Leadership in Action: Dividends and Interest - The Pleasure and pains of Writing this Column

LEARNING EXPERIENCE

For me, the hardest part of writing a regular column is not coming up with subject ideas but deciding which of many ideas has enough substance to provide 1,500 words that will hold readers' attention so they read the entire piece.

Along the way I think I have learned a lot about writing. Some of these lessons should be useful for leaders, because writing well is a valuable though often underestimated leadership skill. One thing I have learned is to write before I really need the material. If I have an idea in a coffee shop and jot some notes down for a future column, for example, those notes are almost always of better quality and more readable than anything I create under deadline pressure. One of my toughest challenges is ...