Self Leadership and The One Minute Manager

Title: Self Leadership and The One Minute Manager
Writer: Ken Blanchard, Susan Fowler, Laurence Hawkins
Translator: Marselita Harapan
Publisher: PT. Gramedia Pustaka Utama, Jakarta
Year: 2006


It begins with a story of a young account executive named Steve who works for an advertising agency. After his bright career for around 3 years, he is assigned to handle the whole process of advertisement for a client. He thinks he can succeed because of his capacity in budgeting and production scheduling, but he fails in the presentation. He forgets several things. He starts being unconfident and thinking of resigning from his job before his boss fires him. But he meets a magician named Cayla who makes him understand ‘things’ he forgets and helps him improve his personality and career.

This book actually wants to convey the three leadership tricks. First, fighting against limiting assumption. A limiting assumption is a faith we have, which is based on our past experiences and limits present and future experiences. We often think that we are unable to do or get something because we assume that it is not workable or impossible to proceed. It makes us unable to see the way out.

Secondly, be grateful for your powers. Power is not attained from a certain title or position only. There are several powers, i.e. the power of personality, power of relationship, power of knowledge, power of duty, and power of position (due to certain titles). Perhaps one of our greatest weaknesses is our awareness of our powers :)

Thirdly, cooperation for achieving successes. By realizing our strengths, we will understand our capacity and in what ways we need to improve. We will need other persons to advise, to support, to motivate, to monitor, and to evaluate us. The two most effective words for asking cooperation are “I need…”