Customer Reviews

The Jossey-Bass Academic Administrator's Guide to Exemplary Leadership (J-B Leadership Challenge: Kouzes/Posner)

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Kouzes and Posner are the coauthors of The Leadership Challenge, one of the classic leadership books. In this book, they have repackaged those ideas for an academic audience. While the ideas are not new, this recontextualization is very effective for applying them to the academic setting.

It seems some days that there are as many books available on the topic of leadership as there are leaders, all of them covering the same ground with one different twist, leadership from people that like Swiss cheese, or leadership as postulated through the random variables of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In The Academic Administrator's Guide to Exemplary Leadership, you will find no trendy niche marketing approaches to leadership; it contains straight forward, to-the-point thinking on what works in leadership, placed in the context of higher education.
Kouzes and Posner describe their paperback as a "field guide to take along on your leadership journey." Based on their research begun in 1983, the book boils down the key components of successful leadership in an inspiring, yet levelheaded approach that takes its examples from the day-to-day realities of college administrators. This is a concise, readable, yet thoughtful book that would make an excellent addition to the orientation package of any new administrator. While some experienced readers may hold that the author's approach to these topics seems old hat and possibly even simplistic, this book can provide even experienced administrators a focus for critical self-reflection and renewal, which is crucial to any leader.

Awesome handbook for higher education professionals. A must read !!! An intelligent coffee book for educational leaders.