Introduction
Before we begin to discuss the second chapter of John Maxwell’s excellent book: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, as part of our newly launched Book Club, we are going to start, not with the chapter contents, but by outlining how and why we can make summaries of information and text. In this way, we get to talk about some really great ideas on leadership and hone (sharpen) our writing skills at the same time. We will begin today's article by talking about why and how we summarise, and then we will go onto to unpack Maxwell’s concept of the Law of Influence, in our next post. This will allow you, as students and readers, to examine how I have made a summary of the information in Chapter 2 of that book, and to judge for yourself how effective my methods are. In other words, is it a good summary? Does it contain the information you as a reader need? Of course, it also helps you to pick up some good tips for making summaries as we go along. Let’s begin by discussing the relationship between leadership and writing.
Leaders are writers
One of the most important skills you must learn to become an effective leader is the ability to write well. And one of the most important skills you will need as a writer is the ability to summarise information from texts. You may well ask what summaries and writing have to do with leadership? That is a very good question and one which we have touched on in our discussion on the first principle contained in Maxwell’s book: the Law of the Lid. The connection between leadership and writing is that writing is intrinsically (you can’t remove it) tied up with leadership. You cannot separate the two, because writing is communication, and a good leader must be able to communicate well with other people.
Much of the communication we do in our modern age – perhaps most of it – happens via (through) writing. What exactly do I mean by this? Well, even if you spend a lot of time online, you are dealing with written information on Websites. If you watch movies, those movies started out most likely as novels or books and were then turned into screenplays, or scripts, before they were made into movies. In other words, movies are actually written texts that are turned into speech. Think about this for a moment: you do not hear actors in movies make mistakes in their speech, do you? They do not repeat material, or sentences, or speak in half sentences. Their answers are always timed perfectly because it is not ‘’real’’, everyday speech. Thinking of speeches, even when you give a prepared speech to an audience, or make a presentation, your text has first been written down before it is verbally disseminated (shared).
In addition, in your academic studies, or in business, you will also have to write emails, business plans, and reports. These are things that leaders have to do all the time in order to communicate with those around them. Good leaders are good communicators, as we will see in later posts. And in order to communicate well, you must write well. In order to write well, you must read well, and so on. All these concepts are integrated (locked into each other). So let’s now talk about how we summarise.
How to summarise a text
It may very well be true that the best indicator of a person's intelligence is hir or her ability to summarise a text. Why is this the case? Well, when you can summarise, it means that you are able to take the main idea/s of a debate or a text, and capture it into a shorter, more concise (efficient) form of the original. The reasons we summarise are first, to save time, and secondly to locate and highlight important information. The latter (the last part) is important when you need to study for a test or an exam, and you have a lot of information to work through. Summaries help us to learn. So how do you go about summarising, and what tools can already exist within the text you need to summarise that can help you to do this?
Firstly, take a look at the main and sub-headings. Headings indicate the themes of texts. Themes are the main idea, along with sub-headings that portion off, or help to layout, your information. A text with no heading is a text with no direction and no indication to your reader of what you are doing to discuss. Would you consider buying a newspaper that had no headings to any of its stories or information? Why, or why not?
Secondly, take a look at the first sentence of each paragraph. Did you know that paragraphs also have themes? If the paragraph is well written, the first sentence will contain its theme. Topic sentences are really useful for summarising the contents of paragraphs and information.
Of course, you also want to be looking carefully at any diagrams or pictures contained in the text, as these can also assist you to make a good summary. Like any aspect (part of) learning to write well, improving your summarising skills will take time and practice. In addition, I want you to consider that the ability to write as much as possible, in as short a text as possible, is a highly prized and complicated skill. A good writer has to ability to write short texts, without losing the clarity (clearness) and strength of the message.
This brings us back to Chapter 2 of John Maxwell's book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. I am going to provide my summary of the chapter and principle of the Law of Influence below. Go on to our next blog from our Book Club, and take a read. While you are thinking about Maxwell’s thoughts and ideas on leadership contained in this principle, take time to consider whether you think the chapter has been well summarised. If not, how could it be done better? As always, we welcome your comments, thoughts, and ideas.
See you in our second Book Club article: The Law of Influence.
The Wordwise Team
Disclaimer: The reviews reflected here are only my personal opinion and do not represent the opinions of other associated parties.
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