One of my leadership highlights this year was listening in to a telephone Q&A session between Dr Henry Cloud (also see Cloud-Townsend Resources) and Dan Rockwell of Leadership Freak Blog The call was planned a few days ahead of time and a several hundred people mainly from across the US signed on a few minutes before the session started one Wednesday afternoon ready to gain some wisdom.\r\n\r\nAfter some early introductions Henry Cloud was asked this:\r\n\r\n“If you were able to give the young Henry Cloud some practical advice on leading effectively what would it be?”\r\n\r\nThe answer was this:\r\n\r\n”There’s no magic formula that guarantees you will lead effectively, but there is a magic formula to help you get there. Work on filling up these four columns:\r\n\r\n1 get some significant relationships to model and correct and inspire and mentor. Seek out people to fill this first column\r\n\r\n2 you’ve got to know what you’re doing. In terms of whatever your endeavour is, you’ve got to do your homework – reading, workshops, training etc. It’s inconceivable that a surgeon would never read a book.\r\n\r\n3 get experiences. Again, you don’t want to be operated on by a surgeon who’s never done it. So volunteer, get on teams, get on projects, scare yourself, hold on by the bootstraps. You’re not going to figure it out unless you get on and do it, and no-one else will get you there apart from … you.\r\n\r\n4 figure out a structure for your development. Make time to develop. Make a structure. It doesn’t just happen. You don’t throw a maths book at a kid and hope they learn maths. In other words, nothing happens without planning”\r\n\r\nFood for thought …\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nWritten in the top floor cafe of John Lewis, The Mall, Cribbs Causeway