Customer Reviews

Leadership in a New Era

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Disclosure: I know John Renesch socially, although I don't believe it has influenced my star rating, it's only fair to tell the reader.

Leadership is hard to define in these changing times where organizations are evolving to become flatter and more fluid as the marketplace becomes more global and information-based. This compilation of 23 essays, organized into five thematic sections, does an amazing job of bringing a diversity of viewpoints, concerns and approaches to such an amorphous, but no less critical, topic.

Although some of the essays make specific recommendations, this is not a step by step "how-to" book like so much of the literature on business topics. As Stephen Covey points out, management and leadership are distinct skills - this book is NOT a management text. Rather, it is a spark of inspiration to light your own leadership fire and prompt reflection wherever you might be stuck. Many of the articles emphasize the role of a spiritual dimension in business and in leadership. Authenticity, listening, cultivating awareness and personal growth are recurring themes throughout the essays.

In places, some readers may find the essays too "new age" or contradictory. I'd encourage them to remember that ambiguity and paradox are the very challenges that most require leadership and adaptation without reliance on the hard, proven, old certainties. By contrast, the fourth essay, Ann Morrison's "Diversity and Leadership Development", takes a very precise and hard-nosed approach to a topic that I've seen most companies attack with a flurry of fluffy symbolic lip-service and inept half-measures. Morrison describes a model for how leaders develop, identifies the challenges faced by "nontraditional" candidates in that model, and, outlines specific steps companies can take to avoid common pitfalls if they are truly committed to building diversity at the top and throughout the organization.

My favorite single quote, which should give the reader a good feel for the overall book, is the following by James Autry in the first essay: "Or could it be that those who believe in the greed of the marketplace have just found a convenient excuse for their own greed or for their own unwillingness to concern themselves with the human spirit?"