Steve Dealph, a businessman from Warner Bros. Entertainment, recently spoke for CSU-Pueblo’s Distinguished Speaker Series. He presented to 60 students, faculty and community members Nov. 9, in the OUC Ballroom.

Dealph came to the campus to give a speech on what he dubbed “extreme leadership,” but it turned out to be more of a leadership workshop. The layout of the room was set up with 12 round tables in the ballroom so that members of the audience could interact with one another as Dealph took them through his main advice to become an extreme leader.

Dealph defined extreme leadership as “a wholehearted commitment to making things better, often at the risk of failure and sacrifice.” It involves a will to lose something in order to get something better, he said.

Much of Dealph’s key points and ideas came from the book “The Radical Leap Re-Energized,” by Steve Farber. The book and excerpts from the author were prevalent throughout.

“How do we lead people? Love,” Dealph said.

The key to being a good leader is the ability to manage themselves and others through emotional intelligence and then to cultivate love in their employees, he said.

While love was the cornerstone in Dealph’s attributes for a, extreme leader, he built his definition around the acronym, “LEAP.”

LEAP stands for love, energy, audacity and proof.  An extreme leader must learn to cultivate love, generate energy, inspire audacity and provide proof of what they are doing, Dealph said.

Dealph uses these attributes as the criteria to separate extreme leaders from posers within leadership roles, he said. 

“A poser is not someone who finds himself in over his head, but someone who decides to do nothing after this realization,” Dealph said.

“There are many people who think they want to be matadors, only to find themselves in the ring with two thousand pounds of bull bearing down on them, and then discover that what they really wanted was to wear tight pants and hear the crowd roar,” according to a line Dealph quoted from the leadership coach Terry Pearce.

Dealph challenged the audience to not settle for poser leadership, but to lead with love and always provide proof of their extreme leadership.