Leadership the Hard Way: Why Leadership Can't Be Taught - And How You Can Learn It Anyway (J-B Warren Bennis Series) [Hardcover]

Dov Frohman (Author), Robert Howard (Contributor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0787994375 | ISBN-13: 978-0787994372 | Publication Date: April 11, 2008 | Edition: 1

Leadership the Hard Way presents a method of living and working that can truly facilitate the learning of leadership. Their method shows how to go against the current, fight conventional wisdom, and embrace the unexpected. It is about trusting oneself and valuing intuition, principles, and imagination as much as hard skills and analysis. Frohman combines his counterintuitive ideas with experiences from his own background?from escaping the Nazis as a child to becoming a leading innovator in the semiconductor industry?to show how readers can build their own leadership abilities. A leader?s values and personality, he ultimately reveals, are the only sure source of stability in a world of continuous change.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...can truly facilitate the learning of leadership." Public Net Friday 1 August 2008

From the Inside Flap

leadership the Hard Way

Few subjects have captivated the business world in recent years more than leadership. Yet at the very moment we are seeing so many efforts to teach leadership, we are also experiencing widespread and continuous failures of leadership—and not just in business but in politics, education, and other institutions of modern society. The reason for this disconnect, says Dov Frohman, is that most of the conventional wisdom about leadership today is, while not wrong exactly, surprisingly irrelevant to the true challenges and dilemmas of leading in today's world. While so many of the articles, books, and programs on the subject maintain that leadership is largely a matter of technique or a set of skills that can be taught, Frohman believes that precisely the opposite is the case: learning how to lead is more in the nature of cultivating personal wisdom than it is of acquiring technical skills.

In this book, Frohman—iconoclastic innovator and founder of Intel Israel—and coauthor Robert Howard present a method of living and working that can truly facilitate the learning of leadership. Their method shows how to go against the current, fight conventional wisdom, and embrace the unexpected. It is about trusting oneself and valuing?intuition, principles, and imagination as much as hard skills and analysis. Frohman combines his counterintuitive ideas with experiences from his own background—from hiding out during the Nazi occupation of Holland as a child to becoming a leading innovator in the semiconductor industry—to show how readers can build their own leadership abilities. A leader's values and personality, he ultimately reveals, are the only sure source of stability in a world of continuous change.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (April 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787994375
• ISBN-13: 978-0787994372
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #488,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gripping Autobiography, Somewhat Contrived Angle on Leadership, August 19, 2008

By 

Mr. Simon D. Galbraith "Simon Galbraith" (Cambridge, England.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Leadership the Hard Way: Why Leadership Can't Be Taught - And How You Can Learn It Anyway (J-B Warren Bennis Series) (Hardcover)

Leadership the Hard Way is a gripping autobiography viewed through the lens of leadership. Dov Frohman is an interesting and inspirational person, who has achieved wonderful things, but for me the "leadershp" angle often seemed contrived. For example as a child Frohman, who is Jewish, was adopted and hidden from the Germans by a Dutch family in occupied Holland. A husband and wife taking the terrifying and courageous decision to take in an otherwise doomed Jewish boy is turned into a coaching moment about leadership: "Often, genuine leadership is the result of the leader's commitment to a transforming vision and to a set of values that follow from that vision." I can't help suspecting that this sort of guff is Harvard Business Review Editor and co-author Robert Howard's deadening influence.
That criticism aside there are many thought provoking ideas and much inspiration to be had from this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Much more than a manual, December 27, 2010

By 

Ray Melmed - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Leadership the Hard Way: Why Leadership Can't Be Taught - And How You Can Learn It Anyway (J-B Warren Bennis Series) (Hardcover)

That this remarkable story could be told in little more than 100 pages speaks volumes about the author, Dr Dov Frohman, the story he tells, and the message he wanted to deliver. Whether dealing with the loss of his parents in a concentration camp, his earliest, formative years as the foster child of a devout Calvinistic Dutch family, his moving to Israel after the war as an orphan, his discovery of the prototype of the erasable, programmable read only computer memory chip (EPROM) early in his carer as a physicist and electrical engineer - one of the most significant advances in computer technology ever, and his then dedicated creation of INTEL Israel as a major engine of R and D, and chip manufacture, in a company regarded as the world leader in this field. A riveting read, with the unbeatable clarity and authority of one who turned a sequence of exceptional life challenges into a positive and principled life philosophy that became the basis of his highly successful management style. Dr Frohman's story carries so many messages of importance in todays world - while a must for every MBA student and aspiring business leader, it surely needs to be read by a much wider audience. Anyone interested in people, and especially those who transcend the conventional boundries to achievement will find this story inspiring.