Presentation software can be a wonderful tool if used correctly. It can also be a dangerous distraction that interferes with communication rather than facilitating it. The line between the two is thin.

Over the course of my career, I have sat through hundreds of presentations. Most of them were done with PowerPoint. Most of them are done poorly.

I awoke this morning to the dragon’s hot breath on my face. I was disoriented, not quite knowing where I was. I struggled to open one eye. Then another.

And there he was. A dragon. A very big dragon. With three heads. Sitting in my bedroom, like so many mornings before, he was waiting. His heads swerved back and forth, dancing in the dim light. Each head alternately belching fire and hissing smoke.

Everyone knows we have a “men problem.” You can hear about it on CNN, read about it in the New York Times, and watch the destruction it creates on Dr. Phil.

The stats are jarring. For example, 80 percent of men are so emotionally impaired that not only are they unable to express their feelings, but they can’t even identify their feelings. The collateral damage is staggering. One-third of America’s 72 million children will go to bed tonight in a home without a biological dad.

In 1991 I, along with my business partner, suffered a financial meltdown. We had built a successful publishing company, but our growth outstripped our working capital. We simply ran out of cash.

For a while our distributor funded us in the form of cash advances on our sales. But eventually, their parent company wanted those advances back. Although we didn’t officially go bankrupt, the distributor essentially foreclosed on us and took over all our assets.

It’s easy to look at successful people and envy their situation. What you often don’t see is the pain they went through to get there. That certainly applies to me.

I didn’t eventually become a CEO because I made fewer mistakes than you. In fact, it’s probably just the opposite. I made more. In fact, I’ve been fired from three jobs in my career.

Each of these was a very painful experience. But these experiences also taught me important lessons that I probably could not have learned any other way.

Face it. You will eventually quit your job. It may be this year. It may be next. It may be ten years from now. But it’s inevitable. It’s only a matter of time. The only real question is how to do it in a way that doesn’t burn your bridges. You never know. You may want to come back. At the very least, you may need a reference.

Unfortunately, many people don’t always end their tenure at a company as well as they begin. The key, in my opinion, is to begin with the end in mind. As leaders, we should be intentional about everything we do—even quitting.

Many words in the English language are difficult. In fact, there’s even a Dictionary of Difficult Words. But none are more difficult than these: “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Will you please forgive me?”

Many otherwise articulate people seem to have great difficulty in spitting these words out. They hem and haw. They stutter. They may get something close out, but they have a hard time slowly and deliberately saying these ten simple words.

Yesterday, I posted the first part of the interview with my friend, Anne Jackson, is a writer, speaker, and activist. In her newest book, Permission to Speak Freely, Anne chronicles her own story of growing up in church and being afraid to talk about certain “taboo” topics. She also shares some of the many “confessions” she received in response to the question she originally posed on her blog: “What is something you feel you can’t say in church or around other Christians?”

As I mentioned yesterday, the premise of Permission to Speak Freely is that you are not alone in your battle with secrets and brokenness.

My friend, Anne Jackson, is a writer, speaker, and activist. In her newest book, Permission to Speak Freely, Anne chronicles her own story of growing up in church and being afraid to talk about certain “taboo” topics. She also shares some of the many “confessions” she received in response to the question she originally posed on her blog: “What is something you feel you can’t say in church or around other Christians?”

The premise of Permission to Speak Freely is that you are not alone in your battle with secrets and brokenness.

I have always believed that you are more likely to accomplish big goals if you declare them publicly. My rationale has been that this creates the accountability you need to follow-through. But now I am not so sure.

Derek Sivers makes a compelling case against going public with your goals in his short talk at the 2010 Ted Conference. (The talk is only a little over three minutes long.) His basic premise is this: telling someone your goals makes them less likely to happen.

Taking over a new leadership role can be a pretty exciting moment in any executive’s career. It can also be one of the most dangerous. Research conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership shows that up to 40 percent of newly promoted managers and executives are no longer in their roles within 18 months of a promotion.

What goes wrong? In surveys and focus groups with thousands of executives, researchers at Indiana University’s Kelly School of Business identified some common reasons why new leaders can run off the rails. Some of the top derailers are:

I have spoken publicly about a dozen times in the last three weeks. Because this is more than usual, I have begun to notice a pattern in my own psychological state as I go through the speaking cycle.

It has been helpful to identify the components of this cycle, so I am not so surprised when they occur. So far, I have identified ten stages I go through in preparing to speak. (This assumes that I have never delivered this exact speech before.)

Delegation is critical to leadership. You can’t take on more responsibility unless you are willing to delegate to others. But that doesn’t mean it is always easy.

Recently, one of my mentees was planning a special event. Last week, he was surprised to discover that someone on his planning team had completed a project that he didn’t really authorize. He was clearly frustrated, because he felt the other person had taken more initiative that he was given.

After listening to him describe the situation, I finally said, “The fault is not with your team member’s action. The problem is that you didn’t make your expectations clear when you delegated this task.” I then asked him if he had ever heard of the five levels of delegation. He said, “no,” and then I shared them with him.

I’m a husband to one woman, father of five more, and grandfather to three more (little) women. We also have a number of women in strategic positions at Thomas Nelson, with whom I work on a regular basis. Suffice it to say, I spend a lot of time in the company of women.

Here’s something I’ve learned from all that experience: women are different. Earth-shattering, I know. But when it comes to motivating the women in your organization, it’s important to be mindful of that difference. What works for a man doesn’t always work for a woman.

Last spring, Jim Bradford, Dean of Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, interviewed me on my leadership philosophy and practice. He asked some tough questions. I tried to be as candid as I could be.

I intended to share the video here on my blog a few months ago, but it got lost in the shuffle. However, I thought about it today and thought you might enjoy seeing it.

Richard L. Daft is a professor at the Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, where he specializes in the study and teaching of leadership. I had the privilege of meeting Dick several years ago, when he invited me to speak to one of his classes on “Culture as a Leadership Tool.”

I currently speak a couple of times a year to his classes and it is always a treat. When he told me about his new book, The Executive and the Elephant: A Leader’s Guide to Building Inner Excellence, I knew it would be perfect for my readers.

I’ve never been to the Orange Conference, but I am excited to go this coming spring. I heard Reggie Joiner speak at the Catalyst Conference last year, and, frankly, that was enough. (He was awesome!) It is scheduled for April 27–29, 2011. Registration opens on October 5th.

The Orange Conference is committed to a simple premise that I believe whole-heartedly: the church and the family must work together to influence the next generation.

For the past few years we’ve been studying breakthrough teams in some of the world’s most respected firms including Pepsi Beverages Company, American Express, Texas Roadhouse and Zappos.com.

Predictably, we found that great teamwork is about such things as effective goal-setting, instilling performance measurements, and increasing trust levels; but it’s also about something much softer. Something surprising.

Most leaders periodically talk to their teams about how they value honesty and why they want more of it. This talk on honesty has become one of the classical management talks in the business world.

However, judging by their behavior, I have noticed that very few of these leaders actually encourage honesty. And I’m confident this doesn’t apply just for the leaders I know. It’s very easy to state that you want honesty from people; it’s much harder to create a culture that actually fosters it.

There comes a point in every story when you are ready to quit. It could be a relationship, a project, or your job. Regardless, you’ve had enough, and you are ready to “throw in the towel.”

My friend, Donald Miller, discusses the temptation to quit in his book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. In a chapter called “The Thing About a Crossing,” he describes something called a “story arc” or trajectory. This is the dramatic outline that nearly every great story—including yours—follows.