Book review: Leadership From The Inside Out
October 23, 2008 by Miki Saxon
Leadership From The Inside Out: Becoming a Leader for Life is a second edition, published on the 10th anniversary of the original.
What Kevin Cashman writes resonates whether you’re running a Fortune 100 corporation, raising a kid, or struggling to live a decent life.
As Cashman reminds us immediately, “we are the CEO’s of our own lives,” so if you read the book forgetting what you do or what you earn and focus on increasing your value to YOURSELF and those around you the book has great value.
However, if you read it as another part of a to-do list on getting ahead its value substantially declines.
Leadership From The Inside Out addresses understanding, growth and change in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) as opposed to a set of steps and check-off points in how to be a ‘leader’.
Unhappily for some, Leadership From The Inside Out requires you to not only think, but think deeply. To gain real benefits from it you’ll need to mull, cogitate and then enable change in many levels of your MAP. Doing so is neither easy nor comfortable, but it is personally rewarding and extraordinarily valuable.
The book is still more valuable if you recast some of the thoughts to broaden its scope, e.g., where Cashman asks how authentic you are as a ‘leader’, ask yourself instead how authentic you are as a human being? How authentic in your other roles—parent, friend, spouse, teacher, landlord, plumber, etc.
The book is divided into seven ‘masteries’, they are
- personal mastery;
- purpose mastery;
- change mastery;
- interpersonal mastery;
- being mastery;
- balance mastery; and
- action mastery.
Cashman focuses on the fact that it’s not enough for you to master each of these, but that you must share them—passing them on to others within your world.
Although the book talks about executives, it’s not difficult to extend the intelligence to any level along with every-day life.
You always have to lead yourself, and you never know when you’ll have the opportunity to lead others, which makes the effort involved in truly utilizing what Cashman offers well worthwhile.
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Your comments—priceless
We are on the same page Mike. We tend to read the same books and are interested in the same topics. Thanks for sharing. I need to get signed up for the Harvard leadership discussion. Thanks. Jann
Hi Jann, thanks for stopping by; I’m glad that you found information of value.