Becoming a Self-reliant Leader

Becoming a Self-Reliant Leader: How Grit and Disciplined Duty Forge Indomitable Teams

Fortune 500 leadership advisor and former Green Beret Jan Rutherford and leadership development consultant and former assistant professor at the United States Military Academy Jacquie Jordan have created the ultimate prescriptive handbook on what it takes to design and lead energized and effective teams in an increasingly complex and uncertain global landscape.

Crafted from Rutherford’s Crucible® Expeditions wilderness experience, Becoming a Self-Reliant Leader is a practical guide that explores each step of the Crucible journey and how its lessons can be applied to today’s leadership challenges.

These lessons are based around the three pillars of Self-Reliant Leadership®—leading yourself, leading others, and leading an organization—and include how to:

  • Develop courage, curiosity, and grit to confront adversity and lead your team to success
  • Select the right people for your team—people who are selfless, adventurous, and heroic
  • Create the right direction, pace, and tone to achieve any goal
  • Design and maintain a positive and energized work environment
  • Build mutual, genuine trust among team members and fellow leaders

Whether they’re leaping across icy chasms or scaling slabs of rock, Crucible Expedition participants are pushed to their mental and physical limits—and emerge on the other side renewed and more durable than ever before, with a new understanding of how overcoming hardship refines our skills and accelerates our growth.

This compilation of lessons and stories from past expeditions offers business leaders more than just an exciting read—it’s a proven recipe to creating and sustaining high-performing teams.

Screenshot 2024-02-06 at 8.50.15 AM

“I’ve invested decades working with and trying to develop leaders. In my travels I’ve encountered more articles, books, and blogs than I dare try to remember – and truth be told, most of them are a reiteration of countless predecessors.  Occasionally I stumble across a diamond, a sparkling jewel.  When I do, I carry it with me – study it – learn from it.  Becoming a Self Reliant Leader: How Grit and Disciplined Duty Forge Indomitable Teams  is not a precious gem – it’s the diamond mine.  It is that rare find that actually does more than challenge us to build our own narrative – it shows us the way.  Step by step and with wonderful real world examples that expound - each forged in a crucible.   Who should read this book?  Everyone interested in building a life that matters – to include every person that has ever dreamed of being a leader of significance.  This book will soon adorn the bookshelves of a great many.  But I hope that it will become much more – a reference guide on how to become a transformational human being.  We need them now more than ever before in this world of ours. This is the book a lot of us have been waiting for – we just didn’t know it.” 

Tim Cole, Founder

The Compass Alliance
Screenshot 2024-02-01 at 9.57.05 AM

"Becoming a Self-Reliant Leader' brings to light the raw, unvarnished truth about leadership. Much like the entrepreneurial journey, the story shows that the path to true leadership is often through the wilderness of challenge and change. The book acts as a compass, guiding the reader to understand that the real transformation begins where comfort zones end. It's a must-read for those ready to face their own crucibles and lead with conviction and clarity."

Gino Wickman

Author of Traction & Shine, Creator of EOS
Screenshot 2024-02-01 at 10.00.02 AM

“Managing others is a difficult process, but managing ourselves to do so properly can be just as challenging. Fortunately, this book gives us the tools to do both in a remarkably illuminating and engaging read. Current and prospective leaders alike would be wise to absorb and implement its lessons."

Robert Cialdini

Author of Influence and Pre-Suasion
Screenshot 2024-02-01 at 10.01.16 AM

The development of leaders, and especially extraordinary leaders, has been a challenge for thousands of years.  During that time, millions of books and even more studies have been produced in an attempt to identify how great leaders are developed.  This is an important endeavor because between 20% and 70% of the outcomes in organizations are due to the leader.  Strategy matters, culture matters, incentive systems matter, processes matter, but if all of those are in place and the leader is incompetent, the organization and its members will not thrive.  In this book, Jan Rutherford and his colleague, Jacquie Jordan, have captured the very essence of leadership development.  Using Rutherford’s Crucible Expedition experiences, they capture leadership lessons as they emerge and are refined.  Personal, interpersonal, and team leadership skills are developed in real time and in conditions where failure is costly.  This book is an exciting, entertaining, and insightful read, and you are almost guaranteed to capture numerous useful insights about how leadership develops and succeeds.

 

Kim Cameron

world-renowned scholar and best-selling author on positive leadership and virtuousness in organizations

The Littlest Green Beret

The Littlest Green Beret” represents a small felt hat, Jan’s stature, and all those seemingly insurmountable goals. We all face adversity amidst physical, mental, and emotional challenges, and this book is about becoming self-reliant in terms of creating a powerful future. It can also become your battle plan for addressing life’s challenges and the key to unlocking the leader within you.

Through Jan’s own stories of adversity, he conveys how leadership development can occur every day if you’re observant, reflective, and determined. This book provides an overview of practical leadership principles for managing oneself, creating a personal strategy, and effectively engaging others to assist you with your own developmental objectives.

By exploring what effective leaders actually do and how they do it, you will learn the principles of personal effectiveness and how visionary leadership can develop and inspire people to achieve more than they thought they could. Leadership can be an illusion of control, but changing your perspective on everyday experiences can provide inspirational learning opportunities for personal growth and development.

Half the proceeds from the sale of this book will be distributed to the Green Beret Foundation and the Special Operations Warrior Foundation.

ASCE 138th Annual conf, Pittsburgh, PA

“Notwithstanding your generation or your state of life – student, new hire, young professional, captain of industry, buck private, or general – this book will enrich your mind and ignite the spiritual forces of your leadership. Jan Rutherford is at once a fire-hardened leader, an inspiring storyteller, and a contemplative scholar. His treatment of Self-Reliant Leadership is the hypergolic fuel that will move you and your organization from excellence to extraordinary, from success to significance.”

Joseph A. “Bud” Ahearn

Major General U.S. Air Force (Retired), CH2M HILL vice chairman, emeritus
James-Clawson

“In this compact and meaty volume, Rutherford helps readers learn how to play the cards that life deals. The author models his principles of perseverance, determination, education and centrally, self-reliance. In so doing, he encourages us all to do the same. With an engaging style, Rutherford creates a confluence of Emerson’s self-reliance, Thoreau’s reflective seclusion, Socrates’ self-awareness, and Sparta’s discipline. Readers are rewarded with a relatively unvarnished life’s story filled with memorable and inspiring episodes.”

James Clawson

Johnson & Higgins Professor of Business Administration, The Darden School, University of Virginia, author of “Level Three Leadership”

Purposeful People: Business Leaders Making A Difference

With contributions from senior military, business and government leaders, to Entrepreneurs, international sports elite, and CEOs of multi-million dollar businesses, you'll discover a collection of heartfelt and engaging stories of self-reflection and inspiration.

In this book, you'll learn from first-hand experience on leadership and team organisation, but you'll also look deep within on how to; find your purpose, deal with imposter syndrome, be kind to yourself and create a safe space for courageous conversations. It's full of advice and tips on helping you to create your best life!

'Purposeful People' is ultimately about sharing; sharing knowledge that in some way may uplift and motivate its readers, and sharing proceeds of its sales with four important charities. This book was created to support charities that are closest to our hearts: Children's Cancer; Military Veterans & Families; Mental and Physical Health; and Homelessness.