Becoming a Student of Leadership is a book about leadership in the broadest sense of the word. It asserts that we all serve as leaders in some way, and we need to become students of leadership to learn how best to lead from our various positions within an organization. As students, we must practice with a drive to continually improve and the humility to know that we'll never be finished learning. The most effective leaders spend less time trying to prove what they know and more time creating opportunities for everyone to learn.

Current leaders will find this book useful not because it offers radically new ideas on effective leadership but because it draws readers in with personal anecdotes that remind us of how to be an inspired leader. It reminds us of our human imperfections and encourages us to challenge our views and perspectives. It helps us to check our egos and seek to discover our blind spots and weaknesses that diminish our ability to lead and inspire from a place of humility.

Managers will benefit from this book because they, too, need to understand the difference between effectively delegating and oppressively micromanaging. Many of the stories included in these pages will remind managers how introducing meaning, purpose, and possibility to the work of the team, rather than being an officious taskmaster, will inspire higher levels of engagement, motivation, and productivity across the organization.

Young professionals and aspiring leaders who have known too few inspiring and too many misguided leaders will also find hope and value in reading about how the path to leadership starts right here, right now, and is taken with intentionality, humility, and practice. They will learn that leadership is not about obtaining and wielding power, but about making connections with the team, creating a compelling vision, and generating energy and excitement about the work ahead. 

In fact, this book has something for everyone – the opportunity to discover the leader in all of us. We all have a reason to lead effectively at some point in our lives. The essays, meditations, and anecdotes found in these pages are written as a series of reminders about leadership concepts many of us may already know, but they shine a new light on how to lead in ways that make others eager to follow. 

“Becoming a Student of Leadership is the most genuine leadership book I have ever read – and I've read a lot of them.  It's not written by a political figure or business titan, and it's not full of consultant-speak. The building blocks for the book are hundreds of weekly messages Jeff Page wrote to his teams at the Library of Congress and the Corporation for National and Community Service over more than a decade. The messages address "real-time" leadership challenges and draw on wisdom from personal experience, books, blogs, trainings, podcasts, even poems. Jeff is now sharing his messages with us, and has organized them around themes ranging from Radical Candor to Customer Service. No aspect of leadership is left unexplored, which makes the book a perfect companion for those who just got their first management job, as well as long-tenured leaders who share Jeff's belief that leadership is a practice, and learning never ends.

Jeff's writing is intimate, provocative, humorous, and — especially — real.

As someone who recently suffered a career setback, I found solace in Jeff's stories about overcoming adversity, such as that of Ping Fu, a Chinese immigrant who founded a 3D imaging company. For Fu, personal and professional success was not a continuous upward journey to the summit of a mountain; by choice or circumstance, she traveled up and down mountains all her life, sometimes needing to descend from one peak to find the next.

Having spent much of my career managing budgets and the conflict they engender, I wish I had read Jeff's story of Greg the gardener long ago. Greg taught a high-school-aged Jeff about Judo, and Jeff applied those lessons years later to his leadership. Jeff writes, "Practicing mental judo means taking the negative energy of those who oppose us, and instead of fighting it, trying to receive it, understand it, and redirect it in a constructive way." 

Full disclosure: I had the great privilege of working with Jeff. Ours could have been a contentious and difficult relationship; I came into the organization with new ideas and a mandate to make changes. Instead, it was perhaps the most trusting and honest work relationship I have had in my 26-year career. The reason is that Jeff practiced what he preaches in his book. He put his ego aside, assumed positive intent, and turned his energies to helping me succeed.

After Jeff moved on, he would occasionally send me one of his weekly messages. Each of them taught me something and encouraged me to reflect on my own attitudes, behaviors and actions. By curating his messages and putting them in book form, Jeff is making an invaluable contribution to the practice of leadership everywhere.

It is nearly impossible to sum up Becoming a Student of Leadership, but if I had to, I would point to Jeff's belief that ‘People who follow do so because of the pull of inspiration, not the push of willpower.’ Reading Becoming a Student of Leadership has inspired me anew to become a better leader, and given me the guidance I need to achieve that goal.”

— Andrew Kleine, the author of City on the Line: How Baltimore Transformed Its Budget to Beat the Great Recession and Deliver Outcomes. He has led a team of five people and an organization of 9,000, and he still has much to learn.

“I can not stress enough how great “Becoming a Student of Leadership Making Leadership a Practice” is and how I recommend it to anyone interested in the topic of leadership or even just becoming a better person. Mr. Page’s lessons that are shared through his years of leadership experience and learning are applicable to everyone. Mr. Page shows that being a leader starts with humility, self awareness and the desire to continually improve ones self and he constantly reflects on how that has been the case for him through the years of reflection shared in this book. Mr. Page shows that through the interactions and observations of himself and others, you can learn and reflect on the keys to becoming a great leader and person. Most importantly Mr. Page is sharing all of these key learnings with us to help us reflect and improve from the incredible wealth of knowledge he has to share. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is in the continual quest to be a better leader and person.”

— Jay Miller, former Chief Financial Officer at the US Capitol Police