just as in real life, and the reader keeps turning pages to find out what will happen to Debbie.

The book teaches a leadership model called SERVE. It includes the following principles:

• See the future.
• Engage and develop others.
• Reinvent continuously.
• Value results and relationships.
• Embody the values.

The content of leadership model itself isn’t a conceptual breakthrough. These ideas have been around and taught many times using different words. The value this book provides is the approach used to teach the leadership skills and insights. It is a one-on-one approach, one leader guiding another who is currently struggling.

The most important element of the model is the support Jeff provides over an 18-month period, as Debbie gains insights and tries out new actions with her group. At LeaderStrength Systems, we know that in order to change leadership behaviors we must tap into the automatic, or nonconscious, parts of the brain. This is why a long-term learning approach, such as that modeled in this book, is essential to achieving lasting results. The full 18-month commitment provides support to the learner as she continues to adapt her behavior in her work.

Debbie’s story reveals the truth that when a person can recognize that something is wrong (make the unconscious conscious) and take responsibility for it, she is ready to take the leadership journey. Debbie decides on her own that she is ready for mentoring. Even though her group is ranked lowest in the company for performance, she was not placed in a mentoring program. Instead, she submits an application to be accepted. A self-directed approach is essential to the success of a mentoring-coaching program because people need to first recognize they need to change in order to do the work of personal change.

Recommendation

We recommend The Secret because it provides a framework for how to teach leadership once a person has determined they are ready to learn. Because of the structure of the story, the lessons can be interpreted on two levels. You can read it and make insights for your own leadership journey, and/or you can discover how to develop other people’s leadership abilities. The book gives equal treatment to inspiring a new vision, providing skills and actions, and allowing adequate personal reflection with the use of the story.

Temple University Business Agenda
Leading for Results-February 4, 2005 (Fort Washington)
Leading for Results-February 17, 2005 (Center City)
Motivate and Inspire-March 18, 2005 (Center City)
Project Management-April 1, 2005 (Fort Washington)
High Performance Team Building-April 7(Center City)

Burlington County College (New Jersey)
Communicate for Results-March 16, 2005
Primer on E-Learning-March 22, 2005
Supervisory Skills-April 6, 2005
Delegate and Empower-April 13, 2005
Motivate and Inspire-April 20, 2005
Dealing with Difficult People-April 27, 2005
Time Management-May 4, 2005

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How Do We Evaluate Resources?

All of the books we review are evaluated on how they support a leader’s progress in applying our working definition of leadership.

We teach leaders to: Focus, Build, and Adapt:

Focus: A leader is able to see a new future

Build: A leader can build from his or her strengths as a foundation, adding on new skills, knowledge, and attitudes to create the new future.

Adapt: A leader is skilled at using feedback from their own thinking, other people’s reactions, and results/information from their environments to self-correct and keep moving toward the new future they envisioned.

Here is our rating system:

Outstanding 4

Good 3

Satisfactory 2

Unsatisfactory 1

Focus- How well does this book inspire a vision of a new future?

Build- How well does this book teach new knowledge and skills?

Adapt-How well does this book assist readers in examining and optimizing their own behaviors?

Overall Rating as a Leadership Resource: We average the ratings in the above three categories.