The Leader's Edge: Six Creative Competencies for Navigating Complex Challenges [Hardcover]

Charles J. Palus (Author), David M. Horth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2002 | Series: J-B CCL (Center for Creative Leadership) (Book 19)

Let the Center for Creative Leadership show you how you can dramatically improve your leadership abilities in today's business environment. Based on years of specialized research, The Leader's Edge outlines six distinct creative leadership skills that, while not traditionally associated with management development, have, nevertheless, proven to be essential to modern business leadership. Here, the book's authors deliver compelling lessons in paying attention, personalizing, imaging, serious play, collaborative inquiry, and crafting -- all competencies that modern leaders should master. They also outline activities for real-world implementation, provide case examples, and suggest ways to avoid common mistakes. A wealth of self-reflections and tools helps ensure your rapid progress.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A true breakthrough approach to contemporary leadership. The content enables awareness, development, understanding, and application of six competencies essential to guiding organizations through today's complex and ever-changing business environment. Further, it enables levels of individual and organizational introspection vital to the change and adaptation required in leading and managing through complex challenges."
--Michael A. Barker, executive director of leadership development and executive staffing, Verizon Communications

"No one in any managerial position can ignore this wonderful book, which teaches in a most practical-and interesting-way how to lead and manage effectively. Using real-life examples, the authors painstakingly detail a step-by-step methodology which will literally transform your thinking and take you into the exciting world of creative leadership!"
--Kirpal Singh, professor and director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies, Singapore Management University.

"The creative process has been captured at last, and what a ride. True to the best of learning theory, elegantly simple. A must-read for leaders with the courage to walk on the edge."
--Bernice McCarthy, president, About Learning, Inc.

"Horth and Palus understand the critical role leaders play in creating an environment for productive social engagement in turbulent times. Their practical advice is a must-read for leaders at all levels."
--Kevin E. Kirby, vice president for administration (health sciences), Columbia University, and former executive officer, National Institutes of Health

"The manager just tapped to become a senior leader may have an abstract fear of the new, and a new fear of the abstract-giving rise to questions that begin with 'How do I?' This book maps new avenues to thoughtful and meaningful answers to some of the more befuddling of these questions."
--Hunton Tiffany, chairman, The Fauquier Bank, Warrenton, Virginia.

"The consciousness of leadership and its effects on any organization is more important than ever in our world of increasing speed, complexity, and unpredictability. This book is a valuable contribution to help apply efficient leadership in today's world."
--Ingar Skaug, president and CEO, Wallenius Wilhelmsen Lines AS, Norway

"This well-written book moves beyond creativity theory and provides the reader with enabling tools that will greatly assist in developing creative individuals and environments. Through a series of engaging techniques the authors have given us new ways of stimulating the creative impulse that is resident in all of us. Highly recommended."
--Maurice Terry, president and CEO, Guelph Food Technology Center, Guelph, Canada

"The authors' collaboration has produced a 'work of art,' a useful, simple look at six key competencies everyone should explore and apply."
--Michael A. Cafasso, president and CEO, Pueblo Bank and Trust, Pueblo, Colorado

"At last, a full-spectrum palette for all sorts of creative leaders. This book feels like one of those beautiful Italian artist's sets I sometimes see--full of high-quality paints, brushes, and delightful surprises, practically guaranteed to produce living rainbows."
--David Barry, professorial chair of organizational creativity, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

From the Inside Flap

The tasks faced by organizations today are increasingly complex, and leaders find themselves faced with challenges from all sides: accelerating technology, deregulation, mergers and acquisitions, shifting demographics, new business models, and an uncertain economy. Indeed, to many these challenges seem insurmountable, because traditional management skills are simply not enough to cope with them. The Leader's Edge offers a breakthrough approach to dealing with such situations, showing how to tap into a set of unique creative competencies that are necessary to survive and thrive in this turbulent environment.

Based on seven years of research on several hundred individual leaders and teams from a variety of industries and disciplines, The Leader's Edge identifies the insight, skills, techniques, and wisdom that separate true leaders from merely effective managers. The key to truly creative and successful leadership, say Charles J. Palus and David M. Horth, lies in adding six key competencies to traditional leadership skills: paying attention, personalizing, imaging, serious play, collaborative inquiry, and crafting. The authors reveal how any leader can access and use these sensibilities and skills to make sense of rapid change and complexity-and thus provide an invaluable "leader's edge."
The Leader's Edge will help managers recognize the competencies they already have and develop them further. It will give them a practical understanding of how the creative competencies, when integrated with traditional skills, are vital to the essential process of making sense. And it will show them how to help their organizations and communities develop and use these competencies to create shared understanding, and so better navigate and resolve complex challenges.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (May 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787909998
• ISBN-13: 978-0787909994
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #284,514 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A practical, "hands on" leadership book, February 11, 2003

By 

Elizabeth Brandt "Betsy Siwula Brandt" (Santa Fe, New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Leader's Edge: Six Creative Competencies for Navigating Complex Challenges (Hardcover)

I am an organization development consultant who specializes in innovation and have been using the practical tools that Palus and Horth highlight succinctly in this book with clients such as Exxon/Mobil, Los Alamos National Laboratory and others. Without exception, leaders in these organizations have found the tools insightful and enlightening when applied to unique, complex challenges.

Based on long years of research from the Center of Creative Leadership, the authors have truly put their learnings into a book that is refreshing and easy to read. This is a must read for anyone who is looking for novel ways for groups and teams to interact-- by putting something different "in the middle"--in order to breakthrough (to understand this, you'll have to read the book!) Powerful favorites for me have been "visual connections" and new ways of looking at R&D scorecards.

Have fun with this book and most of all-- experiment!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Real leadership for the current times, December 23, 2002

By 

Valerie Sessa (Hoboken, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Leader's Edge: Six Creative Competencies for Navigating Complex Challenges (Hardcover)

As a leadership development consultant, I found this book a refreshing break from current best sellers that emphasize and glorify the characteristics of individual leaders--I read it cover to cover, word for word. Using long term research and case studies as support, Palus and Horth describe 6 competencies needed to go beyond traditional leadership as we typically know it in order to handle today's complex challenges. The 6 competencies are quite different from those we are familiar with, even opposite of what we often hear: paying attention, personalizing, imaging, serious play, co-inquiry, and crafting. Recognizing that much leadership of complex challenges occurs in a variety of ways-within individuals, between individuals, and within groups, when Palus and Horth give advice on developing the competencies, they discuss developing your own, other people's, and what these competencies look like at the group level. They include two more neat ideas that fit in well with the point they are trying to get across in the book. If you are skeptical about any of the competencies, they invite you to experiment and expand. Second, they include discussions regarding when these competencies are important and when they are not--recognizing that not all situations call for these competencies. I can't wait to incorporate these ideas into my own leadership and into my development of others.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Counterpoint to Traditional Theories of Leadership, December 12, 2002

By 

Christopher Goff (Butler, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Leader's Edge: Six Creative Competencies for Navigating Complex Challenges (Hardcover)

This is definitely a book that you will want to add to your leadership library. Palus and Horth take a creative approach to leadership and have focused their research on key competencies that sucessful leaders employ to tackle complex challenges.

The authors provide an interesting counterpoint to much of traditional leadership theory. I believe that this book will be very helpful to leaders who are seeking to improve creativity, teamwork, and innovative problem solving. The book steps through new ways of thinking about leadership and gives detailed examples of how these concepts are put into practice.

All leaders, and business leaders in particular, are constantly seeking new ways to inspire, motivate and improve performance. "The Leader's Edge" provides fresh new ideas that may be helpful to you.