"Creating Your Leadership Discipline"

The first thing you have to know about this book is that I like to tell stories. Most of them are ‘probably’ true, but on occasion the vivid imagination of my childhood may alter some of the facts, but I assure you it will be of no detriment to what you may learn from reading this book. When telling stories, it is sometimes important to be repetitious in what is being said, so you may read the same point two or three, or even four times in different parts of the book in order for me to really drive home an important point about how to discover your talents and to create discipline to promote what you do best. I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it and I hope my stories help you to know and understand yourself and what you can get out of this book. The first story and probably the most important is appropriately called ‘The Shortcut’. It takes place when I was about five years old and is about how I got to school as a kid. I am the youngest of five children; my next older sibling is my brother Bill who plays a key part in this story as he also did in many stories throughout my life. We lived about a mile from the Monatiquot School and the route to the school, although on back roads was up and over a pretty high hill. My mother would pack me up in the morning in my hand-me-down clothes and give me my lunch in a paper bag and send me off with my personal escort and guardian ‘Bill’. We would usually meet up with the notorious Smith boys, Peter, Bills’ age and Paul, a year older than me. As has been the case throughout my life, I was the youngest and always last in whatever we did. Bill and I would leave the house and the trek would begin. Bill would always be about fifty feet ahead of me and be constantly yelling “hurry up, or we’ll be late”. That mattered to him because he was in the sixth grade, very popular, and wanted to make his mark at the beginning of each day with his friends to assure himself of his stature in the school. I on the other hand was in kindergarten, had a nickname of ‘Butchie’ and was only interested in blending in and being Billy’s brother. We would usually meet up with the Smith boys and the trek would continue. Bill and Peter would lead the parade with Paul somewhere in the middle and Butchie picking up the rear. It would all go pretty well except for the constant bullying I had to put up with from Paul, who was a large (fat) kid who always had to be poking or prodding someone smaller than him. Occasionally the command would come from the top, Bill or Peter, “leave him alone”. If it came from Bill it would usually include “or I’ll kick your ass”. This would stop any problem with Paul, as any one knew that if Bill said he would ‘kick your ass’, he would. About ten minutes into the trek we would be entering the Thayer Academy woods which would be the first ‘shortcut’ in the journey and that was pretty nice. We would walk on paths cut through the woods covered with years of pine needles that had dropped off the ‘gigantic’ (about 30 feet high) pine trees to the athletic fields of Thayer Academy. Thayer Academy, by the way, is a really good private school started by General Sylvanus Thayer as a prep school for West Point. It also had a middle school called Thayer Lands for younger, grades one to six, children. When we crossed the athletic fields we would cross a street and enter through the gate into the stone walled, forbidden, property of Thayer Lands, hurriedly make our way through the playground to the ‘Berlin Wall’ that we would have to climb over as there was no exit gate. Once again the order would come from the top “hurry up Butch or we’ll get caught” as no one was allowed to go through Thayer Lands and climb the stone wall to escape and take the ‘shortcut’ to Monatiquot. Monatiquot, by the way, is an old Indian name probably from the Wampanoag Tribe that inhabited the area before the arrival of settlers from Europe. We would be told by the teachers at Monatiquot every so often “not to go through Thayer Lands, you must go around and down Academy Street”. No ‘shortcuts’. And now the crux of the story; ‘the wall’. Bill, Peter, and Paul were like monkeys, up one side, stand on the top, and then down the other side onto the grass sidewalk. I, on the other hand, would stand and look at the wall and wish it wasn’t there as I hated to climb that tremendously high wall, roll myself over the top (no standing for me) and slide down the other side hoping to find a protruding stone to catch my foot before dropping to the grass. Every day was the same; I never got use to climbing the wall, but liked the ‘shortcut’ because that was how we got to school and it saved a lot of time. I never got hurt, but was always a bit scared that I would because of the height of the wall. I don’t think I ever walked all the way up the hill and down Academy Street to get to school, it just didn’t make any sense and took a lot more time. When you can accomplish your goal without hurting anyone, (especially yourself) except those who want to make it harder for no good reason, take the ‘shortcut’, even if it may be a little scary, and that is what this chapter and book is all about. You can read all the books I have read to find out what your talents are and how to create a discipline to use them advantageously or you can read this chapter and book to save a lot of time by taking the ‘shortcut’. It will take a lot of time to learn what your talents are and how to use them productively and having a good start on what to look for in the reading material will help and hopefully make it fun. Oh, and by the way, the ‘Berlin Wall’ at Thayer Lands’ was about five feet high. Unfortunately for me, I was about thirty inches high at five years old, and yes, my good friends still call me ‘Butch’. Climbing that wall every day also helped me create a discipline and build my confidence. You may also be interested to know that the Monatiquot School and the Monatiquot River are located in the town of Braintree, which was incorporated in 1640 as one of the first towns in America. Both John Adams and John Hancock were born in Braintree. The history of the area was a part of my upbringing, always being told of the importance of individual freedoms and to respect that same freedom in others. You will see that this attitude and unconditional respect for all will carry throughout the book. Now let’s get on with Chapter 1 and ‘Your Shortcut’. Adding Value to a Changing World The world is changing in many ways at a staggering rate that affects business, political, and social decisions. The truth will change rapidly with information provided by the latest social media gimmick and our new leaders will be forced to direct people, and themselves, through the maze of information created by what is popular at any specific moment in time. The United States will no longer be the automatic leader in many instances, and working to maintain our leadership in all we do will become more and more challenging. There are also changes in leadership where the leader of tomorrow doesn’t look like the leader of yesterday. One key change here is that the new leadership is more focused on ‘teams’ and not just individual leaders. This change is one of the reasons to focus on a ‘Leadership Discipline’ for life as well as one for the particular position you may have in business. Look around at how things happen in today’s society; in everything we do, be it social or work related, there is a need for leadership at every level of life. There will be a lot more on this later, but it is important to start off knowing how important individual leadership is in our democracy, and how important it is to have people who want to lead, take responsibility, and add value to their position in life. The idea for this book was never to help create the next Winston Churchill, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gate