Intentional Leadership by Tim Hebert, reviewed

Many leadership books document the magical tasks that a leader should do, or promise a comprehensive playbook to be followed verbatim to become the ultimate leader.

The ‘Intentional Leader’ by Tim Hebert is not that book. If I could summarise the main taking from Tim Heberts 200 page read is that to become the best leader you can possibly be you need to first ‘know thy self’.

Intentional Leadership

The main bulk of the book insights is based on the author’s personal experience leading Atrion, an IT services firm, from humble beginnings to revenues of over $170 million with a team of 260 in addition to his own personal history and consultancy work.

Central to the idea of ‘Intentional Leadership’ is progressively deeper and interconnected key concepts that are introduced in the starting chapter.

‘Decisive Moments’ are times when we make an intentional choice, ‘Defining Moments’ are those actions that exemplify our core character while ‘Unguarded Moments’ are those when our authentic self manifests itself during moments of inner clarity. All three need to be recognised and activated to unleash a better leader.

‘Ghost Leadership’ is one of the final concepts that runs throughout the book as it is the antithesis of Intentional Leadership and a space where many leaders unknowingly find themselves.

While Intentional Leadership is characterised by Empowerment, Connection, Self Awareness and Inner Authority, the symptoms of Ghost Leadership are Unhealthy Ego, Disconnection, Lack of Presence and Lack of Trust.

Once the theory of these concepts have been explained the book uses storytelling narratives to help identify and avoid the negative components of Ghost Leadership while harnessing the drivers of Intentional Leader.

Much of the focus of the book is on self-reflection and fully understanding yourself as the basis for growing as a leader.

This makes the book more of a challenge as it involves a lot more than mere psychometric testing (which he does cover in detail) but rather a deep focus on self awareness, in addition to understanding and being comfortable with your core ideology and values, which form the basis of trust. Leaders also need to be able to tackle ego, which is both an enabler and blocker, and foster rich connections.

The importance of inner reflection is very evident in the chapters on values and vision where Hebert’s main contention is that you need to understand and be comfortable with your own values before you try to establish a vision and values statement for your organisation.

In effect, your need to be comfortable in your own skin before you can expect to be able to lead other people. In the author’s case, he made early career decisions to exit companies that did not match his own inner beliefs.

Despite the heavy theory of early chapters, the later chapters detailing how to empower teams through a Health Ego, which relies on the development of inner authority, are detailed, practical and instructive.

Not surprisingly there is also a healthy dose of psychology especially evident when the author talks about the importance of taking and giving feedback.

The explanation of the ‘amygdala hijack’, the immediate personal, emotional and frequently out of whack reaction to a stimulus, should be very recognisable to many leaders and possibly evoke embarrassing memories.

Leadership books where the author has never made a mistake are not believable and his sharing of his own errors, the difficulty he experienced in fully embracing his own self-reflection, in addition to stories of clients where he could not change their mindset makes the book more believable and compelling.

These challenges are the basis of learning and something to be embraced rather than avoided in order to grow.

Flow

Although this is a book you can read from beginning to end it also acts as a reference document that encourages you to implement and try out the learning with some guiding questions and pointers.

The early chapters introduce you to some of the core concepts covered above which means the pace of reading is initially generally slow as sceptical minds like mine will question the validity and originality of these concepts against other similar sounding terms from other books.

However, with this bedrock of knowledge established it becomes easier and faster to digest the later chapters as they incorporate more stories of first hand experience with the author matching these to the core concepts.

Structure

The book itself is tightly written with succinct and memorable quotes. Most chapters end with a reflection (summary) and a list of action points, which is especially needed for some of the theoretically heavy chapters.

There are also plenty of mini case studies, told through the first-hand experience of the author. He also incorporates plenty of research and references to other thought leaders on the relevant topic areas.

Overall

This book will resonate with and benefit leaders who are open to deep introspection and inner reflection.

Those willing to enter a voyage of difficult self-discovery and questioning combined with a willingness to implement changes in how they lead will reap the greatest rewards.

It is well researched which nicely augments the authors hypothesises on what makes a great leader.

However the underlying evangelistic zeal and the self-professed purpose of the author to unleash the best inner leader within us makes the book very compelling.

Written by Eoin Kennedy

About Eoin Kennedy

Eoin Kennedy is a digital entrepreneur, trainer and communications consultant and currently working as a content strategist in the pharmaceutical industry.

He also runs the annual technology unconference in Cong called Congregation, which has attracted attendees from over 5 countries.