WINNING WORDS

A consultant and former educator and college football coach offers leadership advice in this debut motivational guide.

“Leadership is not easy at any age or in any assignment,” Hjelseth writes in his book. “Effective leadership requires vision, wisdom, discernment, decision making, communication, confidence, and follow-through.” In his pithy, engaging narrative, the author seeks to explore the relative values and mechanisms of these elements of leadership. He draws on his own life history and feedback from a wide variety of business leaders, coaches, and inspirational speakers. This work is the distillation of all that he’s learned over the years, with each chapter ending with a series of “Questions To Affect Your Life” that are intentionally open-ended (things like “How do you think relationships are best built?”) to provoke introspection and conversation. “Attitude is the key to relationships, happiness, and emotional health,” Hjelseth writes at one point. “Attitude trumps ability. Believe in God, and believe in yourself.” The manual is structured around a handful of very familiar, tent-pole self-help headings like “Faith,” “Leadership,” and “Teamwork,” and the author’s frequent references to basic observations about these subjects can sometimes give his guide a derivative feel. But Hjelseth’s personality keeps everything readable, and when he writes about the importance of humor (“As I look back at the various roles I have filled over the years, I know that being fun and creating fun have been key aspects of my journey”), readers will readily believe him. This is a warm, friendly book, brightened throughout by the author’s long experience as a football coach, an occupation that tends to put theoretical life advice to extremely real and concrete tests and can therefore separate the junk from the sound counsel rather effectively. In fact, it’s Hjelseth’s always generous evaluations of others—athletes, coaches, businesspeople—that work most effectively in building his readers’ trust in his own judgments.

An appealing, wide-ranging, if somewhat unchallenging look at the core tenets of leadership.