Random anecdotes

 Leadership is about influence and leverage. To succeed, you

need to harness the energy of others.
 The higher you rise in an organization, the more you play the
role of company architect.
 Recruiting is romance. Employment is marriage.
 What works well in one organization or role may fail in another.
 There is no one-size-fits-all approach to leading change.
 Your ability to adapt and self-manage depends on both self-
awareness and personal discipline.
 When you transition into a role in which you have to lead your
former peers, the first step is to accept that those relationships
must change.
 The higher you climb in an organization the more you must play
the role of the organizational architect.
 Effective delegation requires you to translate higher-level goals
into specific jobs, fill those jobs with competent people you
trust, and establish metrics to monitor their progress. How you
approach delegation varies based on whether you are
delegating tasks, projects, processes, or outcomes. For example,
outcomes require more strategic context than tasks.
 According to a study on leadership transitions, executives plan
and implement change in waves. The first wave of change
follows a period of focused learning. Then, the executive
regroups to focus on deeper learning about the organization
and to allow people to adapt to the initial changes. Armed with
more actionable insight, the executive implements another
wave of deeper change. From there, the executive focuses on
fine-tuning to maximize performance until moving on to a new
leadership transition either via a promotion with the same
company or a new job with a new company. For more on this,
see When a New Manager Takes Charge by John J. Gabarro.