Excerpt

On a cold winter day in 1953, two Cambridge researchers, Dr. James Watson and Francis Crick, solved a mystery that literally changed the way people viewed human life. On that historic day, the two men cracked the elusive DNA code, discovering how a double helix in DNA carries life’s hereditary information.
With their breakthrough, Watson and Crick not only uncovered the secret of life, but they also accomplished a feat other scientists had been attempting to do and had been writing about for years.
Another mystery that researchers, experts, and so many others have attempted to crack is the seemingly enigmatic secret behind leadership. Evidence of this hunt for the great leadership secret search can be found in any bookstore, library or online bookseller. Just look at the thousands and thousands of books written by authors and experts expounding on their theories on leadership or giving advice on the subject.
Among all those books though, you rarely will find any two with the same concept or theory. Every leadership book or manual seems to take a different approach. Some outline the habits of effective leaders, others analyze the various strategies behind leadership, and a seemingly endless list discuss the qualities, principles, laws, theories and characteristics that successful leaders need.
In fact, quite a number of these books are by renowned government leaders and business icons, such as Winston Churchill, Colin Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, Lee Iacocca and Jack Welsh, who write about their leadership styles or recount their performances in crisis situations.
But despite this endless collection of leadership materials, finding a book that explains how YOU can be a better leader at work, at home, and in your community is virtually impossible. Instead, all these leadership authors and experts have concentrated only on the WHAT and WHY of leadership. As a result, they never solved the leadership mystery because the secret is not in WHAT and WHY. The secret lies in HOW: How to inspire others to wholeheartedly commit to a common course of action.
After years of research and study, The PAR Group cracked open the mystery of leadership to reveal the skills needed to be an effective leader. In Cracking the Code, we share those leadership skills that will that put you in control of your destiny: Skills that will make your goals realistic rather than just dreams; skills that build and nurture relationships; and skills that lead you down the path to success.
Cracking the Code is based on decades of research. Our studies started in the 1970’s with our observations of countless people successfully leading others in the military and in businesses, teams, meetings, and organizations. We became intrigued by how some leaders were more effective than others at influencing followers and we began to closely study leaders and their skills.
Using these detailed observations, along with the leadership experiences of our entire PAR team, we expanded our quest to understand the secrets behind leadership. We researched the psychology and behavior of leaders as well as observed people lead in both the business world and in everyday environments. And, of course, we read hundreds of leadership books and training manuals.
As a result of all this research, we made a discovery that is changing the way people view leadership. Leadership is not a mysterious process. Leadership, in fact, is just an intuitive, natural process of skills.
Think of all those instances when you were most successful in persuading other people to commit to your point of view. You got what you needed because others reached a level of confidence with your idea and acted on it. In other words, you led and people willing followed.
When people succeed as leaders, no matter what the circumstances of their leadership roles, they exhibit a pattern of clear and definable skills. And, most importantly, that same set of intuitive leadership skills is used every time and forms the core of leadership and teamwork ability.
At PAR, we have identified these skills and developed a comprehensive leadership and teamwork training application so we could share our discoveries with others. And share we have. Over half a million men and women on six continents have learned the secrets of leadership and teamwork skills through PAR training applications. We have even tailored our training applications to specific work situations relating to selling, negotiating, coaching, supervising, customer service, management, self-directed work teams, or other business situations.
Yet, even though our PAR applications have met with worldwide success, we wanted still more people to have the opportunity to tap into their leadership skills, so we wrote Cracking the Code.
Covering the basics of our PAR leadership/teamwork training applications, Cracking the Code shows the skill set successful leaders use and, more importantly, shows YOU how to make those skills part of YOUR everyday life. To help you understand how the skill set works, we break leadership into interdependent, manageable chunks that are easy-to-see and do. Each chapter explores a different element of the skills leaders use and gives examples of every day business and personal life experiences. We also include easy-to-understand follow-up exercises to help you hone your own skills so that you can ultimately accomplish more at work, at home, and in your community.
The book, divided into five sections, follows our PAR Leadership Skills model. The first four sections cover the essence of the PAR model, while the fifth offers real-life examples of PAR leadership at work.
At the very center of the PAR leadership model is confidence because, after all, who would follow a leader who is not confident? In order to inspire someone to action, leaders must first believe in that action. Leaders are confident and committed to reaching targets, results, or goals. If a leader is not committed to achieving a goal, how can he or she inspire someone else to commitment? Leaders may recommend strategies or action plans, but, make no mistake; a leader’s focus is on the result, the end game, the goal.