Being a leader does not always mean your job title is CEO or office manager or creative director. Leading from within is as affective if not more than leading from the top of the corporate structure. Based on William Deresiewicz’s essay/lecture (which I quoted portions of back in April, but for a refresher, read the article here: Solitude and Leadership), how would you apply some of the principles he suggests in “Solitude and Leadership”?

Maybe your work life is something like this. You have a full, eight-hour day work load of project management tasks (that you are trying to squeeze into ten hours), production items and internal and external clients to assist. Shortly after you sit down at your desk and take a sip of coffee, your email inbox audibly notifies you of an email from your supervisor. You do not respond to the email immediately because you are processing files from yesterday for today’s activities. These are files the supervisor needs by 10 a.m. That allows you one hour to complete the task. Within a few minutes you receive a Skype message from the supervisor asking if you saw the email. When you do not reply to the Skype message immediately, you receive a text message on my personal mobile device asking if you saw the Skype message about the email. Does this sound familiar? How do you handle such distraction and meet your supervisors requests and requirements?

This may be a mundane example, but it is more accessible to most readers than that of a Wall Street broker. So, how would you apply some of the principles Deresiewicz suggests in “Solitude and Leadership”?