The Leader Who Had No Title by Robin Sharma - My personal Review

After I finish by far, the best week in my life at Robin's Sharma Titan Summit in Toronto, I flight back to my country full of ideas, initiatives and at the same time, a little confuse on how to start. Putting in practice one of the main ideas of the training (Big achievements belong to small but constant habits), I take a "week off" to re-adapt myself to my daily reality, leaving behind all the notes and books that I received as part of the training. 

Then, I decided to start reading one of the books that I haven't had read from Robin but (according to most of the people that I met at that training) is one of his best: The Leader who had no title. I have to confess that I didn't feel connected to a book for so many months until I started to read this masterpiece. With connected I mean that this book (and its simplicity) invite me to read it really concentrated (I must confess that I am not good at it) without thinking in time or in any other distractions.

I was kind of surprised when I decided to read again the notes from Titan Summit while I was finishing this book because most of the concepts were almost the same. So, if you can access for a few bucks the theory of a thousands dollars training, why you don't just give it a try?

I don't want to underestimate the Titan Summit with this comment. Actually (as I already mention) the training was full of other amazing ingredients such the speakers and the amazing assistants (Titans) that I met there. But if for some reason you cannot assist, this book will provide you the basics to start leading your life while you influence other people's life. 

An actually, this is one of the most important and remarkable messages of this book: You don't need a title to lead. Society use to promote the idea that the leadership belongs to a few privileged human beings that receive some sort of gift or superpower to do it, or also to those individuals that has people in charge. For my personal experience (as an Employee with an Individual contributor role) I started to understand that this statement is real and you can adopt it if you want to. 

So, how to start? As I mention before, the best way to do it is by doing small daily changes. Some of the suggested through the book are:

• Waking up early: If you wake up one our early, you'll gain 30 more hours each moth.
• Try to use that extra hour in your self-development: Do some exercise, read books or just focus in planning your day.
• Avoid TV and Food (In excess). 
• Stop worrying about things beyond your control. Accept the things just the way they are.

As you can see, none of the suggestions listed before belong to "special" people. Everyone can apply them and the key factor of success belongs to Master your daily habits. As it is mentioned in the book, to really "Master something, you need to invest at least 10.000 hours on it". 

The next step on this leadership path belongs to excellence. To show real leadership we must start by being truly excellent in all the roles that we play everyday (health, family, business, and finances, among others). To do so, start by identifying those things that make us different and that we enjoy to do in our daily routine (our gifts) and try to apply them to deliver rich value to everyone. 

Of course there are also certain things that we know are important to our success but that we use to procrastinate because we don't like to do them at all. These actions are also important for excellence so it is important to start them. As it is mention in the book "You need to pay the price for success before you get the rewards"

By far, this is the first lesson that the book explain but I took my time to describe it because for me is the most important one. Next lessons main ideas are:

2. Turbulent times built great leaders. During this lesson, the book is focused in why you must face your fears and limitations in order to adapt yourself to new stages. As long as you move away from your comfort zone to areas of discomfort you will be expanding your possibilities. This is very important in the current world, where change is essential in every area. At it sounds easy, facing our fears generate weird feelings. But again the key is persistence, focus and patience.

  

3. Leadership is based on Relationships: This is for me, is the stamp that Robin puts on his Leadership Philosophy. Unlike other authors, Robin proposes a concept of Leadership based on Human networking and community development. More than just a result oriented philosophy, success is the result of how you help others to transform their lives through your actions and your example. For that reason he empathizes in the importance of being humble. 

4. Before anything else, become a better person: Related with the last idea, a real leader reflects by his actions and example what he truly is. So this last idea actually tries to remark the other 3, inviting the reader to focus all his new habits and actions to become a better person. And again, don't forget great goals belong to small actions and patience. 

It would take more paragraphs to detail of the main ideas and concepts that I took from this piece of art. But more than that, I encourage you to read this simple and interesting book that holds of the theory and main concepts of Robin Sharma's leadership philosophy which is in my opinion the most accurate description of leadership in the new era that the world is facing.