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Summary: As leaders we all need to take this leap...and often!
Review: I loved this book. It was a great journey and reminded me of EXACTLY what I needed to be reminded of in my leadership responsibilities. I keep it on my desk so that I don't forget about what it takes....it's a short story, and you won't need a MBA to enjoy it!
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Summary: The Radical Leap
Review: I loved this book. It was a real page turner. Being a manager, Leadership is a topic I'm quite familiar with. The author's approach is entertaining, fresh, innovative and relevant given today's preoccupation with pushing the envelope. It's an engaging story with delightful characters and lot's of chuckles with a few unexpected twists. Whether you're a leader an aspiring leader or just looking for an entertaining read, I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Great Read
Review: I was the designer for this book cover. I design a lot books so I don't normally have a chance to read many of them. After designing the cover and reading the jacket copy I knew I had to sit down and read this book. Boy was I glad! This book uses such an entertaining story with a friendly approach that you do not even know you are learning. It helped me view my career with a renewed eye and helped inspire me to go in new and interesting directions. I put this book up with some of my other favorite business reads like: The Circle of Inspiration and The Tipping Point. I recommend this quick read to everyone.
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Summary: Trust and love and humility are hardcore business principles
Review: Imagine someone audacious enough to say that "trust and love and humility are hardcore business principles."All around us, in the boardrooms and business offices of any number of formerly credible companies, many of the players have literally shredded the concept of honesty - the building block of trust; the only love is the love of compensation packages and power; and humility is a foreign concept long ago discarded for megalomania and self-righteousness and celebrity status. Imagine someone audacious enough to suggest that people who work in business can change the world for the better. Doing whatever it takes to meet or exceed analysts' short-term earnings projections to raise the value of the stock and increase shareholder value, now that is a readily observable hardcore business principle. Or at a more micro level, as one boss said to me early on in my career, "Your job is to help me make my bonus." Imagine someone audacious enough to suggest that we need to reclaim our right and power to set an example of what's right in business and everywhere else, and to challenge the examples that are not. In the past few years in business and in government, we have been confronted daily with evidence of an American culture in which fear drives behavior to conform rather than confront, in which intimidation greets those who would choose to live by personal codes of ethics. And so it is a radical leap to suggest that trust and love and humility, and a desire to change the world, and the right to stand up for personal values have anything other than a wishful place in business. Enter Steve, one of the duo of main characters in Steve Farber's The Radical Leap; A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership. Steve, a 40-something leadership management consultant tutored under the wing and influence of some of the leading thinkers and writers in the field of leadership, is disillusioned by the lack of meaningful change among his clients. Despite his best efforts to preach and teach the art and the practice of exemplary leadership - mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspiration - he finds himself surrendering to a world in which the title leader has been cheapened by so many merely posing as leaders, by so many who simultaneously empower employees and warn them "don't screw up and check with me before you do anything." The curious irony is that a casual polling of 20-somethings along the boardwalk in his San Diego beach neighborhood reveals that this generation - and by extension our next generation of leaders - look for and aspire to the very qualities in a leader that Steve has been preaching. Enter Edg, the second of the main characters. Edg, a scruffy 60-something on a skateboard, first overhears our leadership management consultant as he is conducting his informal poll along the boardwalk. He wants to participate in the poll too, and offers his definition of leadership. And so begins the audacious lesson for Steve and for all of us, the lucky observers, as we watch the story played in 7 scenes over 7 days - each scene ripe with its own wisdom. We watch Steve rekindle and reawaken his love for his work, his clients and his desire to shape the world for the better. We watch Edg coach Steve as he comes to the rescue of a corporate damsel in distress who is about to throw in the towel on her job as COO. We watch Steve help our damsel get reconnected with the love of who she is and what she stands for - love that energizes her to have the audacity to prove it to herself and her boss through her actions. And we learn the secrets and the source of Edg's own tutelage in leadership.
