The Entrepreneurs Library
A Preview of Leaders Open Doors with Bill Treasurer
A summary of things you should know about Leaders Open Doors according to Bill Treasurer
Introduction
In this episode Bill Treasurer takes a deep dive into his book, Leaders Open Doors where he gives you very simple ideas for becoming a valuable and successful leader.
In his book, Treasurer helps you create opportunities for the growth and development of the people that you lead. The goal of the book is to show you how to inspire people as a leader and help people reach their goals by inspiring a willingness to take initiative.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs that are not natural born leaders, but need a radically simple leadership approach to motivating people, lifting profits, and encouraging performance.
The Book’s Unique Quality
I think other leadership books spend too much time trying to prove that the author is smart by using big SAT words and such instead of simple ideas that really matter.
The Best Way To Engage
Chapters 1-3 are important that you read all the way through. The rest of the book you can skip around if you want. I always suggest you read the whole thing though.
The Reader’s Takeaway
I would say to get out of yourself and stop focusing on you and focus a little less on results, but rather focus more on the means to the results and the people you lead.
A Deep Dive Into The Book
The first chapter deals with Open Door Leadership and it situates the reader in to this idea of the need for simple and important ideas of leadership. This chapter helps define the idea of open door leadership which is not about the leader but rather those being lead. A lot of leaders focus on their own ambition and their own climb and don’t recognize that the people who help make that climb for you are the people that you’re leading. Open door leadership is really about creating opportunities for the growth and development for people and organizations that you serve when you’re in a leadership role.
The second chapter is a deeper look at the idea of an Opportunity Focus. So many people in the workplace pride themselves on being “problem solvers” and what leaders really need to be is opportunity focused. People will move mountains for you if they know that in exchange for moving the mountain there is something in it for them.
The third chapter is what we call Purposeful Discomfort. We seem to exist on this grand continuum in any situation that we are dealing with that ranges from safety seeking behavior to opportunity seeking behavior on the other hand. And most of us are willing to go out on that continuum to some degree which we call our comfort zone. But what this chapter reinforces is that human beings and organizations don’t grow in a zone of comfort. Rather we grow, progress, and evolve in a zone of discomfort.
From there we move in to part two of the book which describes six doors of opportunity; six doors that you can open for the people that you are leading in your organization.
Chapter four is The Proving Ground Door. People need something to prove. People work really hard and are really motivated when they are trying to prove something to you but mostly when they are trying to prove something to themselves.
That takes us to chapter five which is The Thought Shifting Door. A leader needs to provide a thought shift so that they can see in a bigger and broader way that opens up more imagination than possibilities.
Chapter six is called The Door to a Second Chance and the focus of this chapter is the fact that people will make mistakes but if you want them to innovate you have to have some tolerance for mistake making. The first question when a mistake is made should be what went wrong and how can we prevent it from happening again. Instead of who did it or caused it to happen. This chapter is about the importance of leaders taking mistakes and turning them in to learning opportunities so that you can extract lifelong lessons for the person who made the mistake.
The next door in chapter seven is Opening a Door For Others. This is our diversity chapter. This chapter is about the importance of going out of your way as a leader to discover and pay attention to the people who are least like you. This chapter is about diversities and men creating opportunities for women.
Chapter eight is called The Door to a Personal Transformation. This chapter is about how a leader can say something to you in one moment that might have a transformative impact on the rest of your career.
Chapter nine is the culmination of the book and it’s called The Door to Your Open Heart. If you are never revealing who you are behind your role as a leader people will never be loyal to you because at the end of the day people want to know that you care about them.
In the epilog of the book I invited 10 world-renowned leaders to submit stories about leaders who opened doors to them.
Notable Quotes From The Book
“All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.” – Albert Einstein
The Credibility/Inspiration Of The Author
I am a dad of three kids who are 11 year old twins and an 8 year old as well. I am also a business owner/entrepreneur and started Giant Leap Consulting 12 years ago after spending six years at Accenture where I was a manager. Before that I was with a company called Executive Adventure which was an experiential team building company and I used to take executives to the outdoors doing rope courses and such. Before all of that I was the captain of the US high diving team and I used to dive from 100ft platforms into small pools for a living. I have a bit of a colorful background but my specialty is leadership and courage building.
I have been a practitioner of leadership development for over 20 years and have designed, developed and delivered many leadership development programs comprehensive in nature for emerging and experienced leaders. I felt like I knew a thing or two about leadership. I’ve written four books now, I have an off the shelf facilitator training program. I did my thesis on leadership in graduate school and literally traveled around the world teaching leadership development. One day I got some new counsel that really schooled me in the idea of leadership and it came from my five year old son, Ian. Ian got me back to what matters most about leaders and that is to open doors of opportunity for the people and the organizations that you serve in a leadership role.
Other Books Recommended by The Author
Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram
More Information About This Book and The Author
Buy Leaders Open Doors on Amazon today
Visit LeadersOpenDoors.com for bonus material and fun graphics
Visit GiantLeapConsulting.comfor more about Bill and his company
Contact Bill through his email here
More Information About This Episode
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Hello, My Name Is Awesome by Alexandra Watkins | How the World Sees You by Sally Hogshead | Courage Goes to Work by Bill Treasurer
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Wade Danielson
Wade is a 4-time serial entrepreneur and is the Founder/Host of The Entrepreneurs Library. With a long time passion for reading books, Wade created an online resource and podcast for entrepreneurs who love to read personal and business development books. His long-term goal in life is to start an entrepreneurial home schooling program for children of business-minded families.
