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Sales rank 34,257
Customers rating (based on 12 reviews)
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Leaders today are familiar with the demand that they come forward with a new vision. But it is not a matter of fabricating a new vision out of whole cloth. A vision relevant for us today will build on values deeply embedded in human history and in our own tradition. It is not as though we come to the task unready. Men and women from the beginning of history have groped and struggled for various pieces of the answer. The materials out of which we build the vision will be the moral strivings of the species, today and in the distant past. Most of the ingredients of a vision for this country have been with us for a long time. As the poet wrote, "The light we sought is shining still." That we have failed and fumbled in some of our attempts to achieve our ideals is obvious. But the great ideas still beckon—freedom, equality, justice, the release of human possibilities. The vision is to live up to the best in our past and to reach the goals we have yet to achieve—with respect to our domestic problems and our responsibilities worldwide. —From the Preface to On Leadership
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| Publisher | Free Press | | Release date | 03/1993 | | Availability | Usually ships in 24 hours | | Edition | Paperback |
| | List price | $18.95 | | Our price | $13.64 (you save 28.02%) | | Used price | from $0.79 |
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 Still one of the best on leadership - So much here
This book is so full of great straight-shooting advice that you really need to read twice to get the full effect of it. The great news about Gardner's teachings is that nearly anyone can develop their leadership skills. One of his interesting findings is that there is no one set of leadership styles or personality traits that can create great leadership.
In my consulting practice working with heads of emerging enterprises, lack of leadership skills is the greatest obstacle to the success of their respective organizations. There are literally hundreds of books that come out annually on leadership and management, most of which are retreads of older material with a fancy new title.
The elements of strong leadership don't change with the season. Instead, they stand fixed over time.
 Seems like a new book
The book I ordered was a used book however once it arrived it looked brand new to me. I also had the book within 5 days of placing the order. I was impressed with the note the seller included as well. Would order from this seller again.
An Introduction of Leadership
I'm used to reading Maxwell's books on leadership and what I liked most about this one here, is that he doesn't make use of stories all the time. This annoys the hell out of me...
So, this book goes straight to the point and points out the good, the bad, and the ugly of being a leader. He mentions the catastrophic actions of Heil Hitler for instance, and so on.
As I said, even though I'm already familiar with the concepts of leadership, I really appreciated this book. It brings a lot of concepts and it's easy to grasp.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Don't worry about it being dated, it's still pretty truthful/relevant regarding leadership.
To those who never read about this before, shame on you, buy it now!
Classic leadership text
Gardner's first sentence of his introduction, "Why do we not have better leadership?' is first answered by his initial definition of leadership attached to a disclaimer: "attention to leadership alone is sterile--and inappropriate. The larger topic of which leadership is a subtopic is the accomplishment of group purpose" [italics original]. This purpose, he says, is furthered by people other than individuals traditionally identified by leaders, such as "innovators, entrepreneurs and thinkers." He did not intend "to deal with either leadership or its related subjects comprehensively" but wanted instead to "illuminate aspects of the subject that may be of use in facing our present dilemmas--as a society and as a species" (p. xvi).
His book accomplished his purpose by highlighting, in vignettes, what by the 1990s had become the standard topics of leadership--traits, contexts, leader-follower dynamics, and so forth. In this sense, Gardner's book, with a flavor made particular by his extensive political examples, is in the genre of classic leadership textbooks, and his answer to the question posed in his first sentence was the book-length elaboration of the final sentence of his introduction: "We can do better. Much, much better" (p. xix).
His contributions to the field of leadership studies include his discussion of "dispersed leadership," which is woven through the text, his thoughts about renewal, and his discussion of how leadership and followership can release human potential. His extended definition of leadership, found on the first page of the first chapter, stated "Leadership is the process of persuasion or example by which a leader (or leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by the leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers" (p. 1).
His book is a goldmine of aphoristic insights into leadership:
* The concept of accountability is as important as the concept of leadership. (p. xviii)
* The first step is not action; the first step is understanding. (p. xviii)
* Many people with power are without leadership gifts. (p. 2)
* Many writers on leadership take considerable pains to distinguish between leaders and managers. In the process leaders generally end up looking like a cross between Napoleon and the Pied Piper, and managers like unimaginative clods. This troubles me. (p.3)
* Values always decay over time. Societies that keep their values alive do so not by escaping the process of decay but by powerful processes of regeneration [italics original]. (p. 13)
* Indeed, one could argue that willingness to engage in battle when necessary is the sine qua non of leadership. (p. 16)
* Leaders are invariably symbols. (p. 18)
* Achieving a goal may simply make the next goal more urgent: inside every solution are the seeds of new problems. And as Donald Michael has pointed out, most of the time most things are out of hand. No leader enjoys that reality, but every leader knows it. (p. 22)
* Executives are given subordinates; they have to earn followers [italics original]. (p. 24)
* Woodrow Wilson said, "The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people." (p. 29)
* One ambitious young lawyer asked one went about winning trust, and the senior partner said dryly, "Try being trustworthy." (p. 33)
* Hobbes said that the reputation of power is power [italics original]. (p. 34)
* As Peter Drucker put it, Vail saw that the only way to keep Bell a private company was "to stand for the public interest more forcefully than any public agency could." (p. 45)
* He said, "He's a superb crisis manager, which is fortunate because his lack of judgment leads to a lot of crises." (p. 49)
* Acclaim and derision are the rewards of leadership. (p. 53)
