As I talk with people about online marketing, one question I often hear is, “What is the deal with Twitter?” Many people are completely stumped as to what the service is good for, especially in a business setting. Usually, if I walk them through some examples of why it’s useful, the light goes on and they get it. Just explaining it, though, out of context is difficult at best.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz took on the task of explaining how to use Twitter to promote nonprofit causes in her book Twitter for Good: Change the World One Tweet At A Time. She does a great job taking tweeting down to its basics and helps people build a strategy around activity on the service. To make it easy to remember, she uses the word “TWEET” as the guide for her main points:

• Target
• Write
• Engage
• Explore
• Track

The book takes each of these five pieces and breaks them down into smaller parts which are easy to digest and act on. It starts with working out why you want to be on the service and what you want to accomplish, all the way through measuring results to see if you were successful. While comprehensive, the book itself is easy to read with many great real-life examples of how these concepts are used.

While Claire wrote the book with charity work in mind, here’s the best part: The concepts she teaches apply to businesses, too. The five points she outlines and the methods she describes can work very well to help anyone who wants to incorporate a Twitter strategy into their marketing and customer service efforts.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about or sharpen their Twitter efforts to make them more effective and on target. I especially believe anyone who is involved in nonprofit or charity work will benefit tremendously from the lessons in it.

Twitter for Good: Change the World One Tweet At A Time by Claire Diaz-Ortiz (Amazon Affiliate link, as is the cover shot above) – great guide to Twitter strategy.

You can get more information by visiting the author’s web site: clairediazortiz.com or the book’s companion web site www.Twitter4Good.com.

Disclaimer: I received the ebook version of this work free during a promotion. This is my honest opinion of the work.

Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy

I learned of this book, Generally Speaking published in 2001, from a veterans group on Facebook. The banter going back and forth centered more on General Kennedy’s comments about her commander and others in a unit in Augsburg, Germany during the 80s. I was there at the same time and knew of (then) Lieutenant Colonel Kennedy, so I decided to get the Kindle edition and read it for myself.

What I found was the story of a woman who started a military career in the Women’s Army Corps during the Vietnam Conflict and went on to retire 32 years later as a Lieutenant General – the first woman to achieve that rank in the Army. It is a very interesting book about how her life in many ways matched the societal changes going on both in military and civilian life. If you’re interested in history centered on women in the military and in business, you will certainly want to read this one.

Interspersed throughout the book, too, are some great leadership nuggets which I want to highlight here. They apply just as much to business leadership as to military leadership. For instance:

Regarding Mentoring

The most fortunate path for any aspiring leader to follow is to be consistently mentored by the junior and senior leaders in her or his organization … . For the process to work, of course, the person being mentored has to set aside arrogance, be willing to learn, and be receptive, especially when it involves people who are junior in rank. It is essential for leaders to realize that they are always works in progress … even as they reach senior positions. Once a person decides she is complete, she is announcing her growth is ended and her potential is fulfilled. This signals to everyone the end of her progress in that field.

The need to learn is constant and continuous. The need to mentor and be mentored really never ends because so long as one is active in the world (or in business or whatever) the need to learn never ceases.

Mentoring, however, should never be used as a crutch or to get by through the “Old Boy Network,” rather it is a teaching and training tool. Each person needs to be responsible for his or her own career:

No one should depend on [anyone else] to reach down and pull them up the career ladder. Army officers or civilian executives must achieve power on their own merit, seeking the requisite professional training that entails, and undertaking the assignments that provide the best experience to accumulate leadership skills.

You need to take responsibility for yourself

Regarding Learning From Those “Lower” in Position

When faced with tough problems, young executives in the civilian workplace with degrees from prestigious business schools might do well to forget about their MBAs and seek advice among their organization’s equivalents of Betty Benson, whom they can find on the shop floor or among the anonymous line engineers’ cubicles.

You can always learn something from people with more experience. It does well for leaders to remember they don’t learn everything in school – some knowledge just comes with experience. In other words: don’t be like Lieutenant Jones and take too long to learn this lesson, there are some very experienced people you can learn from and you might be surprised who they are.

