TOP DRAWER BOOK REVIEW
by
HL Carpenter

 

The Centurion Principles
by Colonel Jeff O’Leary, USAF (Ret.)
248 pages; hardcover; $19.99
Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN, 2004

You may prefer to think of your workplace as something other than a battleground. But author Jeff O’Leary believes warriors can teach you how to lead your organization.

Notice the emphasis on ‘lead’. Colonel O’Leary makes clear this is a book about leadership, not management. What’s the difference? Leaders embody integrity, inspire trust and get things done. Managers ... manage, which typically means sticking with the status quo. In today’s world, there are too many of the latter and not enough of the former. As Colonel O’Leary puts it, real leaders – what he calls Centurion Leaders - are as rare as a speechless politician.

The Centurion Principles, the first of a three book series on leadership, is dedicated to changing that sad reality.

A Centurion was a commander in the Roman army, head of a unit called a century, which consisted of 100 men. Achieving the rank came only after years of exhibiting outstanding leadership skills. The Centurion Principles targets the stories of eleven historical figures who exemplify the same exceptional abilities.

Colonel O’Leary has done massive amounts of research, and students of military history will find the battle plans and details fascinating. But combat zone heroics aren’t the focus of The Centurion Principles. They simply serve as a proving ground for virtues typically viewed as less warlike: Creativity, learning from failure and putting others first.

Are you a manager who’d like to nurture those virtues, to become a leader and rise above the current atmosphere of corporate excess, with its attendant lack of integrity and ethics? The Centurion Principles offers ammunition you can use to win the battles you’ll inevitably face.

Review originally published December 2004.