Leadership is one of the most valuable talents we can pass on to the next generation. It can change lives forever—not only for the leaders but for their followers as well.
I know. Learning how to lead changed my life. I began my leadership journey in college and have been learning ever since.
To do my part in helping the next generation learn to lead, I just released a new book for teens and other young adults called Ticket to Lead. It's aimed at the high school- and college-aged young people, including recent graduates, who want to lead a sports team, club or student group, use their leadership roles to make it easier to get into a good college, create and build their own business or get a better job now and in the future. Those same leadership talents can also help young adults build their confidence and self-esteem, increase their respect and influence, leverage their impact and show them how to encourage others to be the best they can be.
Learning to lead early can be especially valuable for young adults. Among other benefits, it can:
Position them to lead their sports team, club or student group;
Make it easier to get into a good college;
Prepare them to be an entrepreneur and build their own business;
Improve their self-esteem;
Teach them to make others the best they can be;
Increase their popularity and respect;
Enhance their impact when pursuing their passion; and
Help them get a better job now and in the future.
Ticket to Lead helps young adults become leaders sooner than they expect while also learning leadership principles that will help them lead for a lifetime.
I wrote this book after talking with my high school-age grandchildren who were looking for some leadership experience and advice that might help their college applications. After searching for a good leadership primer for teens and other young adults, I gave up. Everything I found was too simple, too long, too broad, too dull or written for businesspeople who were looking for their next promotion and raise. I wrote this book to fill the gap.
You might ask why a grandad (my spelling) would possibly feel qualified to write a book about leadership for teens and young adults. It’s a fair question, and worth explaining. I was a long way from being a leader during my middle school and high school years. I was not even much of a member most of that time. I was an only child, raised by my wonderfully dedicated mom, a fine legal secretary who was a single parent for most of my life. We were financially challenged. We didn’t have a car for ten years when I was aged 6 to 16. My grades were good, but my social skills were poor.
During my senior year of high school, I began watching and learning from my contemporaries who were student leaders. After I moved to the University of Florida (UF) for college, I started learning to lead, largely by watching others. I joined a fraternity, became involved in student government and, in my senior year, was elected vice president of the student body. After graduating from UF with high honors, being commissioned in the U.S. Army via ROTC and getting married, I went to Harvard Law School, where I started in the bottom 5% of my class and graduated cum laude three years later.
Following Harvard, I spent 18 years practicing corporate, banking, securities and technology law. Early in that period, when I was only 27, I became vice president and general counsel of a regional bank holding company. I also taught at the UF College of Law. After my legal career, I served as CEO of a private investment banking firm and a publicly traded federal savings bank, was vice chair and CFO of a publicly traded hospitality company and CEO of a semiconductor company that we turned around, took public and later sold to a leading Wi-Fi chip maker.
In the process, I led and managed lawyers, bankers, securities brokers, construction and development executives and hardware and software engineers, along with a cast of financial, marketing and administrative people. We accomplished a lot together, and I am grateful for their support and what I learned from them.
As my eclectic career shifted from law to business, people would ask me what I did for a living. Initially, I would ramble on, trying to explain the details of my latest role. After a few years, I realized that the answer was simple: I built organizations and people. In the process, I learned how important mutual trust is to doing both.
Throughout my career in law and business, I watched and learned from the leaders around me. Some were superb role models who changed my life through their wise, patient counseling, encouragement and willingness to make a bet on my ability to do things I had never done before. A few provided invaluable examples of how not to lead. All contributed to my leadership journey.
In my CEO and CFO roles, I used input from board members, investors, advisors and my executive teams to hone my leadership and management skills. I learned what worked and what did not. As a lawyer, investment banker, advisor, board member and investor, I helped other CEOs, senior executives and entrepreneurs improve their leadership and management.
I have always enjoyed writing. In addition to my three contemporary novels (all conspiracy thrillers based on the interplay of political, social and technology issues), I have authored or co-authored three business trade books on computer contract negotiations and equipment procurement and written countless magazine and law review articles and blog posts.
My best credentials for this book come from our three children, who (thanks to my wife, I’m sure) had all the leadership, social and athletic skills that I lacked as a teen. Out of respect for their privacy, I won’t go through the details, but suffice it to say our kids knocked the cover off the ball with their collection of sports, student government, and club leadership roles, which helped all three attend nationally rated college and master’s programs. They earned these accolades, not me, but watching how they learned to lead as teens—and have continued to lead ever since—has been both wonderfully rewarding as a parent and highly informative as a writer.
Ticket to Lead is crafted from two important ideas: First, leadership is a set of behaviors that are supported by background skills that make those behaviors more effective. Second, the fastest and best way to become a leader is to learn from other leaders. The book accelerates that process by explaining the behaviors and skills and showing young adults how to apply them.
The book covers ten essential leadership behaviors—five "commitment behaviors" focused on bringing people together, and five "execution behaviors" focused on building people and trust to drive results. Each of these chapters includes an explanation of the behavior, a story about how other young people have applied it, and tips for learning and improving the behavior. These behaviors are followed by a dozen "supporting skills" that help leaders make their leadership behaviors more effective.
Leaders lead and managers manage. Many do both. This is a book about the leadership side of the leader/manager continuum. It’s not another business book about how to be a better manager.
Ticket to Lead fits today’s limited attention spans. The printed book has about 130 pages. Chapters and ideas are short, making it easy for readers to come and go as time permits. After reading the introduction and the first three chapters, readers can continue straight through or jump to the areas they are most interested in. For those who want to dig deeper, an appendix includes a collection of additional leadership insights.
Ticket to Lead is available in eBook format on Amazon Kindle, Apple Books and Barnes and Noble. The paperback version will be on Amazon shortly. Plans include an audiobook after that. Introductory prices have been set low to encourage distribution to teens and young adults. I am far less interested in royalties than in getting this book into the hands of the young adults who may benefit from reading it.
Leadership is a noble game with viral impact. Leaders not only change their lives, they change the lives of the people they lead. Some of those people will become leaders who will change more lives, and so the torch will continue to be passed, improving more and more lives as more people learn to be leaders.
If you know a teen or young adult who may have the potential to lead (or just wants to know more about leadership), or if you are teacher or advisor to high school- or college-aged kids, please pass the word about Ticket to Lead. Our world needs leaders now more than ever.
Ticket to Lead is a fast-track roadmap for young adults who want to learn how to lead.
Reading it can change their lives. It is one of the best investments they can make.
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