Foreword

Leadership has been the subject of so many books, studies, and commencement speeches that many people have started to ignore the importance of the message. And, to be fair, authors and speakers often rehash the same clichés and obvious truths, leaving readers and audience members searching for something new.

But maybe it’s not something new that we need. Maybe we only need to take a longer, harder look at what we already know but have failed to grasp—the simple but painful truth that if your heart is not right, no one cares about your leadership skills.

In The Heart of Leadership, Mark Miller makes a compelling case for a radical form of leadership. According to my dictionary, radical means “favoring extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions.” And, Mark’s ideas around the heart of leadership just do not correspond to the more self-oriented views, habits, and conditions of today’s culture.

This book also illustrates the idea that there is much more to the concept of leadership than most people realize. As the main character in the story comes to understand, wisdom, responsibility, and courage are not generic, fluffy or simplistic concepts that any leader can easily embrace. They can only be achieved through a radical detachment from self, through a painful honesty about our past mistakes and limitations. Anything short of that will leave an aspiring leader, and his or her constituents, feeling empty.

For those who have the courage and the character to embrace the radical nature of heart-based leadership, the rewards are great. But those rewards are not always tangible nor are they guaranteed. They cannot be calculated like a bonus or a 401(k) program. That may be why relatively few leaders choose to lead this way. But perhaps this book will begin to change that. I certainly hope so.

—Patrick Lencioni President, The Table Group Author, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage