The Director's Cut: The Naked Leader - Part 1

David Taylor has written his monthly 'Director's Cut' column for silicon.com for several years. His first book, The Naked Leader, is released on 9 July. We'll be selling it and serialising it that week but for now we thought we'd hand over his usual slot to let him provide the teaser to end all teasers.

If you're the kind of person who leafs through a book's first few pages to get a feel for the material in hand, to see if you should part with your heard-earned, then look no further. Below we provide you with the intro, the preface, the Big Sell from the same ex-IT director who has cast a critical eye over dozens of aspects of leadership and guru 'life coaches'.

See what you think, and let us know your thoughts...

The Naked Leader, by David Taylor

1. The Structure of Guaranteed Success

Imagine if success has a structure, a formula. Imagine it as a formula, and that if you follow it, you will achieve whatever you dream, desire and deserve. In effect, imagine that success is guaranteed.

Guaranteed, no matter what your background, your present position, where you want to go, or who you want to be.

Imagine no more, for your success is indeed guaranteed. It is a formula, that when followed, will lead you wherever you want to go. We cannot forget change, or chance, as they will play a part, however your fundamental driving force, by far, is choice.

Your future, your choice.

Over the last seven years I have been studying every theory, reality and form of leadership, with three aims in mind:

1. To discover if there is a common formula that runs throughout them all
2. To find out what always works. Not to invent something new, indeed, quite the reverse.
3. To remove all of the academic jargon, author hype and deliberate mystery, and apply everything that works into day to day realities for people like you and I

And so Naked Leadership was formed, an approach to leadership that strips away the hype, applies the most powerful, proven tools and techniques into real life without any inherent mystery, and to give people back to themselves.

Naked Leadership has seven principles, and the first is that success has a structure, it is a formula, and despite everything that we have been told, that formula is very, very simple.

Having read literally hundreds of success, business and leadership books, attended conferences throughout the world, and worked with individuals, teams and organisations, I have found the formula for success is always the same. And this was an amazing discovery, as often this formula has been hidden behind the most amazing jargon, hype and mystery.

Naked Leadership is dedicated to blowing all of that away, so, to start with, here it is - just a few chapters in, the formula for success that other books take hundreds of pages to reveal:

The formula for guaranteed success

1. Know where you want to go

2. Know where you are now

3. Know what you have to do, to get to where you want to go

4. Do it!

Silence in your head - enjoy that silence for a few moments, indeed, re-read the formula a few times.

Allow those thoughts from your "judge" that tell you success cannot be that simple.

Welcome those feelings of doubt that you have wasted your money on a weird book.

But even as you have these two streams of thinking, please also invite in a third

What if I'm right?

What if this formula was right, and that if you followed it, you would achieve anything you want?

What if you had opportunities beyond anything you previously thought possible? The future of your choosing, the life of your dreams?

Imagine if you simply could not fail:
What would you do?
Where would you go?
Who would you be?

For that is the promise that this book delivers.

And what's more, I am not even going to ask you to believe it. Most leadership and human potential books tell you that you have to believe them, for them to "work". I am taking the completely opposite view. In fact, I would prefer you not to believe this, all I want you to do is to do it. To put it, and what is in this book, into powerful practice in your life.

To transform your career
To reinvent your team and organisation
To reignite your relationships

Do you buy his message? For more, you'll have to wait and see...

Or to order an advanced copy, email jscott@silicon.com .