GenXmanager: Leadership for the Generation X Manager

I recently read the book Monday Morning Leadership by David Cottrell. Overall, I’d give the book four out of five stars. Though the book regurgitates leadership ideas that have been proposed before by various other authors and researchers, it does so in a unique and simple to read fashion.

The book is about a manager, David Cottrell (the author), who is having a variety of leadership and managerial issues at work. He is at his wits end and decides to seek the council of a seasoned, successful leader by the name of Tony Pearce.  Tony agrees to mentor David for eight consecutive Monday mornings.

In this time, Tony listens to David and imparts his wisdom. He doesn’t tell David what he should do but guides him in his decision making.

The eight lessons Tony imparted to David were:

1. Take total responsibility for results without excuses. In addition, being a leader requires that one makes different decisions.
2. Be certain that everyone has bought into the shared vision and rowing the boat in the same direction. He also states that employees quit people rather than companies.
3. The job of the leader is not to lower the bottom but raise the top. He suggests really knowing and getting in touch with your employees.
4. Act with integrity. Be proactive and develop an action plan before a crisis.
5. Hiring high performers. It sends a message to the current team.
6. Manage your time and by being more effective at whatever you do. 
7. Coach, encourage, recognize, reward, and respect your employees. 
8. Be open to new opportunities, always learn, help others, stay positive.

If you’ve read most of the best selling business books over the past 20 years this all sounds very familiar. There is a bit of Covey’s 7 Habits and First Things First, Collins’ Good to Great, Rath and Clifton’s How Full is Your Bucket, Lee’s The Power Principle, and other random books on management and leadership.

What this book does do well is tell a story and puts all of these concepts into action. We all have been (or will be) where David was in the book. We struggle at various points in our career and question our own leadership ability. This book shows that simple principles can have big positive effects. Though the principles are simple, they are not easy to implement as we see David Cottrell struggle to live the eight lessons.

There was one “ah-ha” moment I had while reading the book. Step five states that a leader must hire top performers. That sounds obvious but the rationale was unique. All leaders want the best performers (would you seek out a low performer on purpose?). Tony says that by hiring the best performers you are positively impacting the team. You are sending a message that you respect the team enough to only bring on board those of a certain caliber to enhance the team. It was about respecting the team first. Performance was an outcome of this respect.

I’ve noticed that most management and leadership books these days simply repackage what’s already been said. However, this is a good thing. You read enough of these books and one will eventually strike an emotional or intellectual cord that will spur personal or professional change.