Book Review: Remarkable Leadership
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Kevin Eikenberry has experience in the real world. It makes this book better. He is an avid learner and experienced trainer. They make this book better. And he's worked with real people one-on-one to help them improve their leadership. That, too, makes this book better.
If you're looking for an informed, practical and effective way to accelerate your own leadership development, you should buy, read, and use Remarkable Leadership. This will also be a good book for you if you're responsible for the leadership development program in a company or for the development of a protégé.
Like the experienced trainer he is, Kevin states his goal at the beginning of the book. "This book is designed to help you identify the parts of your personal leadership package working in your favor and help you develop those parts, and any others you wish to work on, to become the leader you are capable of becoming."
He moves directly from that statement to setting up the material that will fill the rest of the book. He has you do an exercise I've done with groups in training for years: identify a great leader you know and define why you rate them as great or remarkable. Then he shares the core competencies as he sees them. Here's the list.
Remarkable leaders …
Learn continually
Champion change
Communicate powerfully
Build relationships
Develop others
Focus on customers
Influence with impact
Think and act innovatively
Value collaboration and teamwork
Solve problems and make decisions
Take responsibility and have accountability
Manage projects and processes successfully
Set goals and support goal achievement.
After anchoring his thinking in the principle of building on strength, Eikenberry moves to the next chapter where he discusses leadership development in the real world. His model matches my Apprenticeship Model in all important respects.
The three most important are that most leadership development happens on the job, not in the classroom, good leadership development makes extensive use of feedback, and your boss and other more experienced leaders play a crucial role in your development.
Chapter 3 tells you how to get the most out of the book. Then comes the real meat of the book, a chapter on each of the competencies.
Each chapter includes examples and stories to help you get the concept. There are resources to help you develop. And there are two features that make this book stand out. "Now Steps" offer you suggestions for immediate ways to apply the principle of the chapter. And "Bonus Bytes" give you a link to a web site where more resources and ideas await.
This book is for you if you want a guided way to take charge of your own personal development. You'll get solid information and insight, coupled with learning tools and suggestions for action.
This is also a book for you if you're responsible for the development of leaders in a smaller company or for a protégé. The structure of the material and learning tools should make you more effective at that task.
If you support leadership development in a larger corporation you'll find many good ideas here that you'll be able to incorporate. You should also consider buying multiple copies to share with the working managers in your company to help them assume a mentor role.
Now, who should not buy the book? If you expect to learn leadership from simply reading this or any other book, save your money. Leadership is an apprentice trade and learning it takes work on the job. Remarkable Leadership can help you do it better.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Request your free copy of "Meeting the Challenges of the Boomer Brain Drain: An integrated approach."
Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.
Click here to find out more about Wally's coaching services.
For weekly tips and resources pointers, check our Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.
Click here to find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.





Wally - Thanks for the very kind words about the book. They are much appreciated!
Kevin Eikenberry
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Wally,
From 1975 to 1995, according to the Library of Congress, books on leadership appeared at a rate of about 24 a year. In the past 10 years, that output has doubled.
That's a new book on leadership every week, or enough over the decade to wallpaper every classroom at Harvard Business School. We've been graced recently with leadership lessons from everyone from Jesus to George W. to Geronimo to Colin Powell.
For those interested in developing their leadership skills through self-learning, wouldn't it be helpful for someone to breakdown these leadership books by theme/subject matter covered?
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Thanks for stopping by, John and adding that statistic. I wasn't aware of it.
I think the suggest to break them down is a good one in principle. The problem I see with it is that most of what we know about leadership has been known since Plutarch was the one doing the writing.
We've only been studying leadership as a separate discipline since the 1940s and even now most of the writing about it is some form of biography. I think we might be better to cut to the chase, and suggest people read Kouzes and Posner's Leadership Challenge or check out my Top Ten Books for Business Leaders.
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