Summary of Creating a Personal Leadership Strategy

One of the sources I read for my research was "Creating a Personal Leadership Strategy" by Derek Lidow. I thought this piece was interesting because it provides an outline for developing the skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur.

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Paragraph Summaries:
1. A personal leadership strategy is required for mastering the basic skills needed to lead an enterprise to success.
2. Start the process by examining yourself and your goals.
3. Evaluate your core motivations.
4. Selfish motivation will get you nowhere.
5. Brian O'Kelley didn't reach his biggest achievements until he was more motivated.
6. The next step is finding a mentor.
7. A mentor is objective; a friend is biased.
8. A board of advisors also works well, but you may have to pay them.
9. Virtually every successful leader has at least one mentor.
10. Next make a list of your traits, it's important to understand your own characteristics.
11. Make a list of how each trait helps/hinders you on the pass to your goals.
12. Consider how each of these will affect you in the future.
13. Assess your skills as basic, competent, master, or best in class.
14. If you're frustrated with your level of proficiency at any task, ask for help from your mentor(s).
15. Make sure you can convince an objective third party of your proficiency.
16. Characterize in a couple sentences your behavior relative to each skill.
17. It's important to recognize that intelligence and common sense is not a substitute for skills.
18. A personal leadership strategy is designed to keep you accountable on your track to success.
19. Your PLS is based on your motivations, traits, and skills.
20. There is no right or wrong format for your PLS.
21. Entrepreneurs who are open to seeking advice and creating a PLS do very well.

One to Two Sentences:
Objective self-assessment is crucial for figuring out where and who you are, which are both necessary for figuring out the best way to get to where you want to be.

Revised Sentences:
The first step is to figure out what your motivations are. Then you have to determine what traits and skills you have that will either help or hinder you on your path. After you've figured all of this out, you can develop your personal leadership strategy. The PLS is important because it's like a roadmap for how you can go out and achieve your goals. Some won't admit that they need help, but the most successful people all have mentors and written goals that they keep track of.

Compare the summary:
I compared my summary with Jason Wittler's, and it seems like we did most of the work in a similar fashion. His summary revision was more concise than mine but other than that it really does look like we have a similar style.