The Brilliance Imperative (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9789916404515)

How are you going to show brilliance today?

How are you going to help everyone else to become brilliant?

Like you all, I am a busy person and, to be honest, whilst I like a good bit of research-based reading, I seldom have the time or the inclination to do it as often as I might like.

Work life, for me, already means a lot of reading; once that is over, I have little capacity left in my head to cram much more in.

I do, however, undertake my thinking in a much less formal, less structured way, focusing on the premise of, 'What can I do and learn that will actually help me get better at what I do?'.

This book should only take approximately an hour or so of your time to read.

It is intended that this book be a time-efficient, easy read with easily accessed main themes that promote further thinking and questioning.

Ideally, you will find some areas that you would like to delve deeper into at a later stage. Included are lots of questions to assist you in exploring these areas yourself and a couple of practical activities that you might like to try.

Part book, part manual and part checklist, I hope to have achieved something that is quickly digestible but which also sparks new thinking and reflections that you can then run with and develop further.

Simon's book is a wonderfully accessible, easy-to-read, common-sense exposé of leadership in general and school leadership in particular.

He uses a chatty, engaging style to cut to the essence of what it means to be a leader, dodging the conventional jargon and demystifying the sophistication others have burdened the term 'leadership' with.

By describing leadership in terms of its focus on individual and team performance, Simon has surfaced the imperative need for self-leadership to drive the leadership of others.

Ignoring any temptation to become embroiled in semantics or vague wanderings of fancy, he stresses the distinction between a title and a role, and distils his many years of experience, deep thought and discussion into simple, blindingly-obvious descriptions of what effective leaders do.

This is a refreshing re-look at leadership, recommended for all who profess, aspire or are obliged to be leaders.

Greg Flattley

International education advisor, consultant and school principal