by Dave Ferguson & Warren Bird
Gold mine! Dave Ferguson and Warren Bird attach a sticky name (Hero Maker) to an important concept (leadership multiplication), and then offer a blueprint for making it an everyday leadership reality.
Hero Maker is so much more than a good idea. Hero Maker feels like I'm listening to leaders who have observed leadership multiplication, practiced it, reflected on it, taught it, and distilled the broader concept into five repeatable practices anyone can emulate.
Hero Maker is pragmatic, but it is not pragmatism. Dave and Warren help the reader to see the practice of Jesus as well as how his disciples, then and now, move from leadership addition to leadership multiplication.
You can't simply read this book. You have to absorb it and do the necessary work to put it into practice. The fruit can be exponential leadership development.
5 Takeaways from Hero Maker (and it was hard to isolate this to five):
1. Developing a Hero Maker Culture. Henry Cloud says, leaders have what they create and what they allow. Dave and Warren provide essential help for growing a culture of leadership multiplication.
2. Asking the right questions. The chapter not only asks a great question ("Am I trying to be the hero, or am I trying to make heroes out of others?"), it provides help to continually ask the kinds of questions that lead to better leadership and leadership development. They help you "dream big."
3. Permission Giving. I loved this take on the "I do it, you watch..." leadership development process. The six levels for giving permission are simple, practical, and oh so essential.
4. "I see in you." "When a leader says to someone, "I see in you . . ."and describes a preferable future, [then] the switch is flipped on for gift-based serving." Often times I have to return to concepts over and again to learn them, this one stuck from the first time I heard it.
5. Apprenticeship. Hero Maker is a text book on apprenticing. Apprentices graduate when they have another apprentice. As with the rest of the book, the author's principles are followed with practical processes and stories of others who have successfully navigated the practice.