Principle Centered Leadership

Principle-Centered Leadership was a wide ranging book that covered leadership at the workplace, your home, and yourself. At times it was repetitive, but as a whole the longer you read the same ideas presented in different situations you began you to see what he was getting at, and while I don't think it is entirely possible to be a perfect human being, if you would follow what the author writes, you'd come pretty close.

The first section of the book covered personal and interpersonal effectiveness. One of the areas of this section I felt I got a lot of was the section where he detailed his version of the "seven deadly sins."

One of the sins that stood out to me was the idea of wealth without work. I have known people who have tried to get rich without work, or at least attempted it. While there are some get-rich plans that are legal, many are not, they are simply scams, and someone loses in the end. One such corporation that I have a personal experience in is Quixtar. While this corporation may be technically legal, it is built on shaky ground, and the chance of you making it rich is not likely.

I have at least 4 friends who have tried to get rich off Quixtar, with little to no success. The whole basis of the company is to get people to buy home supplies ranging from shampoo to toilet paper to big screen televisions off the internet and have them shipped to your home. But in order to be able to buy these products you must be a "member."

When they first try to get people to join they hold these huge meetings at hotel conference rooms and have these "success" stories come in and tell the people how they are 28 years old and will never have to work again! While maybe it worked for that one person, I can't see how everyone wins. You must pay a certain fee to join, and pay that annually. How you make money is getting commissions off the people below you who you convince to buy the Quixtar products, and then they in turn are supposed to sell those products to someone else, who they, and you, will make a profit off of through the commission. So in theory, yes, I can see how this works. But the people I have known, 4 out of the 5 were never even able to recoup their investment, much less make millions upon millions of dollars! I guess sometimes, like he talks about in the book, we must work for what we want, as nothing ever comes as easy as it sounds like it should.

An article I read out of Forbes magazine best says it all regarding Quixtar:

Before you're tempted by Quixtar's sales pitches or fancy Web pages, remember that most reps in such organizations spend more time recruiting than selling. And many lose money. "I spent between $3,000 and $5,000 on the business and had four people down line (under) me, but overall I still lost money," says Don DeLeon, a 23-year-old former IBO from Waipahu, Hawaii.

Take a lesson from DeLeon, who gave up being an IBO to go back to school. By joining organizations like Quixtar, you're more likely to fill your shelves with bottles of shampoo than to fill your bank account with cash.

This is generally how I feel about these get rich quick corporations and from reading this book, I tend to think that the author would feel the same.

The other part I enjoyed out of this section was how to increase your honor and power and a leader with others. He listed ten "power tools" to be able to accomplish this. Of all of these "power tools" the one that I think it all boils down to is integrity. Without integrity what do you have? You can't be respected and looked upon when people can't trust you and think you are doing things behind their back.

In section two, it focused on managerial and organizational development. In this section he talked about mission statements for just about everything. Your business, your family, everything you do. While I feel this is a good idea and basis, it is realistically not possible for most families to sit down and have a mission statement you will all agree on and work toward, but a great basis for family development nonetheless.

In chapter 24, he talked about managing from the left, leading from the right. While the title of this chapter is catchy, it is also a very good guideline in management. I don't know how many times I've seen companies fall just because emotions got in the way, or the leadership couldn't just adjust their thinking to the present and reinvent their company to the