John F. Antal - Leadership Rising

Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2021 by

CASEMATE PUBLISHERS

1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083, USA

and

The Old Music Hall, 106108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK

Copyright 2021 John Antal

Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-63624-066-4

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-63624-067-1

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

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Acknowledgements

Every book is the work of many people. I wish to thank those who helped transform Leadership Rising from a thought to publication. First, I want to thank my wife, Uncha Antal. She is the fuel for my fire and the love of my life. With her, anything is possible. Second, I want to thank my good friends, Francis Fierko and Rick Jung, for their counsel, wisdom, and superb editing. Fran is as amazing a leader as he is an expert editor, and his efforts in helping with the manuscript were decisive. Rick was also central to the transformation of the work from draft to final version, reading every word and illuminating my shortfalls. I also want to thank the many people who took time to read, comment, and offer advice to me on how to improve the preliminary versions that I circulated prior to the final draft. These include, in alphabetical order, James and Beth Antal, Edward Braese, Ray Dishaw, Shawn Graves, and Carolyn Petracca. Finally, I am thankful for the editing and advice from Ruth Sheppard, Alison Griffiths, Megan Yates and the entire team at Casemate Publishers. I am profoundly grateful to you all.

Raise your awareness.
Raise your leadership.
Raise your life.

Preface

Read to Lead

My purpose is to develop leaders and inspire service. Purpose is the basis for all motivation. Without purpose, your goals lack direction. Without leaders of purpose, teams cannot reach their destinations. If you live your life with purpose, your actions move you towards a definitive goal. With purpose, you can move forward, explore, and grow. My purpose for writing Leadership Rising is to empower you to raise your leadership awareness to become a winning leader.

Leadership is of vital importance to you, or you would not have selected this book. Leaders change the potential energy of a group into the kinetic energy of a team. If you win at leading, you can win at life.

Navigating your leadership journey can be difficult. To navigate, first you must determine where you are. If you do not know where you are, then you are lost. Next, you must decide which direction to go. If you start by heading the wrong way, you waste precious time and energy and may find yourself traveling in circles, getting nowhere. By starting in the right direction, you save time and energy. In addition, you gain a tremendous advantage over those who do not know the way. Finally, you must know where you want to go. Traveling without a destination is pointless.

Today, to navigate and move from one physical location to another, you use the technology of the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) network on your smartphone. This makes navigation effortless as, after you input a destination, the GPS marks your location on a detailed map and gives you voice-prompted, point-by-point directions. Your leadership journey is a different matter. There is no GPS to help you navigate the leadership terrain. No technology can replace leadership. Leading requires you to deliver a holistic, human effort all day, every day, in calm and in crisis. To learn to lead, you must chart your course across this turbulent territory in more traditional ways, by first developing a mental map of the journey and then developing your own internal compass. Your compass needle points true when you are following your purpose and your values. Together, these provide your leadership with location, direction, and destination.

Leadership is the paramount ingredient that inspires people to cooperate and accomplish goals. If your leadership level is low, your life will be hard as it will be difficult to motivate people to work with you. If your leadership level is high, you can influence people to accomplish specific goals. Often, the best leaders inspire their teams to achieve seemingly impossible objectives. Accomplishing what was considered unobtainable is the magic of great leadership. Leadership, however, is not magic. You do not achieve great deeds at the snap of your fingers. As in the development of any worthwhile skill, sharpening your leadership takes study, practice, and discipline. The discipline of leadership requires persistent action to attain an intended result. Discipline earns the deed. Just like doing push-ups, the more you exercise each day, the stronger you become and therefore the more push-ups you can do. This book provides the mental push-ups that will raise your leadership awareness.

Leadership is not a title or position and comes in many forms. Anyone with a driving desire and the basic cognitive ability can rise to lead. Leadership can come from the newest member of the team or from the most experienced. The best leaders are effective communicators, but there were prominent leaders in history who could not read. Conversely, there have been abysmal bosses who were as articulate as Shakespeare but incompetent as leaders. By raising your awareness of leadership, you can learn the difference.

Leadership involves influencing people. There is no simple equation for leadership, and no formula to mass-produce leaders. The leadership journey is a personal effort of introspection, education, experience, and most importantly, dedication. There are as many types of people, teams, groups, and organizations as there are stars in the night sky, but you can raise your awareness and learn to lead others if you have the will to engage and improve your character, competencies and commitment. No matter what your situation, age, or circumstance, what defines you is how you rise, grow, and lead. You can raise your leadership, increase your chances for success, and improve the lives of those who follow you. If you are not growing your leadership, it is withering. Eventually it dies. There are few things sadder than an experienced leader whose map is out of date and whose compass no longer points true. Leadership, therefore, is a subject to ponder and refresh at all stages of your life.

In seven short chapters, this book will rapidly raise your awareness of leadership. Outstanding leaders know the value of time. Once a minute is past, we lose it forever. Time is a finite asset that cannot be stored. Time is not just money; time is the measure of everything. There are 24 hours in a day, but few people make the most of those hours. To squander time is to waste life. To win time, therefore, is to win life. As a leader, to misuse other peoples time not only wastes their hours, but also their lives, as we measure life in hours, days, and years. Time is the most precious element of human existence, writes Denis Waitley, author and national authority on high-level performance and personal development. The successful person knows how to put energy into time and how to draw success from time. Through successful actions, you can win time for yourself, those you lead, and those who benefit from what you deliver or produce.