{"id":26610,"date":"2026-08-13T00:10:53","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T05:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maiglobal.org\/?page_id=26610"},"modified":"2026-08-13T00:33:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T05:33:15","slug":"how-to-turn-your-leadership-experiences-into-a-book-with-pusonnam-yiri","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/maiglobal.org\/es\/how-to-turn-your-leadership-experiences-into-a-book-with-pusonnam-yiri\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Turn Your Leadership Experiences into a Book with Pusonnam Yiri"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How to Turn Your Leadership Experiences into a Book with Pusonnam Yiri<\/strong><\/h2>

Learn how to record and share lessons from your leadership journey for current and future generations with author and book coach Pusonnam Yiri.<\/em><\/p>

A book is just the start<\/strong><\/h3>

As I trained more leaders in book writing, I discovered that a book is just the beginning.<\/p>

A book is like a seed. A forest can be created out of it.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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I\u2019ve discovered that from one book, we can create an organization, a movement, a training center. A story can be converted into a book, and a book can be converted into other platforms.<\/p>

Today, I want to focus on having a conversation with you on the topic, how you as a leader can turn your story, your lesson, your journey into a good book.<\/p>

Writing: an everlasting witness<\/strong><\/h3>

Isaiah 30:8 says, “Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come, it may be an everlasting witness.”<\/em><\/p>

God calls writing an everlasting witness.<\/p>

When I attended LittWorld 2015 in Singapore, I think it was during lunchtime or dinner, a lady asked a question that I\u2019m still thinking about. She asked, \u201cHow do you feed people from over 50 nations?\u201d I reflected, and I gave myself this answer: Maybe the best way to feed people from over 50 nations is to offer your menu. To share your story.<\/p>

Read knowledge vs lived knowledge<\/strong><\/h3>

In my years of training writers, I discovered that many people are writing books based on what they know. They have head knowledge. They know about an idea. I call it untested.<\/p>

But living knowledge\u2014which I call tested knowledge\u2014is the knowledge you have after living the idea. A pastor was asked why he waited for many years to release his book. And this is his answer: he was busy living the book first.<\/p>

Living knowledge is tested knowledge.<\/p>

I discovered that most leaders who are writing books from head knowledge are producing books that are abstract. They don’t have souls. Sadly, many are writing books from head knowledge.<\/p>

My main focus is on living knowledge. For example, there are authors who know about the city, but they have never traveled there. The authors I work with are leaders who have traveled to the city. They have seen the city. They have experienced the city. Now they are back. They are sure of the road. They are back to take us to the city. That is what I call tested knowledge.<\/p>

As a leader, you have things to say. You are a traveler. You have a vision. You have several ideas. You have led several people. The knowledge you have now is not just a head knowledge. It’s knowledge that you have lived.<\/p>

The journey shapes the author<\/strong><\/h3>

After these years of training writers, I have written different ideas. I have reshaped different ideas. I have refined my thoughts, until finally, I reached this idea that you are seeing right now: The journey shapes the author and the author shapes the book.<\/strong><\/p>

Instead of developing the writers first on book writing skills, what we do now is to help the authors on the journey\u2014if you have a quality author in his thinking, in his leadership approach, then out of a quality author, you can have a quality book.<\/p>

Nobody has your story\u2014and the world has space for it<\/strong><\/h3>

Out of the billions of people in the world, nobody has your story. Your story is original. Your unwritten story is not in the market. What that means is this: the world has a space for your story. Can you imagine how many leaders are denying the world original stories?<\/p>

This reality actually hit me after the death of my father. My father was a minister. He was a mentor to so many people. He served the Lord. He preached God\u2019s Word. He wrote so many things\u2014I have his journals from many, many years ago\u2014but he didn’t write a book.<\/p>

After the death of my father, I discovered that when the generation that listened to my dad passed away, a time will come in the future when nobody will know of my father. Nobody will know of his values. Nobody will know of his teachings.<\/p>

That was when I discovered that a book is probably one of the biggest investments a leader can make. Maybe that’s why God gave us a book\u2014not a video\u2014because a book can outlive you. A book can be here for many, many years.<\/p>

A friend once told me that an old man invited him and asked him to come and record the history of a village. My friend couldn’t go. Eventually, the old man died. He died with the history of that village.<\/p>

