Today I review chapter 2 of “Flight Of the Buffalo” .  If you read the first post in the series you know that this is a management book that I decided to review for you guys.

PART 1 – Our Personal Leadership Journey
CHAPTER 2 – Can the Head Buffalo Become The Lead Goose?

This chapter starts by describing how the authors started their own personal, emotional journey of changing leadership behavior.  We start to see many OBSERVATIONS, he makes through the things he has learned.  He goes on to describe THE GAP that many leaders report.  That of knowing what they have now and what they know they must have if their business is to survive.  They can see what needs to be done, but just don’t know how to do it.

We also learn that the search for a Leadership Recipe will lead you to the conclusion that each person must write his or her own personal cookbook.  Sometimes in our discovers we learn that we have to be ready to hear the I-am-the problem message in order to accept and make use of it.

I agree that many times, because we built something or are currently in a position to lead we never believe that we are actually hindering our own growth.  We read that sometimes we need someone else to be able to point out the things we aren’t seeing.  A mentor or accountability partner.

We learn that leaders often try to use a FIX THEM model and sometimes produce employees that follow through with the new action plan for better and sometimes worse.  Last we see that in trying to come up with something different we give more of the responsibility to our workers.  In in this case can be too much too soon.

We then read about The Palmer Challenge where in light of having to make a huge decision about opening a new plant, he turns of the decision making to the management and employees that would work the plant.  According to the story in two weeks the workers rose to the challenge.  This brings us to a new thought, “People Rise to the Challenge- When It is Their Challenge”.

This chapter closes by reminding us that Success Is Always the Enemy.  This means that soon enough you start talking about what we are and forget to ask what we want to become.

End of Chapter Question: What am I doing or not doing as a leader that makes me the head buffalo instead of the lead goose?

Leadership Solution: See leadership as a personal, emotional journey.  Understand it happens in your gut before it happens in your or anybody else’s head.

I hope you enjoyed this  chapter review and stay tuned as I cover the next chapter