Edg, somehow, speaks from a place of experience and meaning and wisdom about the hardcore business principles of extreme leadership. "Leadership is intensely personal and requires us to live the ideas we espouse - in irrefutable ways - every day of our lives, up to and beyond the point of fear." "We are our own worst con artist, if we use safety and security in the same sentence as leadership." "When necessary, the Extreme Leaders will risk his or her own safety and security in order to grow the business and - just as important - develop as a human being." Edg challenges Steve and all of us, to "take our power back and become each one of us Extreme Leaders in our own right. We have to set an example of what's right in business and everywhere else. We have to be audacious enough to follow the examples we respect and challenge the ones we don't." And that is the foundation of the Radical Leap that Edg challenges us all to take. The 60-somethings seem to know this. The 20-somethings seem to want this. It is the many of us in the middle, who are cynical or conflicted or searching for more meaning, who could benefit from Edg's challenge. Edg's audacity will remind us and inspire us to love what we fundamentally stand for. It will help us inspire those whom we hope to lead, and it will energize us to have the audacity us to take action to shape the world for the better. Buy The Radical Leap; A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership; Observe and absorb its lessons; refer often to the Daily Handbook for Extreme Leaders which is offered at the end as a guide for putting extreme leadership into practice; buy lots of copies, give them to your colleagues and employees; set aside some time to talk about the principles and how you might put them into practice so that you can each, in your own way, change the world for the better. And let us hope that this first week in A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership is followed by many more that will inspire us all to take the risks - the Radical Leap - to develop as human beings and leaders.
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Summary: Stories teach..
Review: Incredible book! I enjoyed reading it so much, I almost didn't notice I was being taught powerful leadership lessons. Steve Farber is a masterful story teller, and has a wonderful grasp of what leadership is all about. Let's hear some more Mr. Farber!
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Summary: It misses the mark....
Review: Leadership is a difficult subject especially in the land of business and post Enron and Worldcom scandals. This book borrows liberally from characteristics espoused in Ayn Rand's books, as Farber tries to pull an humanistic objectivism framework out of her work and characters, which I don't think is possible. Don't get me wrong it is very readable and has a laudable goal but at the core of it Farber is missing the key ingredient to Love and Energy and without it Audacity and Proof will be little better than Mutt and Jeff. Farber's book assumes self-love but that assumption is not possible in today's work force which is largely driven by fear. And without it the concept of love, trust and respect within an organization is impossible. In order to deal with it Farber must address the emotion/energy duad which is the leadership genre's haunted forest complete with trails of breadcrumbs and a gingerbread house; and up till now no one who has gone in has ever returned. As such this book stands as another missed mark by business professionals and no doubt fires the starter's pistol on yet one more leadership tome and philosophy which the world (small 'w') can ill afford to endure.
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Summary: This book is a must-read...
Review: No matter if you are a student of life or a hard-driving CEO this book is a must-read! The three most influential books in my personal and business lives have been overshadowed and enhanced by Steve's astoundingly obvious conclusions. Buy it, read it and pass it on to a loved one.
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Summary: A Highly Evolved Leadership Paradigm. Great Book!
Review: Steve Farber brings consciousness, authenticity, and a direly needed approach to authentic and successful leadership, where there is a true win/win for all.
The Radical Leap helps to make radical and important changes so that you can learn exactly HOW to reach the top, and bring everyone else up with you. His book reads genuinely, and the authenticity is a fresh breeze for anyone that wants to learn how to rise on all levels, along with others that are striving to be and do their best.
If you are looking for an outstanding book on leadership, and working in harmony with others for the Highest good of all, this is one book that will be a treasure of insight for you. Thank you Steve for this excellent and much needed contribution to humanity!
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Summary: A Life Changing Read
Review: Steve Farber has managed to give birth to a book which might have had Richard Bach's ILLUSIONS and WHO MOVED MY CHEESE as parents. I encourage everyone to read, learn and practice Farber's formula in Radical Leap: a personal lesson in extreme leadership. Here's a personal lesson that can bring you to a transpersonal way of sharing your life with "inspired audacity" among other qualities. I'm looking forward to more from Steve's delightful fount of wisdom and practicality. An inspiring must read!
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Summary: Pithy but bland
Review: The Radical Leap turns out to be nothing of the sort. It's the same old story told a slightly different way - the dialog seems to be taken from a Nickelodeon TV sitcom episode than a serious business book.
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