The 10 Principles
- LOVE –Friends like but leaders love. From Aloha to Agape, Czarnecki starts the book by describing the different types of love and how they reflect in leadership and the corporate world. He also defines the difference between liking and loving and how liking can hurt the company’s goals. He concludes that love is the emotional and intellectual basis for effective leadership.
- EXPECTATIONS—Setting the Bar Sets the Tone. Where love sets the tone for the leadership relationship, expectations set the focus for achieving future successes. Gerry concentrates on actions you can take right now in your leadership role to establish expectations that are aligned with the rest of the organization.
- ASSIGNMENT—Square Pegs in Round Holes Never Fit! The key to having a winning team is having great players. Czarnecki helps identify and find stars (top performers) in your organization by recognizing potential and motivation in employees and morphing them into the future of your company. Makes you also take a look in the mirror to see if you are in the right place doing the right thing and being a top performer yourself.
- DEVELOPMENT—the Good Get Better, the Best Excel! Czarnecki discusses the role of leaders as coaches and mentors and how in order to be effective in that role; you will need all the love you can muster. Gerry shows how to create a constructive learning experience for your associates and how to prove your commitment to them by being focused on their development. He challenges conventional wisdom by encouraging the leader to focus on helping the talented first; and not to waste energy on those with little potential.
- EVALUATION—Leaders Succeed by Making Judgments. In this principle, Mr. Czarnecki addresses the most personally challenging aspect of being a leader. While pointing out top reasons to why leaders avoid evaluations, how to get ready for tough feedback sessions and offering ways to get your associates attention, he’s showing how with love the whole process might be less stressful, and much more fruitful. At the end of the chapter, Gerry invites leaders to perform self evaluation and receive feedback from others.
- REWARDS—An Organization Elicits the Behavior It Rewards. The message in this principle is that if you truly know how to love, then you need to be positive. Czarnecki is pointing out how negative feedback creates fear and fear creates flight. Although sometimes you have no choice but to be negative, but he shows how rewards will reinforce behavior good or bad. He’s teaching us to use praise, not just money rewards and ends by showing leaders how to reward their own success.
- SYSTEMS—Structure Frees the Mind to Be Creative. While the previous principles focus has been primarily on activities the leader executes and how they directly impact staff behaviors and the unit’s performance, this one focuses on the unit, how it performs its role, and, most important, what the leader must do to structure the activities of the unit as a whole. While talking about “right brain”, “left brain” thinking and Process Management Disciplines, Czarnecki concludes that leading is what we do for, with, and to people while managing is what we do to assure ourselves those goals we are responsible for are actually achieved. In this chapter Czarnecki brings up Peter Drucker and discuss his concept of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. As his usual signature chapter ending; he finishes with self reflection and showing leaders how to organize themselves.
- HUMOR—Lead with Humble Humor not Hubris. Mr. Czarnecki takes humor seriously when he says that leaders who want the best from their associates must incorporate humor into the workplace. Not to be mistaken for “goofing off” or slapstick jokes, humor is about attitudes and actions that promote health, happiness, teamwork, creativity, and job satisfaction. He points that organizations that embrace humor employ associates who love coming to work. As a leader, it is your responsibility to lighten up and laugh, and encourage your associates to do the same.
- INTEGRITY—Begin Every Action with a Commitment to Integrity. Bringing up the sensitive subject of the rash of horrendous scandals that have plagued corporate America in recent times and how it has put a spotlight on the integrity, and lack thereof, among today’s business leadership, Czarnecki is pointing at the huge loss of public confidence in corporate leadership. Confirming how leaders in corporate America are now ranked near the bottom on evaluations of trust and respect, even lower than politicians. This situation has created severe angst in corporate boardrooms and has incited a strong determination to regain the trust that American consumers once had. Trust and mutual respect are fundamental to all human relationships. Without trust, our relationships with customers, shareholders, associates, and
vendors will be difficult to sustain. Czarnecki ends with “There Are Good Leaders, and There Is Hope”. - PASSION—Drives Purpose and Performance. Gerry brings the book to an end with another strong emotion – passion. While many of the leadership principles involve actions you must take; passion is a force that must be felt for you to be a successful leader. Passion is a driving force in the human spirit, and when passion is present, success is attainable. Where passion is lacking, success will be lacking as well. If leaders don’t deeply believe in all aspects of their work and don’t feel passionately about their business, they will lack commitment and creativity. Passion stimulates energy, desire, confidence, and faith in the ability to achieve extraordinary results. It also fuels the determination to overcome obstacles and cements the conviction that it can be done.