I remember he was a smart man, a wonderful man, very intelligent, a visionary. I had thought of asking him to write a book many years ago, but procrastination took that opportunity from me. He died some years ago. Now there is no written source that this generation can connect to.<\/p>

My personal grandfather, I can’t recall meeting him, but recently I had to ask people a few questions to tell me about him. I asked somebody who is like an uncle to me, I also asked my mom. And they told me that my paternal grandfather was a good storyteller. He was a speaker. He loved children and he was generous. My father was a wonderful storyteller, excellent speaker, practical speaker, but he also died without a book. I’m a storyteller, and I would have become better with that family rich history.<\/p>

The book isn\u2019t the product\u2014the author is<\/strong><\/h3>

This is what is happening in Africa. Many of our elders have lived well, but they died undocumented. Even in their lineages, it’s difficult to remember them. So, that’s why I’m passionate about leaders documenting their values, their stories. It’s very, very important.<\/p>

In my journey, I used to think that the book is the product.<\/p>

The more I work with people, the more I discovered that the book is not the product\u2014the leader is the product. The book is only the by-product of the leadership journey of the leader. A book only manifests the author’s ministry or intellectual credibility.<\/p>

This has changed the way I look at book writing. I focus more on developing the leader\u2014because if the leader doesn’t have anything to say, we cannot have a good book. I see the leader as the product, and then the book as the by-product.<\/p>

Out of a good tree, the Bible says you are going to have a good fruit. Out of the bad tree, you are going to have a bad fruit. So, instead of expecting good fruit from a bad tree, my focus is to first ask myself\u2014how can we make the tree good so that we can have good fruit?<\/p>

Case studies: How to turn your journey into a book<\/strong><\/h3>

A new book must have new content or a new way of presenting old content. If you want to convert your idea or your journey into a book as a leader, there are direct or indirect approaches. I want to give you the stories of clients whom I have worked with directly.<\/p>

Victor: working with your team<\/strong><\/h3>

Victor is a leader of a big mission agency in Nigeria. I went to a program and I sat near his wife. When she got to know that I help people write, she told her husband about me and her husband contacted me.<\/p>

We organized a workshop in Abuja. Victor registered with his team to attend the workshop. His people learned what he learned, and he approached his writing conversion with his team members. I served as his consultant and his team was very helpful in the process.<\/p>

Leaders are busy people. Time is mostly what they don’t have. Their team members can help them. Leaders can produce the raw material and raw ideas, and still be deeply involved in writing, but also have the assistance of their team.<\/p>

Judy: an entrepreneur with powerful ideas<\/strong><\/h3>

Somebody recommended me to Judy, and she reached out to me with the raw manuscript of her story. She was a brilliant person. She invented an idea that she called \u201cwholesome leadership.\u201d She is an organic thinker, an entrepreneur with powerful thoughts.<\/p>

I helped her as a consultant. She released her first book, The Dancing Butterfly<\/em>, about her journey as an entrepreneur. It\u2019s an excellent story, a mind-blowing story. She had compiled her raw manuscript and then worked with somebody to harmonize it before contacting me.<\/p>

Shegun: humility and teachability<\/strong><\/h3>

Shegun is a Nigerian-American, and he reached out to me with his manuscript. He asked me, “I wrote it using the American context. Can you help me to contextualize, to fit it into the Nigerian context and the African context?”<\/p>

I served as his consultant. When I read through his manuscript, I discovered that if you write something for the American market and you send it to Africa, there are gaps that you may not know, gaps that would be misunderstood here, especially in Nigeria.<\/p>

I pointed out these gaps and Shegun welcomed the ideas. He was a humble and teachable person. We worked on the manuscript to fit into our context in Nigeria. He wrote a wonderful book on the silent battles of pastors, using fictional stories to portray real-life lessons. We helped him with structural editing, copy editing, and story editing.<\/p>

Nahor: writing about others<\/strong><\/h3>

Nahor did not write a book about himself, but he chose to write a book about a leader in his church denomination. Nahor is a PhD scholar. He contacted me to work with him as a consultant. I saw a gap where he was struggling to tell this story, and I helped him in this area. We worked together, and eventually he did this.<\/p>

Hosea: capturing expertise<\/strong><\/h3>

I visited Hosea after his retirement and encouraged him to write a book. He welcomed the challenge. He didn’t tell his story, but focused on his area of expertise and wrote a book on retirement.<\/p>