Richard Riordan, leadership and mentors

Yesterday I was reading something Richard Riordan gave me to read. He has been a wonderful friend and mentor over the past years and I can recite his axioms of leadership in my sleep (courage, giving/caring, empowering others and relentless pursuit of goals…with vision and sense of humor perhaps added…and already all over the Internet). What I was reviewing was more personal, about his life and struggles, and made me reflect deeply.

We all have those roll models and influences who make us think differently. I’m a very creative person and having spent so much time in Silicon Valley believe that the real edge any person or company has is the ability to think differently and then execute on that vision.

I’ve been blessed with a number of free thinkers in my world and thus no longer fear saying something with which others disagree. Sometimes they are right, sometimes I am, but only in having a free and open dialogue can any of us work through the differences to the ultimate answer. Others truths become apparent only over time or as technologies evolve.

Yesterday as I was reading I learned about empathy. Any path is littered with mistakes, mixed luck or even tragedies yet some people learn from these contingencies and apply those lessons to achieving more in life and not making excuses. We need to pick our mentors and roll models carefully as we mimic their ways of handling situations when confronted with surprises, problems or even successes.

Escape (Captive’s sequel) is about a week from being finished. In the book my characters address the types of challenging issues we all chose to face or not. Idealistic but worldly, like Dick Riordan, they struggle with the practical realities of life’s constraints as they try to achieve their goals in the face of obstacles and adversity. As a novelist, I set my characters on a path then mess them up in as many ways as I can imagine (story arc etc). Is life so different?

Writing over 400 pages requires an incredible amount of discipline; revising close to 100,000 words even more so. Today I’ll be inputting minor changes and polishing as the book is almost done. It’s hard and mind numbing work but those last revisions are often what makes the book good. As Dick would ask, which axiom am I displaying? Relentless pursuit of goals. Anything we create is leadership in practice. Thanks to all of those who blazed the trail for me to follow – I couldn’t do what I do without you. We all face barriers to accomplishing something we want to achieve, whether they are internal or external. Creativity and thinking differently just makes our path more fun!

Sample reading group questions

I was asked for them….I’ve never written reading group questions before. So, below is draft one. If you haven’t finished the book stop reading now!

1. Captive is about two men who’ve had different options in life and made very different decisions. Character wise, are they similar? Were their lives shaped more by circumstance or by character?

2. The story is told from a woman’s perspective twice: once from the viewpoint of Khalil’s mother, Leila, and the other from George’s wife, Karen. Do their insights add to the story or detract from it? Do you sympathize more for the men after learning something about them from women who love them?

3. Shortly before Khalil turns up at his door, Omar begins to question whether he really wants to die for his jihad. Is this questioning consistent with his character? Why, when pushed, does he ignore his misgivings?

4. Stacy and Jennifer are both smart women who make foolish choices with respect to men. They are minor characters in the book so less fully explored. What about them or their romantic partners provides insights into these disastrous romantic choices?

5. George and Khalil both love to read. George brings Khalil an assortment of books during the captivity. What insights do the book choices add?

6. Captive is essentially about people who are captive in different senses of the word. Is it easier for these characters to break out of their physical or mental captivity? Do any of them truly escape by the end of the book?

7. Is the story line very situation specific or does it have recurring elements from a larger literary or historical perspective?

8. Do George and Khalil ever begin to like each other? Why does Khalil shoot George but not kill him (presumably, he could have ensured George died with another or better placed shot but doesn’t).

9. What happens after the book ends to each of the main characters that perhaps wouldn’t have happened had the Captive events never taken place?

10. George struggles to get information from someone who doesn’t open up easily. Is he effective at his job based on how events occur at the end?

The picture is of the San Francisco Bay and taken by Jonathan Dugan of BitTorrent