Kevin CashmanCritiques

I often bemoan the vapidity of leadership literature which treats 'leadership' as a silver bullet which cures whatever ails any organization. Nevertheless the genre of business leadership has two sorts of books which have some important things to say:

1. Books which address managerial systems, administration, systemic approaches
2. leadership as personal development.

This book is very much the second sort of book, which is a sort of Self-help for the Corporate soul approach. Cashman proposes that the best leaders are those with personal mastery, purpose mastery, change mastery, interpersonal mastery, being mastery, and action mastery. So if you want to be master of your own domain, this may be the book for you. There is a lot of helpful advice, questions for self reflection and steps to help you integrate what this book says

Personally I think this book has some helpful things to say but that it is too individualistic and overly anthropocentric for me. Cashman at a number of points declares that religious and spiritual beliefs should only be followed as far as they aid personal development. The whole thing is theologically deficient and rather 'me' centered.

I got this on audio via my public library and will promptly forget everything in this book. But if you had a hard copy, you may find Cashman's tips helpful and it might make you a better (and more productive) person. Probably not.

I'm not sure if this book is only for the CEO's and other top-level management people. This book is for anyone how is looking at leadership skills at any level. Also, pretty much anyone who wants to develop his personality should read this book.

I have now started to look at my 'shadow beliefs' to improve myself.

"Try not to become a man of success. Try to become a man of value." - from the book.

7 pathsways to mastery