"Be Bold. Do Good. Be Great."

Home

Services

Image Management

Branding

Messaging

Public Relations

About Us

Contact Us

Headington Rules

Communications 101

ABCs of Public Affairs

Speechwriting 101

The Headington Cabal

Headington Media Center

Leadership 101

Guerilla PR

Community Hotsheet

 
 
 

The Headington Rules of Leadership (as learned from Drs. Bennis and Sample)
 
My interest in leadership predates college but it was a transformative class co-taught by Drs. Warren Bennis and Steven Sample at USC (aptly called “The Art and Adventure of Leadership”) that accounts for where I am today.  I followed their teachings with a focus on political leadership in graduate school and continue to be involved in public affairs leadership training (through Coro and membership in ASTD).  Below are some leadership rules and principles of the Bennis-Sample duumvirate.
  • Leaders are people who are able to express themselves fully.  By this I mean that they know who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to fully develop their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses.  They also know how to communicate what they want to others, in order to gain their cooperation and support.  Finally, they know how to achieve their goals.  The key to full self-expression is understanding one’s self and the world, and the key to understanding is learning from one’s own life and experience. – On Becoming A Leader (OBAL), (Addison-Wesley/1989), p.3.
  • Leaders are made, not born, and made more by themselves than by external means. . . . [and] no leader sets out to be a leader per se, but rather to express himself freely and fully.  That is, leaders have no interest in proving themselves, but an abiding interest in expressing themselves.  The difference is crucial, for it’s the difference between being driven, as too many people are today, and leading, as too few people do. – OBAL, p.5.
  • I really believe in the role of luck in human affairs.  Machiavelli said that fortune favors the bold.  I think the prepared mind is basically the same thing as the bold, but fortune is in there. – OBAL, p.108.
  • You have to know where you’re going to end up.  Mountain climbers don’t start climbing from the bottom of the mountain.  They look at where they want to go, and work backward to where they’re starting from.  Like a mountain climber, once you have the summit in view, you figure out all the ways you might get there. – OBAL, p.135.   
  • True leadership is a demanding vocation that requires would-be leaders to summon that which is best and strongest within themselves. – The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership (TCGTL) (Jossey-Bass/2002), p.xi.
  • If we are to raise great leaders for our own age, we probably don’t want to clone the leaders of the past. – TCGTL, p.1.
  • Leadership is . . . highly situated and contingent; the leader who succeeds in one context at one point in time won’t necessarily succeed in a different context at the same time, or in the same context at a different time. – TCGTL, p.1.
  • Certainly there are natural leaders who seem to gravitate effortlessly to positions of power and authority.  And yet man of the world’s greatest leaders demonstrated little aptitude for leadership in their youth, but instead learned this esoteric art through study, apprenticeship and practice. – TCGTL, p.2.
  • The art of leadership, as well as individual practitioners of that art, are always works in progress.  They are never finished and complete; rather, they are always evolving, always changing, never static, – TCGTL, p.5.
Sample’s 15 Contrarian Principles
  1. Think gray: try not to form firm opinions about ideas or people unless and until you have to.
  2. Think free: train yourself to move several steps beyond traditional brainstorming by considering really outrageous solutions and approaches.
  3. Listen first, talk later; and when you listen, do so artfully.
  4. Experts can be helpful, but they’re no substitute for your own critical thinking and discernment.
  5. Beware of pseudoscience masquerading as incontrovertible fact or unassailable wisdom; it typically will do nothing to serve your interests or those of the organizations you are leading.
  6. Dig for gold in the supertexts while your competition stays mired down in trade publications and other ephemera; you can depend on your lieutenants to give you any current news that really matters.
  7. Never make a decision yourself that can reasonably be delegated to a lieutenant; and never make a decision today that can reasonably be put off to tomorrow.
  8. Ignore sunk costs and yesterday’s mistakes; the decisions you make as a leader can only affect the future, not the past.
  9. Don’t unnecessarily humiliate a defeated opponent.
  10. Know which hill you’re willing to die on, and realize that your choice may at some point require you to retreat from all the surrounding hills.
  11. Work for those who work for you; recruit the best lieutenants available, and then spend most of your time and energy helping them to succeed.
  12. Many people want to be leader, but few want to do leader; if you’re not in the latter group you should stay away from the leader business altogether.
  13. You as a leader can’t really run your organization; rather, you can only lead individual followers, who then collectively give motion and substance to the organization of which you are the head.
  14. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that people are intrinsically better or worse than they really are; instead, work to bring out the best in your followers (and yourself) while minimizing the worst.
  15. You can’t copy your way to excellence; rather, true excellence can only be achieved through original thinking and unconventional approaches.  
 
 
A boutique communications firm that specializes in image management, branding, messaging and public relations.