Leadership Rites of Passage

Leadership Rites of Passage: The Journey of the Aspiring Leader and the Methods of the Mentor organizes the long-term work of personal leadership development into sixteen distinct Rites of Passage. It displays how the aspiring leader masters each developmental task, how the mentor guides him, and it offers seminar discussion questions.

These Rites of Passage are distinctly separated into four disciplines: Take the Lead, Create Followers, Become a Leader of Leaders, and Master the Psychology of Leadership.

This compelling business fable follows an "everyman", Joe Miller, on his journey toward extraordinary leadership, from his earliest days through to his retirement speech. Early on, Joe finds a mentor, Sagen Cruz, who is masterfully probative and insightful as he draws Joe toward each leadership challenge. In sixteen short but useful chapters we listen in on sixteen mentoring sessions as readers passively gain the benefits of Sagen's careful guidance and witness Joe's work to influence people and build followers.

Very well organized and easy to read, it allows these leadership development tasks to emerge organically as the two men work together. Sagen tells Joe each Rite of Passage will continue calling to him until he masters it. Ignoring it will not make it go away.

Readers benefit from the way this book uncovers the increasingly more difficult-to-detect core issues at play after Joe masters the basic essential elements of leadership. With each leadership challenge, Sagen points Joe to a masterwork in the literature which Sagen briefly summarizes, asks Joe to read, and expects Joe to incorporate into his leadership. Readers can use this reference list to pursue their own subsequent leadership reading.

Each chapter is brief, impactful, and readily put into practice. At each chapter's end, three brief summaries offer us Joe's work, Sagen's executive coaching process, and thought-provoking seminar discussion questions.