When faced with coming into a new situation, one thing I was taught which served me well was never to change anything for the first several weeks of taking on a new leadership position. A wiser move was to observe and learn how things are done, and them make changes as necessary. The old saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies. Many times, though, people feel a need to make their mark early and make sweeping changes right away. This often turns out to be a disservice to themselves and the people they are leading.

Meeting with my company commanders and their first sergeants, and the battalion staff, [note: and later with the people doing the actual work] I posed three basic questions: What were we doing well? What were we doing badly? What did they want me, the new commander, to not screw up by changing?

There’s a great lesson here.

Regarding Servant Leadership

From this and other effective units the panel visited, four characteristics necessary for the exercise of good leadership emerged:

• Good leaders set standards for the members of their organizations.
• Good leaders exemplified through their personal conduct adherence to those standards.
• Good leaders enforced and maintained those standards for the other members of the organization.
• Good leaders demonstrated genuine care for the concerns of their solders, no matter their rank, race or gender.

These four elements pretty much comprise the idea of the Servant Leader, something which I’ve written about numerous times in this space.

You might find it surprising that military leaders learn from many different places, not just from other military sources. For example, under Army Chief of Staff General Dennis Reimer:

… he told us to study the leadership ideas of … Coach Lou Holtz, who believed there are three critical questions any two people ask in a relationship … :

Can I trust you?
Do you care about me?
Are you committed to excellence?

With an effective leader or coach, the answer was demonstrably “yes.”

I recently wrote about leaders who felt they were “entitled” to special privileges (also linked above). The servant leader does not go this route:

Maintaining the trust and respect of those who serve with you is a dynamic and often difficult process. Some people actually believe becoming a leader entitles you to work less and instead draw upon the energy and production of the people assigned to your organization. In fact, the reverse is true.

Leaders need to understand this quote or their efforts will be mediocre leaders at best.

Again, students of military history, especially that which relates to women in the service or Military Intelligence will find this book very interesting. Those looking for good leadership lessons should also read it.

Finally, I think Lieutenant General Kennedy would agree with me that military intelligence vets would make excellent web marketers – or excellent team members in general.

Generally Speaking: A Memoir by the First Woman Promoted to Three-Star General in the United States Army by Claudia J. Kennedy

All links to the book are Amazon Affiliate Links

Cover Shot of "Read This Before Our Next Meeting"

I hate meetings. Or, rather, I hate what meetings do to productivity. Most meetings are set up to gather facts and data in order to analyze a problem ad nauseum. The worst meetings are those which are held “just because.” When I was in the Army, we had those meetings all the time. Meetings were often used to postpone decisions, as a tool to let the boss show he or she was “boss,” or create an atmosphere which makes everyone look busy when there’s no real work going on.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Boss: Hello, Kevin, are you coming to the meeting I scheduled today?

Kevin: No. I’m trying to wrap up a project I’m working on.

Boss: But I have some information to share with the group.

Kevin: Is John there?

Boss: Yes, he is.

Kevin: Good. If you have anything important to say, he’ll let me know.

In one unit I was part of early in my career, the First Sergeant would have each platoon sergeant and their subordinate squad leaders in his office every morning in order to go over the schedule and tell them what to do. Every day, except Monday which was always Motor Pool day, we would sit in our office and wait for the meeting to finish and someone to come tell us what to do. It was a ridiculous waste of time.

Then, in came the new First Sergeant. On his first day at work, all the usual suspects started filing into his office for the morning meeting. He yelled at them: “Get out of here! If you want to know what to do, read the schedule! It’s posted out in the hallway where it’s always been! If you can’t figure that out, let me know and I’ll find someone who can!” A new era had begun.

Meetings are so ingrained in our culture that some of us may have trouble accepting what Al Pittampalli calls “The Modern Meeting Standard” in Read This Before Our Next Meeting. In his reasoning, a meeting is called only when a decision has already been made in order to either resolve a conflict or to foster complex coordination (which means beyond that which can be done via memo). In this new paradigm, what can be communicated via memo will be – and everyone is required to read memos.

