During the past 5 or so years my ears have pricked-up when I’ve heard stories about high achieving people not having later during the course of their lives given something of themselves (their time/ knowledge/ skills) back to their community – whether “community” is taken to mean a school that they once attended, or a club that they once belonged to, etc.
Around 5 years ago I started to experience a change in mindset, from (to that point in time) largely being focused on making advancements in my own career, to instead wanting to share my knowledge/ experience/ skill set with other people who may have an interest to hear what I have to say/ offer. This change in mindset actually happened quite suddenly, and was greatly influenced by me finding myself in a role during that era reporting to a leader who was consumed by his own quest for fame and fortune – to the extent that primary stakeholder relationships had become strained and the organization was embroiled in one political battle after the other. Suffice to say that it was not a happy place to be.
I learned a lot from that experience. Particularly that I never wanted to end-up practicing a style of leadership as that person had. And secondly, that it was time that I increased the extent to which I shared my commercial and organization knowledge/ skill set with other people – to benefit them and their businesses/ organisations. In short, I felt that it was time that I gave back.
This sense of wanting to give back was a huge catalyst for me to write my first book – apart from seeing that the business failure rate in New Zealand hasn’t really improved since I was at university and that I felt I could perhaps help stem this failure rate, and despite my ability to effect positive change seemingly posing a threat to some people. And my quest to give back through offering fresh perspectives on all manner of issues to a wide range of organisations is opening all sorts of doors of opportunity that I have never thought about opening before.
As I said during my speech at the formal launch of my first book, I had a choice to keep my commercial knowledge to myself and go to the grave not having shared it, or instead open-up my 20 years of working in senior management roles to the world. What readers choose to do with the information that they come into from reading my books is completely up to them…and whether a person chooses to read my books or not is immaterial to me also. What is important to me is that I made the choice (and have taken action) to share my knowledge and skill set with the world…to create the potential for more businesses to perform better than they are currently and to help stem the failure rate of businesses around the world. As I well and truly learnt over the years, the best that any leader can really hope for in life is to provide the right set of tools (guidance/ tools/ resources) for others to choose to pick-up and run with/ use. As the age old saying goes “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”.
I urge more leaders to give back…and to start down this road sooner rather than later. It’s a very satisfying experience !