Speaker (Larry Weidel) draws on a 32-year career to critique popular leadership books and practices that generalize lessons from a few successful people while omitting context (funding, timing, training). Emphasizes that leadership is not confined to executives—everyone (cashiers, parents, students, workers) is a leader of their own life. The speaker frames leadership as situational and influenced by unequal starting conditions.
Chapters
A lot of leadership books and I've read a lot of them over the course of my 32 year career. I've gone through so many different leadership experiences and trainings, these types of things. And one of the things you tend to find out is many of these sort of leadership practices that come in and out every year where they study some very successful people, distill down a couple of key points that they do really well and then try to make it available to the mass, say follow this, do that, that kind of a thing. What they tend to forget is everyone has different circumstances, everyone has different challenges, different environments, and not everyone had the same circumstances that allowed those people to be successful. Some of them already had funding, some of them already had specific training, some of them just in the right place, the right time. And they tend to leave those factors out. You don't have to be, you know, a vice president or C. Everyone is a leader. Whether you're a cashier, whether you're a bank teller, whether you're a construction worker, whether you just stay home with your kids or whatever it is, or student, you're the leader of your life.