According to Pittampalli, the Modern Meeting …

• … starts on time, moves fast and ends on schedule
• … limits the number of attendees
• … rejects the unprepared
• … produces committed action plans
• … refuses to be informational. Reading memos is mandatory
• … works only alongside a culture of brainstorming.

Brainstorming is different than a “meeting.”

The main goal in changing how we do meetings is to quit wasting time and get to doing more productive work. Can you abandon the old ways of meeting and try a new thing? Check out Read This Before Our Next Meeting by Al Pittampalli and see if you agree The Modern Meeting Standard is the way to go. Like many other Domino Project works, it’s a quick read, goes straight to the point and doesn’t waste any time – just like the Modern Meeting it describes.

I received a copy of this book free from GoToMeeting by Citrix, however it is my honest opinion of the work.

All links to the book are Amazon Affiliate links.

I’ve rarely been one to merely go along with the crowd. I’ve always been one to prefer staying on the fringe and going to the beat of my own drummer. When I was in high school, I was part of a very close-knit group of ten or so people who really didn’t fit into any other group. We weren’t “jocks” (although the captain of the cross country team hung out with us), we weren’t “brainiacs” (although several of us were honor students). We weren’t “burn-outs,” “punks,” “freaks” nor “straights.” We called ourselves “The Group That Doesn’t Fit Into Other Groups.” Ron’s dad called us the “Motley Crew” even before the band with the similar name became popular. According to Seth Godin, we were weird.

We didn’t mind that we didn’t quite fit in to the main groups. We were all quite content being ourselves and doing what we thought was right. Though this sometimes brought us into conflict with the “normal” kids, we didn’t really bother trying to fit in because we didn’t find it important.

In We Are All Weird, Godin lays out the case that in our current society, we can and should celebrate our differences. He contends that for everyone to be “normal” we all need to bend to some form of structural “middle.” While this is certainly advantageous to mass marketers and those who like things to scale into large numbers, it really doesn’t fit with who and what most of us are.

We Are All Weird focuses on four words and how life in these times is redefining what they mean to us:

• Mass – easy to reach and what some people look to be to conform and survive
• Normal – what we call people in the “middle.” What is “normal” can change from one people group to another
• Weird – people who aren’t normal, whether by nature or by choice
• Rich – someone who can afford to make choices. This doesn’t necessarily mean “wealthy” in a property sense, rather it means that someone has the flexibility and courage to choose how to live.

I didn’t come by my present career position in the “normal” way; I’m a “hybrid” or a “zig-zagger.” After a career in the Army, I started doing web marketing by starting a web site. I learned by doing it, making success and mistakes along the way and learning from them. I sought out those smarter than me, those who had more experience and learned from them. Eventually, I got to the point where people started seeking me out for knowledge.

Have you ever felt like you didn’t fit in? Have you ever felt “weird?” You’re not alone. Celebrate your different-ness. Be who you were made to be. Don’t conform for conformity’s sake. To me, this is what diversity is really all about. Live and let live. Without people having different ideas, thought processes and perspectives we become stagnant. We need fresh ideas and new approaches to solving old problems. This is where being weird can really help.

The Internet has revolutionized how we communicate. It shrinks time and distance so that someone who is weird in one place can find community by connecting with like-minded people anywhere on Earth. Some find that very idea too weird to even comprehend. It’s OK, because I think that’s weird – but perfectly valid.

At my last high school reunion, my friend Roxanne came up to me and asked, “You were always such a nonconformist in school. How did you manage to last as long as you did in the Army? That’s like like the most conformist place I can think of.” My answer: “It’s because I was in the part of the Army where nonconformists fit in.” As strange as that may sound, it’s true.

Seth Godin (c) Bodoni Design

The big lesson for marketers? Don’t always look to go for “mass” in your message. Find out how your product or service can help those smaller groups. Figure out how you can help those smaller groups solve problems. Not only will you be able to work with them, they will help evangelize your product to their tribes.