* So the public (even the reasonably well-informed public) is deprived of the opportunity so cherished in a free society to exercise its native judgment in choosing the candidate who meets its needs. It knows its needs. But it does not know the candidates--only skillfully manufactured facsimiles thereof. (p. 54)
* To say a leader is preoccupied with power is like saying that a tennis player is preoccupied with making shots an opponent cannot return. Of course leaders are preoccupied with power! The significant questions are: What means do they use to gain it? How do they exercise it? To what ends do they exercise it? (p. 57)
* Our federal government is the biggest carrot-and-stick warehouse in the world. No wonder the power junkies gather. (p. 61)
* In our society public opinion is a notable source of power. (p. 61)
* A familiar failing of visionaries and of people who live in the realm of ideas and issues is that they are not inclined to soil their hands with the nuts and bolts of organizational functioning. (p. 65)
* Even veteran observers are bemused by the overreaching of some who exercise power. It is a source of constant wonder that such ancient and dreary vice can spring up so freshly. (p. 66)
* And who remembers the reigning princes? What heritage was left by those who held great worldly power when Buddha was teaching, or when Isaiah was prophesying or when Jesus spoke by the lakeside? (p. 76)
* Cyert and March point out that an organization is generally a coalition of individuals and groups with diverse goals, engaged in continuous bargaining for power. (p. 91)
* Mark Twain said, "There isn't a parallel of latitude that but thinks it would have been the equator if it had had its rights" . . . . People who think of themselves as victims are in no mood to collaborate with others to shape a constructive future. (p. 96)
* Pluralism that reflects no commitments whatever to the common good is pluralism gone berserk. (p. 97)
* Leaders unwilling to seek mutually workable arrangements with systems external to their own are not serving the long-term interests of their constituents. [italics original] (p. 99)
* Hitler said, "The art of leadership consists of consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary." (p. 104)
* Transactional leadership accepts and works within the structure as it is. Transformational leadership renews. (p. 122)
* Leaders must understand the interweaving of continuity and change. [italics original] (p. 124)
* The person who works for social change must not be assumed to be a believer in Utopia and human perfectibility. Change will occur. We must cope. Leaders should understand the point made by Francis Bacon 350 years ago: "He who will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator." (p. 125)
* A feature of the trance of nonrenewal is that individuals can look straight ata flaw in the system and not see it as a flaw. (p. 126)
* Nothing is more vital to the renewal of an organization than the arrangements by which able people are nurtured and moved into positions where they can make their greatest contributions. (p. 127)
* H.G. Wells said, "Leaders should lead as far as they can and then vanish. Their ashes should not choke the fire they have lit." (p. 132)
* There is no doubt that a certain number of top executives have, in the secrecy of their minds, closed the books on one or another portion of their responsibilities. (p. 133)
* Pity the leader who is caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers. (p. 135)
* The final issue is the most serious. Power lodges somewhere. When "the people" take power away from an individual or group they dislike, they may inadvertently empower those they like even less. In a leaderless system, where will power lodge? (p. 142)
* There is a French saying, "Be sure you want the consequences of what you want." (p. 142)
* Most of the endlessly debated questions about leadership are ancient, but there is one that has a distinctly modern ring: How can we define the role of leaders in the way that most effectively releases the creative energies of followers in the pursuit of shared purposes [italics original]. (p. 143)
* The first duties of citizens are not of a sophisticated political nature. Those duties are to look after one another in the family circle, get themselves educated and equipped to support themselves, obey the law, pay their taxes, and rear their children as responsible members of the community. These are authentic forms of participation, though they are rarely mentioned in discussions of the subject. (p. 145)
* The generalization may be that explosive crises produce great leaders, creeping crises do not. (p. 158)
* They learn that it is how they perform as individuals that counts, not how they relate to others. So it is not surprising that many young executives--even middle-aged executives--are still pirouetting for some scorekeeper, real or imagined, with little thought of their possible constituency. Their gaze is directed upward, at the executive staff meetings they want to worm their way into, at the executive vice-presidents they want to impress. They are not even paying attention to the people at their own level or below, whom they might hope to lead. (p. 167)
* Experience, thought to be the best teacher, is sometimes a confusing teacher. Robert Benchley said that having a dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down. (p. 168)
* Mentors are "growers," good farmers rather than inventors or mechanics. (p. 169)
* No leadership course can affect young men and women so powerfully as a well-designed sequence of reassignments. (p. 175)
* Are these just questions to be tossed into the box that lies beyond the in-box and the out-box? (Dean Acheson said there should be a third box, labeled Too Hard.) (p. 182) [note: this is the segue quotation to Heifetz and Peck]
* As a consequence, beneath the surface of most constituencies are dormant volcanoes of emotion and motivation. Oddly, when leaders tap those geothermal sources and evoke intense responses, we attribute the intensity not to the subterranean fires but to charisma in the leader. (p. 186)
* Your identity is what you have committed yourself to--whether the commitment is to your religion, to an ethical order, to your life work, to loved ones, to the common good, or to coming generations. (p. 189)
* We are not only problem solvers but problem seekers. If a suitable problem is not at hand, we invent one. Most games are invented problems. We are designed for the climb, not for taking our ease, either in the valley or at the summit. (p. 195)
* Harlan Cleveland points out that the leader has little choice but to be optimistic. The analyst, the critic, the journalist can afford not to be. But taking a positive view is not something that effective leaders have to work at: It is in their temperament, and no doubt had much to do with their attainment of a leadership role. It may have been a leader who said, "I'd be a pessimist but it would never work." (p. 196)
Gardner is a classic
A classic book. I read it for the purposes of educational leadership. I have read Fullan and the like, but this classic still holds its own with a succinct presentation of the necessities around corporate leadership. It is difficult for a book written this way to become outdated.
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