Great Leaders Are Great People: A Practical Guide to Public Service and Everyday Leadership

A Practical Guide for Developing Great Leadership Skills

There is no leadership DNA and leadership is not reserved for anybody, regardless of wealth, education, or bloodline. Leadership is about making a positive difference for other people, our institutions, and our society, and we can all get better at it. Leadership opportunities have two prerequisites: you must decide to lead and then you have to get in the arena. While your experiences may differ from your expectations, each time you step forward you can learn who you are and how to get better.

Great Leaders Are Great People is your coach-a practical guide for developing the dozens of values, perspectives, and skills you'll need to be successful-as well as what to avoid and how to recognize the many negative behaviors that can derail you. The book also introduces you to the foundations of advanced leadership: how to build excellent teams, the everyday requirements of developing positive cultures that are vital to sustainability, and how to manage and survive the inevitable crises.

While the book offers many of the best guidelines from professionals, little of this wisdom comes from public service-and even less from people who have actually led public institutions. The major source of guidance presented here comes from the author's forty-plus years of public service. Great Leaders Are Great People examines the lessons and values of seven great public servants who led with wisdom, integrity, humanity, and resolve. The lessons of failed leaders are also an important source of wisdom, so dozens of real-world challenges are discussed as well.

Steven Ballard is a proud graduate of Galesburg High School (Illinois), the University of Arizona (BA, 1970), and the Ohio State University (MA, PhD, 1976). He benefitted greatly and learned much about the importance of higher education and about making a positive difference for others from his mother (Lorraine, a nurse) and father (Rene, a teacher). Throughout his forty-five-year career in public universities (University of Oklahoma, University of Maine, Bowling Green State University, University of Missouri-Kansas City, and East Carolina University) as well as service on the City Council of Norman, Oklahoma, he grew to appreciate the importance of public service to our country.He was a three-year letter winner in baseball at the University of Arizona. He was first team all-conference in 1968 and was the captain of his 1970 team, which participated in the College World Series in Omaha. He played professional baseball in the minor leagues for the St. Louis Cardinal organization (1970, 1971).Following a thirteen-year tenure on the faculty of the University of Oklahoma, where he served as Chair of the University Athletics Council, he then spent nine years at the University of Maine, where he was a faculty member in political science and the founding director of the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy. His primary administrative positions were at Bowling Green (chief research officer), UMKC (chief academic officer), and East Carolina University (chancellor). Currently, he is chancellor emeritus at ECU and director of the BB&T Center for Leadership Development. He lives with his wife, Nancy, and dog, Shea, in Washington, North Carolina. He enjoys communication about leadership and can be reached at scb@ecu.edu.