If anything I wrote here resonates with you, I think you will enjoy We Are All Weird. While the book does encapsulate a lot of ideas Seth has presented on his blog and in other books, it’s put together in such a way that it provokes deep thought. It certainly got me thinking. Like his other books, this one is put together in an easy-to-read format with ideas set in nice, bite-sized chunks.

We Are All Weird by Seth Godin.

Disclaimers: I received a pre-release gallery version of the book provided to me at no charge. This is, still, my honest opinion of the work. All title links are Amazon Affiliate links.

Dan Zarrella

I’ve been following Dan Zarrella, the “Social Media Scientist” for a few years now. I get a lot out of his writings and webinars because his studies go beyond the “feel good” or “unicorns and rainbows” (as he puts it) ideas which go around. He attempts to put some hard numbers behind what he recommends and this gives me some great starting points to do my own experimentation and measure how things work for me and those I work for.

Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness is a compilation of many things Dan has already shared in various media, put together in a nice, easy-to-read format which can help anyone involved with web marketing get a great head start on working their own strategies.

The book is full of interesting statistics and studies of data showing:

• what may be the best time to share on Facebook and Twitter
• how timing affects email opening and click throughs
• how often one may wish to post on Facebook or Twitter
• what makes information shareable by others
• how to define goals and measure whether they were reached

All in all this is a very good work and well worth reading. If you’ve never heard Dan speak nor read any of his other work, you will find this quite interesting and full of ideas to get you thinking. If you’re already familiar with Dan’s work, this is a great reference where everything is in one place so you don’t have to hunt it down.

Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness by Dan Zarrella

Note: all links to the book in this post are Amazon Affiliate links

Back in the day (and not to long ago, either) we were taught that the sales process (or purchase process, depending on which side of the transaction you were on) went through a process shaped like a funnel. It was more or less a linear process. It may not have actually been so, but it was a nice model and likely fit many transaction processes.

Now, with the internet and all of the information resources it makes available to consumers, the sales process is no longer linear at all. Often, by the time a customer walks into a store, he has researched features, brands, prices, warranties, and any other information available and knows exactly what he wants. If research wasn’t done ahead of time, it can be done in the store with a smart device. The world, literally, is in each customer’s hand.

This is where the idea of the “Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT) comes in. It’s no longer easy to predict where or when a customer will make her purchase decision. It could be any where at any time. The information which goes into her decision process can come to here from traditional advertisements to banner ads, reviews, videos from other customers on YouTube. Many times another customer’s “Second Moment of Truth” (experience with a product or service) can very well become another person’s ZMOT. If you can find a way to get the right information to a person at the critical time, you can win at ZMOT.

Here are some quotes from the work which got me thinking:

Kim Kadlec, Worldwide Vice President, Global Marketing Group, Johnson & Johnson describes the change in mental models this way: “We’re entering an era of reciprocity. We now have to engage people in a way that’s useful or helpful to their lives. The consumer is looking to satisfy their needs, and we have to be there to help them with that. To put it another way: How can we exchange value instead of just sending a message?

Companies who are winning in this area are already on their way to becoming information resources. Rather like Santa Claus in “Miracle on 34th Street,” they are becoming helpful to their customers, sometimes even at the expense of their immediate bottom line. They are looking to invest in the long-term success of their customers. Last year I wrote about Gun Dog Supply and how they turned themselves into an information resource for those interested training hunting dogs. By doing this, they made themselves an invaluable resource which helped their sales in a huge way.

How can you help your company do this?

Let me make another point about ratings and reviews online: They’re a tremendous resource for customers, but they’re also a tremendous resource for businesses.

“A focus group is artificial. People are paid to be there. They know that there are agency people behind the glass watching them … . The only thing that’s pure and authentic in terms of what’s actually happening in the marketplace is how people talk to each other.”

Think about this: You have a great opportunity to learn what you’re doing well and where you need to improve. This is a tremendous asset to the business person who realizes it’s there and takes advantage of the knowledge available to make positive changes to their product or service.

Beth Comstock, the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of General Electric … says:

“Maybe if you make locomotives, or the software that automates production lines, you think: Why should I have videos or web content out there, who’s going to use that?

