Jack Covert Selects - Heart Leader

Heart Leader: A Personal Journey to the Heart of Business and Life by Daryl Wizelman with Bruce Dundore, Heart Leader Books, 138 pages, $14.95, Paperback, April 2010, ISBN 9780692007129

Just to begin this review by stating the obvious: things change. One of the things that has changed for me is that self-published books are no longer not worthy of consideration for Jack Covert Selects. Mainstream publishing still offers advantages, but in the past couple years, the quality of self-published books has improved dramatically.

Heart Leader is a perfect example of why self-published books are becoming more relevant. It is the simple, but compelling story of a man who has been successful and is forced to shut down his hectic life because of a serious illness. As he examines his life, we learn about his childhood, his dysfunctional parents and his struggles with ADD. In his childhood, he thought money equaled happiness because they had none, and they were miserable. Now with gobs of money, he realizes he was wrong.

As he lay in the hospital bed, he thought about the functional family as a way of running a business. How a family looks out for the happiness of its members. How the strong family helps and protects family members. And it is through this reflection that he discovered the concept of being a "heart leader."

A Heart Leader knows, as John Maxwell shrewdly observed: People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. That is why children listen to parents that show them love and remember their lessons more.

The author lists the sixteen traits of Heart Leaders, and each of them get a chapter. And, at the end of each chapter is that trait's ROI, which is a perfect, practical summary of what you have read that keeps the book grounded and applicable.

There is something oddly compelling about this book. What the author has accomplished is taking ideas like "servant leadership" and "doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason" and surrounding them with very interesting, personal and memorable stories—stories that rattled around in my brain for quite awhile. I think it will do the same for you, and help to either reinforce or change current business practices. You can't ask for more than that from a book.