By: John Fehlen on February 20, 2023
Every once and awhile a book surfaces “for such a time as this.” The content is a prophetic punch in the face. Such is the case with “A Failure of Nerve” by Edwin H. Friedman. I remember feeling this many years ago with Mark Senter’s “The Coming Revolution in Youth Ministry”[1] and more recently with…
By: Travis Vaughn on February 20, 2023
“Calm is contagious.” About a decade ago, I read Rorke Denver’s book, Damn Few: Making the Modern Seal Warrior. While reading Edwin Friedman’s book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, Denver’s story of a particular combat event came to mind. After he described a pretty horrific scene, Denver wrote,…
By: Noel Liemam on February 17, 2023
The word, “Leadersmithing,” sounds so catchy and interesting. It made me wanted to rush into the book and find out exactly what it is or what does it mean. Then, I look closely at it, it has some similarities with words like locksmith and blacksmith in which I said to myself, “ha-ha,” I kind of…
By: Dinka Utomo on February 17, 2023
“Leaders are made, not born” -Eve Poole- Introduction Leadership could be said to be a skill that has existed since the beginning of human civilization and continues to be relevant today. It has long been a scientific field that is studied and applied to various aspects of human life. Knowledge of leadership and its developments,…
By: Jana Dluehosh on February 16, 2023
Master; Mastery: How does one become master? Leadersmithing by Eve Poole brings in many examples of types of work and how one becomes master of one’s vocation. Most of her examples have to do with craftmanship, and how over time one becomes a master by first becoming an apprentice. (More on apprenticing later). In our…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on February 16, 2023
Leadership Early in my career, I led a large team of seasoned professionals. They were all much older than I was and many were in their last chapter of their professional career. I had a brand spanking new Degree (the ink was barely dry), big ideas, loads of energy, and an ego larger than life.…
By: Adam Harris on February 16, 2023
Several years ago I won a trip to Las Vegas for hitting my quarterly goals at a previous company. When we arrived we had one rule. We could not pay for anything. That was a fun rule to keep. Part of this agreement meant we got an allowance to play at the tables. I tried…
By: Cathy Glei on February 16, 2023
In the book Leadersmithing by Eve Poole, the concept of leadership development is crafted around an analogy of “smithing” or leadersmithing. Poole, adjunct professor at Ashridge Business School shares about how leaders learn and about the process of crafting around ideas and practices that prepare leaders. The first part of the book focuses on an…
By: Esther Edwards on February 16, 2023
In past years, as one would observe a strong-willed child, the comment would often be made, “Well, he/she will make a great leader someday!” In other words, a strong will equals the ability to lead. In leadership circles, we often equate good leadership with numerical followership. “They must be an amazing pastor since their church…
By: Todd E Henley on February 16, 2023
Leadership” is a word which is much used nowadays, in many walks of life: politics, business, sports, education, the military, and even the church. According to Eve Poole in this fascinating book, the very use of the word is problematic. It implies a mysterious quality that people either have or don’t have. Instead, she coins…
By: Mathieu Yuill on February 15, 2023
When beginning my Masters journey in leadership and management, a colleague of mine asked me if you can actually learn leadership and if so, how does one teach it. It gave me pause – actually – it gave me great pause as I had never even pondered the question, “Can leadership be taught?” I was…
By: Scott Dickie on February 15, 2023
Unlike some in my cohort, I was looking forward to digging into Leader-Smithing, by Eve Poole . While I have been in Pastoral leadership for the past 27 years, I have not done any significant reading or studying on the topic of leadership. By God’s grace, a decent intuition, and a great community of mentors…
By: Kally Elliott on February 15, 2023
“If you can do something beautifully in miniature, it convinces both you and your masters that you are ready for bigger things.”[1] (85) I’ve been involved in athletics most of my life. In my youth I played soccer and swam on the swim team. In high school and college I ran cross country, began working…
By: Jenny Dooley on February 14, 2023
Reading Leadersmithing, by Eve Poole took me down memory lane and sent me to my basement storage room searching for copies of Aesop’s Fables and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The mere mention of these books brought back delightful memories of reading these stories to my children and sobering moments of clarity about myself and…
By: Pam Lau on February 14, 2023
Annie Dillard, in her beautiful book The Writing Life, says, “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.”[1] Every time I begin the process of writing this blog I pick up a book and hold it…
By: Tim Clark on February 13, 2023
When I was 15 years old my Grandad and I got into an old manual transmission pickup truck and drove to a very steep hill where, without warning, he pulled the emergency brake, got out of the vehicle, and told me to get into the driver’s seat. He was determined to teach me how to…
By: Jennifer Vernam on February 13, 2023
Poole’s Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership [1] endeavors to provide a resource to leaders in all stages of development. This is a lofty goal, as the topics reviewed were broad and would be difficult to completely cover in 232 pages. I found it helpful to review it as an index and appreciated it…
By: John Fehlen on February 13, 2023
I’ve been reading, nay, freebasing (that’s the only drug term I know) leadership books, conferences, resources, consultations, seminars and symposiums for decades and decades. Like a “user,” I couldn’t get enough. If you put me in the business section of a bookstore I’m like a kid in a candy shop. I can quote John Maxwell…
By: Kim Sanford on February 13, 2023
I admit that I was not looking forward to reading Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership by Eve Poole. I figured it would be yet another book on leadership that doesn’t really apply to me because I don’t hold a traditional leadership role. Then Poole opens with a reference to Goya and his portrait…
By: Travis Vaughn on February 12, 2023
“I have a hunch that if we were to repeat our research in ten years’ time, networking would feature more prominently.”[1] Yes! Networking. Better yet, networks. While reading Eve Poole’s Leadersmithing, I was already pondering mental comparisons to Michael Lindsay’s View from the Top,[2] published just a few years before Poole’s work. After all, the…