But one day at our marketing council we did YouTube searches for just those kinds of things. And you know what? Up came hundreds of videos, including videos from our competitors on things like intelligent thinking for product line automation. It was a great eye-opener.”

This really can apply to any product or service. People want to know what’s out there, what’s available and what might best solve their problems. If you can build out content (and not just videos) you can really hit a home run when it comes to attracting good attention. National Instruments has an excellent community full of content on how to use their products. I’m willing to bet all that great content gives them a big advantage over their competitors.

If I’m having this conversation privately with a CMO, this is the first question I ask: “Who’s in charge of ZMOT for you?”

Because if it’s nobody’s job, it’s not going to get done. If I ask you, “Who runs your TV department” or “Who’s in charge of your in-store marketing for FMOT?” or “Who makes sure your green beans reach the shelf on time?”, you’ll give me one person’s name. You should also be able to give me one person’s name for ZMOT.

And that’s because of no one owns it, it won’t get taken care of. I wrote about this regarding web marketing in a guest post on the PubCon Speakers blog. If you’re going to take ZMOT (or anything else) seriously, someone has to own it.

If you’re a marketer, I hope you’re encouraging your customers to make videos about your product that others can find at that Zero Moment of Truth. Never forget that your customers are ahead of you, and that’re ready to contribute right back to ZMOT in real time.

I sometimes get into conversations about creating content. Here’s an idea: if you can’t make enough content, crowdsource it. If people are delighted with your product or service, they’ll likely be happy to share that knowledge with their friends. Sometimes all they need is a little encouragement.

Check out Winning The Zero Moment of Truth by Jim Lecinski. The Kindle version is free. It’s a quick read filled with great information including quite a bit from Google’s research. It only took me a little over an hour to read it and watch the videos; very well worth the time.

You can also get more information by visiting the web site: www.zeromomentoftruth.com

I won this book in an online drawing, I believe from Chris Brogan’s web site. In light of that, this is my honest opinion of the work.

Ryan Blair is a man with a checkered past, to say the least. He is someone who came from an abusive family, a broken home and ended up in a gang committing various crimes. He makes no attempt to hide the fact that he was not always the nicest guy.

Things turned around for him when, in high school, his mother married a businessman who took Ryan under his wing and mentored him in the world of commerce. Being the smart guy he is, Blair blossomed under the tutelage of his step-father and went on to become a multimillionaire entrepreneur.

I enjoy books which have great ideas to help the reader succeed. This book has those. It is full of helpful information, inspiration and ideas to help you improve your career.

Even more, I enjoy books in which the author is honest about mistakes he or she has made and the lessons they learned from them. I often tell my kids that it’s much less painful to learn from someone else’s mistakes than to learn from your own. This book certainly has those, too. In fact, there is an entire chapter which the author entitled “Million-Dollar Mistakes.” I appreciate Ryan’s authenticity and transparency about those mistakes as he expressed in this book.

There are a lot of leadership lessons contained in the work, as well. Many of them I’ve written or told about in other posts. Many of these lessons he learned the hard way – it’s nice to learn from someone else’s mistakes.

This book has a lot of information and valuable lessons, and, it’s well worth reading for those. However, in all fairness, I have to point out it’s not the best-written book I’ve ever read. It feels as if the copy was dictated and transcribed, but not edited very well. That’s not to say it’s totally bad – it’s just not best. If you’re distracted by that kind of thing, you may want to pass this one up. If you can ignore it, however, the information in the book is worth the effort of reading through it.

Nothing To Lose, Everything To Gain by Ryan Blair – lots of good information and lessons. (Amazon Affiliate Link)

You can also get more information at www.nothingtolose.com

Up Front Disclaimer: I requested an advanced copy of the book and received one free of charge. This is, still, my honest opinion of the work.

These days, there’s a lot of talk about location-based services and marketing via those channels. Some of that information is good and some not so good. I was very happy to hear two people who are very knowledgeable in the web marketing arena, namely Aaron Strout and Mike Schneider, were going to tackle this very important topic in book form.

