Lead Like it Matters…Because it Does: Practical Leadership Tools to Inspire and Engage Your People and Create Great Results
Roxi Behar Hewertson
McGraw-Hill (2015)

Every organization needs effective leadership at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise.

The last time I checked, Amazon offers 129,319 volumes in the general category of leadership and 53,713 of them focus on business leadership. Why another? Just as in residential real estate whose mantra suggests that for every house there is a buyer, it can also be said that for every book there is a reader. I think that many readers will welcome the abundance of information and counsel that Roxi Behar Hewertson provides in Lead Like It Matters…Because It Does. Her primary focus is on eight insights, none of which is a head-snapper, nor does she make any such claim. Here they are, accompanied by a few brief annotations of mine.

1. “Knowing is the easy part. Doing is the hard part.”

True, but beware of the perils that Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton discuss in their business classic, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action.

2. “Leading people is messy!”

In Song of Myself, Walt Whitman observes, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself: I am large, I contain multitudes.” All human beings are complicated, sometimes contradictory creatures, and yes, lives are often messy. That said, I agree with Hewertson: messiness need not be a permanent condition.

3. “Leadership is a discipline, not an accident.”

This insight reminds me of an observation by Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” The same can be said of effective leadership. Its foundation consists of several essential, carefully developed habits.

4. “Leading and Individual Contribution require opposite skills and motivations.”

Please see my comments about #2. Also, the healthiest human communities are those in which principled dissent is not encouraged; rather, it is [begin italics] required [end italics].

5. “Leading is all about relationships!”

The most important relationship is the one that each of us has with our self. The health of all other relationships depends on the health of that one. Years ago, Carl Rogers suggested that people without an identity crisis are those who are comfortable living in their own bodies.

6. “Learning the ‘soft skills’ is hard!”

Practicing each of them diligently each day, day after day, is even more difficult. In fact, I resent anyone’s characterization of empathy and decency, for example, as “soft skills” and presumably Hewertson agrees. Moreover, empathy and decency are not skills; rather, qualities of character.

7. “Most change efforts fail, and they don’t have to.”

I do not wholly agree. Many change initiatives are doomed to failure because of what Peter Drucker had in mind in 1963: “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.” Let’s assume the given initiative is eminently worthy, indeed urgent. In that event, it is imperative to keep in mind that the strongest resistance to change tends to be cultural in nature, the result of what James O’Toole so aptly characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.”

8. “Leaders create and destroy cultures.”

In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), Joseph Schumpeter speaks to this when he introduces his concept of creative destruction. When he became chairman and CEO of GE, Reggie Jones led the company to global dominance in more than a dozen industrial product areas. Then, when he selected his successor, he told Jack Welch to “blow up GE.”

The title of this review expresses one of my core convictions about organizational health. Whatever their size and nature may be, all need effective leadership at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. I commend Roxi Behar Hewertson on the wealth of information, insights, and counsel that she provides in this volume. Those who read and then (hopefully) re-read her book will be well-prepared to help their organization to establish or strengthen a workplace culture within which personal growth and professional development are most likely to thrive. Bravo!