Okay, so here’s the scenario:  We’re in the process of packing to move in two weeks.  In packing up those hernia-inducing boxes, filled with books, I ran across a book on leadership from walkthetalk.com.  The book is called Leadership Lessons and I started reading it. 

After DWF and IUSA this past week, I found myself looking back on the fun of the conventions and the people I was able to catch up to, many of them friends I haven’t seen in some time.  In walking the trade show floor, listening to the speakers and talking to several different companies about projects we’re working on, it struck me how the definition of a leader is so diverse.

Photography is a combination of incredible technology and a creative art form.  In the past most of us have considered the leaders to be those photographers who are creating excitement, new directions and new imaging applications, but reading this one little WalkTheTalk publication I found myself thinking about how much deeper the qualities of leadership really go.

“Do something.  If it works, do more of it.  If it doesn’t, do something else.”  Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” Warren Buffet

“Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don’t just stand there, make it happen.”   Lee Iacocca

All three quotes from Leadership Lessons and all three dead on target when you think about the people working to change our industry.   For example, Tony Corbell, in front of 1600 people at his program the other day, chose to not show one single image, but simply talked about the changes in our industry.  His goal?  To get everyone in the room to think about the quality of the images they produce and raise the bar on what they deliver to their clients.  He planted “a tree to create the shade” Warren Buffet talked about.

At the last minute, Dane Sanders, did a series of live interviews from a booth on the trade show floor.  No advance publicity and no way to let people know he was even going to do it until the evening before.  When the smoke cleared he interviewed a half dozen guests and thousands of photographers attended on line or watched the presentations live as they happened.  He followed Lee Iacocca’s lead and “didn’t just stand there, but did something!”

Tony and Dane are just two of the photographers who walk the talk every day, working hard to raise the bar on so many different aspects of our industry.   We’re an industry with so many talented photographers, manufacturers and association staff – all working to help strengthen professional photography. 

One more quote from Leadership Lessons:

“Leadership is not magnetic personality – that can just as well be a glib tongue.  It is not “making friends and influencing people” – that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. “ Peter Drucker