ABOUT THE BOOK
Nobody from Nowhere
Dale W. Botting
Nobody from Nowhere:
A Story of Leadership, Resilience, and Legacy is Dale’s first book. Stayed tuned for more projects in the future.
This book attempts to make a unique contribution to leadership literature, while also providing fresh insights about the political history of Saskatchewan from 1975 – 2010. It is part memoir, part career guide, and part manual for personal growth and organizational leadership. But it’s not the “usual fare” of edutainment or lay preaching from other celebrity authors in this genre. It comes from a gritty life in the trenches – as a civil servant, a high-profile advocate, a social entrepreneur, and an experienced leadership coach. It provides candid stories about the author’s work on the frontlines with numerous Canadian Premiers, and at key moments in the environmental, Indigenous, economic, and social history of his little part of “Nowhere” in Saskatchewan, Canada.
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Part I of the book chronicles all the decades of Dale’s life as a former “eco-warrior”, policy analyst, loud-mouthed advocate for small business, 6-time serial CEO, and Deputy Minister. Each chapter concludes with leadership lessons gleaned from each stage of his eclectic journey, with a summary of sixty-four succinct insights.
Part II delves deeper into a series of topics seldom mentioned in other leadership books. These unique ways of looking at leadership are shared through added stories of candor and vulnerability. There are chapters about Making Character Great Again, How to Illuminate a Person, the Art of Noticing, the Joy of Running to the Fire, Living in the Future, the Power of Solitude, and Making Friends with Fallibility. It also talks about all that “Leadership B.S.” out there, and about Leadership Dis-Eases and Disease like “achiever fever”, workaholism, and clinical depression. The book concludes with a plea to redefine leadership through the preferred language of stewardship, as a humbler way to steer organizations.​
Dale Botting is grateful to be a relative Nobody from Nowhere. In his non-celebrity life at a more remote but vibrant place and time in Canada, he has seen a lot and done a lot. He now wants to gift the reader with all this history, nuance, context, perspective – and hopefully – just a little more wisdom!