If you assume the responsibility of leadership, you have almost certainly been there. You have gone through the feelings of despair and helplessness that rise with every breath you take. You have experienced the obstacles that build one at a time. You have felt the drain of energy with every sandbag you throw in front of the rising water. There is a continual battle with your emotions to ignore the fear. It is a constant effort to keep moving, to keep deciding, to carry on ahead of the tidal wave that never recedes, never lets up.

There is the courage you always find somewhere in your reservoir that makes you proud, even as you wonder if the pressure will ever end. The questions you do not want to examine: "How long can I keep doing this? Do others know how tired I am? Does it show? Can others tell how out of control I feel?"

Being in control of events which affect your life and your areas of responsibility is a form of mastery. Being in control during stressful times is the act of a master. Whether you choose mastery consciously is irrelevant. If you are in a position of leadership or responsibility, you have an obligation to attempt to be in control. Unfortunately, your training may not have adequately prepared you for the times.

Consistently extraordinary performance does not happen by accident. It is developed over time and is only created through incredible attention to detail. The professional athlete offers a good example. Somewhere in his or her background is a trainer who understood the fundamentals of the sport and had the ability to communicate them to the talented pupil. Through constant practice and testing, the professional athlete learns to perform at peak no matter what the circumstance. He or she relies on an understanding of the basics of his or her sport in tough situations.

To develop the appropriate training for leadership, leadership must be broken into its most fundamental components. Next, an understanding of the components and how they fit together to create a composite picture of the most powerful of individuals must be developed.

The premise of What To Do When It Rains is this: if you know the fundamental elements of successful decision-making for leadership and about life, your process for responding to and thinking about the challenges and crisis will be more powerful and more mature than if you do not. You will learn to return to these fundamentals when all other solutions elude you. If you are striving for a form of mastery, labeling the fundamentals will support you in your journey.

The concepts and fundamentals outlined in this text were developed by studying the dynamics of both successful and not so successful individuals and organizations. The horse trainer, the master teacher of mathematics, and the golf pro have something in common. They all understand the building blocks of their area of expertise. Similar to the perspective gained when dividing a substance into its molecular components, a person can learn to build and reconstruct reality with an understanding of the fundamental components of powerful leadership and decision-making. What To Do When It Rains defines a set of arbitrary fundamental components for strong and powerful leadership in all circumstances.

The fundamentals offered here follow a natural and logical progression of skill development for a leader. They also apply to many other areas of expertise. As you read, apply the fundamentals to your sport or your life and determine the relevance for you.

What To Do When It Rains was originally written for individuals with huge levels of responsibility, desperate for content that would help them cope with the enormous stress in their lives. The concepts, however, work for anyone, leader or not, crisis or good times.

The text breaks the development of mastery into three phases. Each is a stage in the evolution of the strong and effective human being. The first phase deals with a person's ability to manage fear. The second works with a person's capacity to manage confusion. The last phase evolves the individual's capacity to manage arrogance. Throughout, the reader addresses his or her own abilities, as well as an understanding of the fears, confusions, and arrogance of others.

If even one of the fundamental steps is missing in the development, the individual will flounder at crucial moments. As you become aware of the role the fundamentals play in the execution of decisions, it is probable you will recognize the missing fundamentals in others. The challenge is to recognize the subtle or, sometimes, dramatic influence they have over your own results.

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