Models

People keep congratulating me on publishing my book, for selling copies, for celebrities mentioning me. I like those things, but the book is a medium of communication. I consider it a means to an end. The point of the book is to give people tools to improve their lives, to develop the skills of empathy, compassion, responsibility, self-awareness, discipline, creating meaning, value, importance, purpose, passion, and related social and emotional skills that traditional education doesn't teach. "Leadership" is the closest word to it, but conjures up mental images of a man in a business suit giving orders for many people that my material doesn't relate to. I'll measure the success of my book most by how many people report that it enabled them to improve…

The mainstream view of the leader is as the quarterback or command-and-control general. It's changing, but those views seem the most common. Different models for leading work better for different situations. Alternative models that I find work more often are that The leader serves his or her followers, see "Lessons in leadership from Frances Hesselbein, part 1" The leader is like a gardener, see "Jack Welch's Gardening Model of Leadership" Another model I've used in teaching that applies to leadership comes from one of my physics professors who has become a friend since the early 90s. He plays piano and often accompanies singers. He views the singer he accompanies as the main performer and the role of the accompanist to make the singer look good…

A friend read my book, ReModel, and asked me: Josh, what's your model about yourself? He clarified: You wrote about how people can be Cathedral-Builders instead of being miserable. What's your equivalent of being a Cathedral-Builder? "Cathedral-Builder" refers to the parable of The Three Stonecutters: Many years ago, a passerby saw three workers cutting stones in a quarry. Though they were doing similar work, one looked unhappy, another looked content, and a third looked overjoyed. The passerby asked them what they were doing. The unhappy stonecutter replied, "I'm doing what it takes to make a living." The content one answered, "I am a stonemason practicing my craft." The overjoyed one looked up with a visionary glance and said, "I am building the greatest cathedral in…