You never know when you're writing something if you're really going to touch anyone or not. You hope for the best, and you always figure that someone somewhere will like what you've written and that it will make some kind of impact.

Then there's something like this, where one of my posts was listed on a blog called Online Degree in a top 100 list titled 100 Blog Posts That Will Make You A Better Leader. My post shows up at #34, that post being When You Should And Shouldn't Give Advice.

I write about leadership and management because almost every day I hear stories about bad managers and supervisors. I hear things that I know if it was occurring to the person in charge they'd stand back, look at it, and realize just how negative their behavior is. They'd realize the impact it has on their effectiveness, and how much the people who report to them hate their jobs.

A couple of months ago I got another interesting compliment from one of my wife's friends. She's been coming to the house doing work with my wife on the weekends. It turns out that every time she came here, she picked up my book and read some pages whenever they were taking a break. Eventually, she asked if she could buy one. I thought about giving her a free copy, but my wife said to charge something, so I did; that's what wives are for. 🙂

Anyway, she actually read the entire book, told me how much she liked it, and said she wished the people she reported to would read it. I thanked her, and though I have to say that I'd love having more book sales, the truth is that often bad managers have no real idea that they're bad. How could they, since they know no other way.

Zig Ziglar talks about his first management position and how it seemed like he was messing it up because there were some factors, most out of his control, that were destroying his department. He didn't know what to do, and after a couple of months, he worried he was going to lose his job. He happened to pick up Norman Vincent Peale's book The Power Of Positive Thinking and realized that if he could change his mindset that things would at least be better for him. What he found is that when things were better for him, they were good for everyone.

That's the true background of good leadership. There's no such thing as a good leader who doesn't succeed in some fashion. And when a good leader succeeds, the people who follow that leader in some fashion succeed. And good leaders are always looking for new ways to improve themselves. I hope you check out the link to the other article; there's a lot to learn from there.