Tony AlessandraThe ONLY Official Site to Book Tony for a Speech

I thoroughly enjoyed your speech and found many new, useful ideas to use immediately in my business... That's a great presentation. Thanks!
--Rose Clayton

I wanted to pass along my personal thanks to you for speaking at our annual Program Manager's conference. All of the feedback that I received, both in person, as well as in writing, was overwhelmingly positive, and your talk was a big part of that! Thanks again, and I hope that we'll see you at a future Harris event.
--Amos Morse

Thank you for the kind words. Your presentation was the best of all outside presentations - everyone thought you were great! I look forward to the opportunity to put you in front of other clients of ours in the future.
--Jay

Tony's presentation had real impact. The points he made were not only relevant to our audience, they were delivered in a way to make them memorable and fun. It was great to have such an important topic delivered with punch as well as humor. His anecdotes were fabulous. Ask him about the pots and pans.
--Corrine Smith

Thanks so much for your presentation at NSA San Diego last week. It was the best combination of practical tips and inspiration that I have seen at an NSA meeting ever! Thanks again for your powerful message and willingness to spend so much time with those of us starting out.
--Jim Cartmill

Successful leaders don't just dream big -- they dream for the rest of us!

From the very first, Abraham Lincoln saw himself as the savior of the country. Not just as a successful lawyer or a judge or the owner of a general store. To him, all those things were way stations on the way to something much bigger and more important. Lincoln saw himself as a leader long before he was one. This was not arrogance or empty ambition. It was a sense of ultimate purpose in service of a worthy cause.

How can you bring that sense of mission into your own life? What are your big, worthy dreams? Are there goals that you recognized from the first that you have continued to pursue no matter what setbacks have intervened? If that is the case, then you are already a leadership genius; you have already mastered the art of leading your life in the direction you want it to go.

On the other hand, you may be one of the many people who have put aside any ideas about changing the country or the world. That's fine, but I do want to repeat the question I asked a moment ago: What are your big, worthy dreams? I want to emphasize worthy. Having a big car or a boat does not count. Those things are great, but can you see the difference between wanting material success and wanting to make a truly big difference in the world, the way Lincoln did? It is the difference between just being successful for your own sake, in very conventional terms, and being a leadership genius, not just for yourself, but for other people too. In Lincoln's case, it was for all people.

Think about your life in terms of a mission, a great purpose that inspires you to pursue leadership, first leadership of yourself, and then of others. If you have identified that purpose, the next step is thinking practically and realistically about how you are going to bring it about. Sometimes the practical side has to be dealt with first, in order to make the larger purpose feasible.

Is there anything about yourself that you suspect might disqualify you from being an effective leader? What are they? How can you turn these perceived weaknesses into your strengths? It is tempting to think that our leaders should be without weaknesses, but that is by no means the truth. Leaders should not be without weaknesses that they are unaware of. Leaders should not be out of touch with what is going on in their minds and hearts. That awareness in itself is much more important than what challenges it reveals. These are questions that will take more than a few minutes to answer, but I urge you to reflect on them to improve your leadership genius.