I am currently teaching a class on Contemporary Leadership as part of the curriculum for the EXCEL Adult Degree Program at Huntington University. The foundation upon which the course was written was Jim Collins' book Good to Great. I have written about this book in earlier posts so I won't go back into it, except to say this is a must read for anyone serious about leadership education.

I am finding, however, that taken alone, the principles from this book may be a little ahead of those who are being exposed to leadership for the first time. I can see in the students' eyes the interest in the material as well as some confusion as to how to wrap their minds around the material. So, I have had to augment the course with some more basic concepts which provide greater context for understanding the book. For example in the discussion of level 5 leaders, I spent quite some time working with Maxwell's levels of leadership and the section on credibility from The Leadership Challenge.

I don't think this is a comment on the students, but perhaps a thought that, while we all say "Leadership is in short supply," we might not know exactly what leadership really looks like when we see. It is easy to get taken in by those who fit the caricature rather than the individual who simply and quietly influences movement toward a goal.