Location-Based Marketing for Dummies is packed full of useful information broken up into five sections:

• Putting a Little “Location” in Your Marketing Campaign – which goes over the different location-based services and how they are used by consumers
• Location-Based Marketing in Action – which covers the tactical parts of putting together a location-based campaign of your own
• Integrating Location into Other Channels – covering the more strategic aspects of incorporating location-based activities into a larger marketing plan
• Measuring Your Return on Investment – there’s no point in implementing an online marketing plan of any kind if you don’t attempt to measure its success; very important information is in this section
• The Part of Tens – which is a collection of lists with a lot of interesting and useful information including some possibly up-and-coming location services

Mike Schneider

All in all this book is easy to understand and breaks down the information in such a way that it’s more of a step-by-step guide rather than just a “for Dummies” book. I very much liked how it was organized to take someone from “zero to sixty” in a short time, getting them going on using location-based services as part of their marketing strategy. It’s full of useful ideas and tips to help anyone plan and run an excellent program, complete with coupons and loyalty rewards, if those are desired components.

I especially appreciate the measurement section. All too often we’re told that online marketing efforts really can’t be measured. This is not true, and I’m happy to see this book includes an entire section devoted to this very important aspect of a successful online location-based program.

Aaron Strout

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about location-based technologies and how to use them for business purposes. I think it would be especially useful to the small- or medium-sized business owner or marketing person who is looking to get an edge over the competition. That being said, those with larger companies, especially those with multiple locations, can also learn a lot from this work.

 Location-Based Marketing for Dummies by Aaron Strout and Mike Schneider (Amazon Affiliate link)

There are few military leaders which have attracted the attention and admiration of the American people more than Douglas MacArthur. During a military career which spanned over five decades and three major wars, MacArthur proved himself to be a great leader on and off the battlefield. To be sure, like any man, he made mistakes. Those mistakes lead to lessons which made him a better leader and a better person.

Mitchell Yockelson does a great job in covering this man’s long and storied career. He touches on his background, his education and his rise to the highest rank in the U.S. Armed Forces, General of the Army (5-Star General) and into the hearts of people around the world. A very highly decorated officer, it’s his larger-than-life persona which attracted so much attention and made him (at one time) the most popular man in America.

There are a number of great leadership lessons we can learn from the career of Douglas MacArthur. There are six which I would like to highlight:

• Lead From The Front – One of the keys to effective leadership is to not ask those you lead to do anything you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself. It’s especially helpful if you have come up through the ranks and done the “dirty work” required to succeed. MacArthur started leading from the front early in his career during his historic leadership on the Western Front during World War One. His willingness to stay with his men during battle and suffer through the same hardships as them helped garner their loyalty and support which lead to many victories on the battlefield.
• Learn From Those Who Know, Regardless of “Rank” – While in charge of the Military Academy at West Point, MacArthur instituted a program where the future officers spent time learning from those enlisted soldiers and non-commissioned officers they would eventually command. By spending time learning from those with experience they would better understand how to lead them when the time came. The key here is to understand that everyone has something to contribute. Don’t dismiss ideas solely on the fact that they came from those without “rank.” Sometimes the best ideas come from those who have a fresh perspective and no preconceived notions.
• Don’t Go Half-Way In Preparations – While in charge of the U.S. Olympic team for the 1928 Summer Games, MacArthur was a tough taskmaster. In war and in peace, as in business, preparation can be the difference between success and failure. As Yockelson quotes MacArthur, “… I stormed and pleaded and cajoled. I told them … that we had not come 3,000 miles just to lose gracefully that we were there to win, and win decisively.”  Prepare for success and it will come. If you only go half-way, expect half-way results.
• Stay Alert and Stay Prepared – Don’t let your guard down because of complacency or laziness. After WWI, there was a large movement in Congress to gut military budgets. However, given the climate in Europe and the fact that even as early as 1922 many experts believed it was only a matter of time before Japan started expanding its empire, this was not a good time to let military preparedness slide. It’s the same in your business. Just because you’re on top and things are going well, don’t get lazy. It only takes one upstart in your market to knock you down off your perch.
• Be Gracious In Victory – MacArthur was put in charge of rebuilding Japan after the end of World War Two. Rather than coming in as conqueror, he came in more like an adviser. He spent a great deal of time helping the Japanese people change from a military dictatorship to a free-market, democratic society. He ran things rather like how the Marshall Plan was in Europe to help change attitudes and help them on the path to peace and prosperity.
• Praise in Public, Correct In Private – The General learned from his father the importance of loyalty and how it went both ways. He trusted his staff members, “never publicly second-guessing their actions.” By demonstrating loyalty to his team members, he, in turn, gained their trust and loyalty. Think about how much a team can accomplish with this type of culture.

