It is a big week on my side of the Internet: my new book – ‘You Can’t Lead From Behind’ – is being shipped from the publishers.

What is it all about? It is about the lessons I have learned through life about leadership. Lessons that include tips & hints and a measure to see how the reader is doing.

How did I become a leader? How did you?

Well, consider this …

Did you know that there were almost 900 high school football teams in Canada and the assumption is that there would also be 900 cheer-leading squads?

That means there are 1,800 starting-quarterbacks and head-cheerleaders produced each year out of 500,000 high school grads. That is an astonishingly low percentage (0.0036%) of those we thought of as leaders when we were in high school.

When you were in high school, you probably thought the QB and head-cheerleader were going to go far? Did you think they were leaders? Did you wish you had what they had?

The reality was that most of us were pencil-skinny, geeky, acne-covered kids who were desperately hoping to get kissed. At the same time as we prayed no girl or boy would stop and talk to us for fear that our pubescent voice would crack like a cheap china plate.

It’s not to say the cheerleaders and QB’s didn’t amount to anything. I am saying that the leadership world is made up of people who were in the chess, band, debating or AV clubs; they were in cadets, scouts or 4H; or, they were one of the vast majority of kids are just trying to figure life out.

Because there are more than 1,800 leaders in Canada, that large group is where the political, social and business leaders come from.

That’s where I came from.

I wish someone could have accelerated what I have learned about being a leader in my life journey from crackly voiced kid to leading soldiers, employees and humanitarians around the world.

I hope my book is that acceleration for you and the leaders in your life.

Take a few moments and listen to Hugh Culver’s interview with me about those leadership lessons