Customer Reviews

Force For Change: How Leadership Differs from Management

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

John Kotter has done a superb job in distinguishing the differences between leadership and management. This is often attempted yet rarely accomplished with such vivid and compelling examples and documented research. If you want to know the differences, get this book....

Another great, easy-to-read, and popular leadership book my company uses successfully for management development and training is strongly recommended: "The Leader's Guide: 15 Essential Skills."

My advice is to purchase John Kotter's article that this book came out of from the Harvard Business Review. It's title is "What Leaders Really Do: How Leadership Differs From Management". The article covers the subject well enough and I do highly recommend it!! Very Important.

I purchased this book for research as part of a recent MBA class paper and I was not disappointed. Kotter stands alone in defining the differences between "management" and "leadership". All of the other works that I reviewed (Bennis, "On Becoming a Leader; Bennis and Nanus, "Leaders"; Fiedler, and Follett)use the terms interchangably.

Of equal importance were the specific differences that he cited along with the examination of whether or not leaders were made or born. This is not the classical trait theory approach but is well reasoned and balanced. Lastly, Kotter specifies the type of scenarios which call for leadership competencies.

I recommend this book highly for anyone wanting to understand how leadership truly differs from management and how the two functions interrelate. Other leadership books seem to emphasize examples of great leaders without the research, balance, or depth of Kotter.

The book is fine but don't buy the kindle version for iPad. I just bought it. None of the tables, graphs, charts, or matices display properly. This undermines the illustrations, data, and comparisons kotter makes. I'd like my money back

This books provides a lot of clarity in discussions of leadership and management that I appreciated. Within this clarity, it begs the reader the questions of "How do I see myself?" and "What position am I currently in and how am I leading or managing?" A great tool for developing people and self-reflection, for growth and better stewardship of people, positions and teams.

This book may be small but it packs quite a punch in that it is able to define change management terms with easy to understand examples. I came away with a much better understanding of change management after reading this book. Recommended for the person looking to improve and for college courses.

This book contains John Kotter's usual dose of platitudes and blindingly obvious insights. Anyone that gets anything useful out of this book is far too dumb to lead anything at all, except perhaps a hollow and meaningless life.

How he has gotten the world to swallow this nonsense book after book, each one a rehash of his previous mishmash of meaningless business speak ("energizing your employees") and vague, unfollowable axioms about, for example, "having vision," is beyond me. But perhaps I just haven't achieved my full alignment potential.

Honestly, seeing this book up on the shelves of seemingly intelligent business people baffles me. Especially since it sits next to works by other self-help authors who dish out the same insubstantial pap book after book. And keep landing on the bestseller list! If you really want to learn how to be a highly effective person, spend some time playing with your children. Bring your spouse some flowers. Read a worthwhile book. Now those are platitudes worth living by.