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I'm Not Special: But They Are
Paperback
Military BiographiesBusiness General
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Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 100
Weight: 0.32
Height: 0.24 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Who made you?
Not who hired you, promoted you, or gave you your first big break.
Who taught you to keep your word when no one was watching?
Who believed in you before you believed in yourself?
Ron Spradling spent more than twenty years in the United States Air Force, rising from a young Airman whose first performance report was decided by a coin flip to a Master Sergeant entrusted with developing the next generation of leaders. Along the way, the experiences in this book eventually became the foundation for Leadership Continuum Theory, a framework for understanding why the same group of people can perform so differently under different leadership. But beneath that theory was an even bigger question:
Are the people who run toward danger, who carry others without being asked, born that way...or made?
I'm Not Special (But They Are) answers that question through fifteen true stories of the people who quietly shaped one man's life: a supervisor who let a coin flip decide a young Airman's future; a Senior Airman with the courage to tell a Technical Sergeant a hard truth; a Chief who trusted a subordinate long before that trust had been earned; a military training instructor's campaign hat that arrived years later as a reminder that real leadership never truly ends; and a wife who spent twenty-five years holding together the fabric underneath every chapter.
This isn't a leadership textbook. It's the story behind one-the ordinary people, quiet moments, and small decisions that shape a leader long before anyone hands them the title. Spradling argues that leadership isn't something you're born with or achieve once and keep. It's something that moves between people, often invisibly, changing lives in ways neither person fully understands until years later.
Whether you're leading a team, raising a family, serving your community, or simply wondering who made you into the person you are today, I'm Not Special (But They Are) will change the way you see the ordinary moments you've spent your life overlooking.
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