The Leadership Platform

This book is a candid, down-to-earth and useful guide for anyone striving to understand the essential art of leadership.

To be effective, a leader must stand on a strong, stable platform of attitudes, patterns of thought, intentions, and ways of understanding the complex world in which human beings interact. As a leader increases the scope of his responsibility and influence, he must continually build and remodel this platform, providing an ever-firmer foundation on which the weight of these responsibilities can rest.

Without this strong platform, the leader is at risk. Leadership is complex and challenging; a leader s platform must withstand multiple, shifting trials to her character, her intellect, and her ability to connect with and motivate others.

The Leadership Platform helps you understand the challenges of leadership as it guides you to build your Leadership Platform.

Jim Hessler is the Founder of Path Forward Leadership Development Services in Bellevue, Washington. Jim gained extensive real-world leadership experience in a bootstrap business career after studying Music and Literature in college. He started in low-level retail work and developed into a strategic executive in one of America s largest corporations. He distinguished himself by conducting a series of successful business turnarounds, which gave him the perfect laboratory to learn his craft and test his ideas. Building on his extensive experience as a business leader, Jim developed the Path Forward Leadership Platform.