I just finished Pujols: More Than The Game by Scott Lamb and Tim Ellsworth. While I had originally requested the book from Thomas Nelson’s BookSneeze program with the intent of reading it and passing it along to a friend who is a huge St. Louis Cardinals fan, I was unexpectedly surprised with how much I got out of reading it.

Albert Pujols is arguably the best player in Major League Baseball today, and may very well end up being the best player of all time. His credentials on the field speak for themselves. During a time when baseball heroes are tainted by scandal and cheating, it’s refreshing to learn about someone who respects the game and the fans enough to play hard, but clean.

There are three themes woven through the leadership articles I write in this space. I believe we can learn lessons from Albert Pujols on each of these themes.

Servant Leadership
Pujols isn’t just a leader in stats and baseball prowess. He is also a leader in on the field and in the locker room. He often takes younger players under his wing and helps them get their career started on the right foot. This is especially true for the young players coming from Latin America. Being from the Dominican Republic and an immigrant himself, he identifies with these young men and cares enough to help them with advice, new equipment and mentoring.

There are some great leadership lessons to be learned from Albert. He is a servant leader and exemplifies what that means.

Excellence
This man has a tremendous work ethic. Although he possesses a lot of raw talent and could get by on just that, he isn’t satisfied with settling. He’s often the first one one the field and the last one off. He takes extra batting practice regularly. He is constantly in search of ways to improve his play in the batter’s box and in the field. Yes, he is certainly talented, but the main reason he’s one of the best players is because he puts in the work to be the best.

If more people approached their work as Pujols does baseball there would be a lot more successful people out there. To be sure, talent and education will take you far; but, if you’re not willing to put in the time to stay sharp, stay current and keep on top of things you will fall behind.

Giving Back
Baseball has made the Pujols family very wealthy. Instead of using his good fortune totally for personal comfort, Albert and his wife, Dee Dee, set up the Pujols Family Foundation. This organization supports children with Down Syndrome and children in the Dominican Republic. The family not only sponsor the charity work, they are often in the trenches during the off season traveling with teams of doctors to help support the actual work.

I often write about giving back, a subject I touched on most recently in my account of Gary Sinise and the Lt. Dan Band. It is extremely important for successful people in all walks of life to be generous to those less fortunate. Generosity benefits the giver as well as those receive the generosity. No one wins when someone holds onto everything for themselves.

The Faith Factor
One subject I don’t touch on too often is that of faith. I believe a good leader has to have some belief which is bigger than himself or herself. Without such a belief the leader risks becoming too full of ego and loses the leadership edge. Whether that belief is through religion or something else, I feel it needs to be there.

Albert Pujols is a man of Christian faith. He tries to live his life as he feels it is laid out in the New Testament Bible. This gives him stability and helps him keep to his convictions. It also helps keep him humble. Being in the position he is, it would be very easy to get carried away with the celebrity of being a baseball star. His faith helps keep him grounded, which benefits him greatly.

If you like baseball, you will enjoy this book. Interspersed within the stories about Pujols himself are recaps of each of his major league seasons.

If you like reading about people with Christian faith, you will enjoy this book.  Woven into the fabric of the story are accounts by Albert, his wife, and their close friends and associates explaining his faith and how it affects every part of his life.

If you want to learn some good business lessons, you will enjoy this book. They are to be found through the entire story.

Mostly, I recommend this book because of the great lessons you can learn from this man’s life. Pujols: More Than The Game by Lamb and Ellsworth (Amazon affiliate link).