Got Leadership?

This year's SCU Summer Session faculty is there to help you find the route to THRIVE not just survive!

by Skip Cohen

Several times over the years I've found great inspiration in books from WalktheTalk.com.  Well, I was in the middle of cleaning one of the bookcases in my office last weekend and ran across this one, Leadership Lessons and I started thumbing through it.

With Summer Session for SCU coming up in August, I found myself looking back on the fun of past programs and the people I've met who have become great friends. In the process I started thinking about the stand-out programs for this year from so many leaders in the industry and it struck me how the definition of a leader is so diverse.

Photography is a combination of incredible technology and a creative art form.  In the past most of us have considered the leaders to be those photographers who are creating excitement, new directions and new imaging applications.  Reading this one little WalkTheTalk publication I found myself thinking about how much deeper the qualities of leadership really go.

"Do something.  If it works, do more of it.  If it doesn't, do something else." Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago." Warren Buffet

"Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don't just stand there, make it happen."  Lee Iacocca

All three quotes are from Leadership Lessons.   All three are dead on target when you think about the people working to change our industry.   For example, this year's SCU Summer Session faculty is Clay Blackmore, Bob Coates, JP Elario, Michele Celentano, Justin and Mary Marantz, Joe McNally, Suzette Allen, Roberto Valenzuela, Zach and Jody Gray, Dixie Dixon, Michael Corsentino, Ryan Schembri, Jen Rozenbaum and Bob and Dawn Davis. They are all exceptional photographers and people working to raise the bar in our industry, but I love the way they teach. They're going to work to help you plant that "tree to create the shade" Warren Buffet talked about.

One more quote from Leadership Lessons:

"Leadership is not magnetic personality - that can just as well be a glib tongue.  It is not "making friends and influencing people" - that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. " Peter Drucker

I hope you can join us in August - it's an amazing faculty and destined to be one of our very best programs yet! And, like Peter Drucker suggested - the team is going to help you raise your performance to a higher standard...

Illustration Credit: © freshidea - Fotolia.com