Customer Reviews

Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I'm surprised at the negative reviews for this book. A lot of this book is written tongue-in-cheek (I doubt any manager wants to be known as the "scourge of God"): a sense of irony doesn't hurt when reading it. Anyway, I thought a lot of the maxims (this book is basically a book of maxims) were quite helpful: when to reward your employees, when not to; how greatness can be achieved through extreme of personality. I guess a lot of readers don't like the take-charge attitude of the author but in my mind it can spur on action. But I am not a manager and may be speaking from ignorance. In any case, I enjoyed this book as a vacation from the many predictable books you read on leadership. I also recommend Lincoln On Leadership by Donald Phillips.

Whether or not the book has factual historical basis is beside the point. I approached this book with what they call in filmmaking as "suspension of disbelief". When read against the backdrop of ordinary experiences, most of the author's analogies and aphorisms amazingly make sense. Attila can exact obedience by just killing rivals and subordinates -- hardly the epitome of the leader. But he rose and survived among unthinking barbarians -- he demonstrated leadership even before he became one. To survive and lead amid trying circumstances is the essence of this book. The author detailed out the mechanics of Attila's leadership which is so credible you would willingly believe. Management gurus dissect leadership in complex paradigms and theories. Wess Robert's Attila simplified these in absolute truths--loyalty, courage, desire, emotional/physical stamina, empathy, decisiveness, anticipation, timing, competitivenes, self-confidence, accountability, responsibility, credibility, tenacity, dependability and stewardship. Attila exuded benign leadership when he gave up Rome and the world because of the word of the Pope. It would be hard to find another parallel in history.

Sure, if you're looking for an in-depth treatise on Attila or Leadership you are bound to be disappointed. I have read this book numerous times and have assigned it to my subordinate managers as required reading. In every case those people have been pleasantly surprised with how easy it is to read, understand and apply to improve their leadership and management practices. It gets individuals interested in picking up other, more detailed works on leadership and management that they might not have been drawn to in the first place.

What a country this is! How else to explain this book? Take an historical figure about whom little is known, ascribe certain banalities about leadership to him, jazz it up with some colorful language, set it in a guidebook format with short chapters and lots of bullets--and sell huge numbers of copies! Get Ross Perot to endorse it!

This book cries out for a spoof--heck, it already seems like a spoof. I'm thinking of taking a few days to write "Leadership Secrets of Spongebob Squarepants" and see how it sells.

As a person who majored in history, I knew that very little is known about Attila the Hun. Having deliberately avoided the book for over a decade, it suddenly occurred to me that there might be a lot of interesting information here that I had been ignoring. So I read the book. I goofed! I should have skimmed a couple of chapters first.

There is nothing in here about Attila that I did not know when I started. And the leadership secrets are not based on anything Attila said, but the author's conclusions about what leaders should do. Each chapter is introduced with a little Attila vignette to help justify the title of the book, and provide some context. Sometimes it works, and often it doesn't.

Let me explain my rating system for the book. As a leadership book, I rated this book as two stars. The reason I rated it so low is that the book has over 200 aphorisms in it that are vague, pretty disconnected from today's world and usually contradict one another. For example, each of them is phrased in terms of what Attila and a Hun should do. On the other hand, at some point, I began to read the book as a satire on leadership books, and I thought it was pretty funny. On that account, I rated it as four stars. I would have rated it higher if it had been shorter or the chapter sequencing had made more sense to me. The chapter on surviving defeat comes after the chapter when Attila voluntarily removed himself from Italy after meeting the Pope, many years after the defeat that is discussed in the next chapter. But that comes as no surprise since the author has told you about both of these things many times before in this short book. If you average a 2 and a 4 star, that's a 3 star rating.

On the positive side, Attila did show remarkable flexibility in learning new strategies and tactics after the battle of Chalons (which was a horrible defeat for the Huns). If the book had focused on the lessons of that battle and its aftermath, this book could have been a lot more valuable.

However, if the Attila the Hun analogy fits, wear it. Any approach that helps you overcome your stalled thinking is a good one. This one didn't happen to carry me away.

If you do decide to read the book, the best two chapters are 9 and 10 on the responsibilities of a leader and decisiveness.

Donald Mitchell

Coauthor of The Irresistible Growth Enterprise and The 2,000 Percent Solution

(donmitch@fastforward400.com)

Business is a battle, and while it is no longer accepted to "kill the hun" that is under performing, the advice, when put in the proper perspective is very robust.

I recommend reading this book when you are tired of the same wordy, self complimenting "normal" management book that saturates bookstores. This book will take what little you have learned out of those books and help put it into a context that is useful.

This book is nothing more than a collection of time-worn aphorisms wrapped in a bizarre conceit; reading it was a complete waste of time. A really inexperienced/poor manager might find some useful (if not particularly original) thoughts among the list of sayings in the appended "Selected Thoughts" section (e.g. "A Hun who takes himself too seriously has lost his perspective."--well-worn, but still true, and "A king with chieftains who always agree with him reaps the counsel of mediocrity"), but most are hackneyed and/or obvious (e.g. "Being a leader of the Huns is often a lonely job," and "Every decision involves some risk.")
I have to say I was surprised and a bit offended by Roberts' blatant racial stereotyping, e.g. Attila's supposed "Asiatic virtue of patience", and the reference to "slanted eyes with a dull glitter of mingled cunning and cruelty." The whole "Hun" thing was annoying and unnecessary to make the points (such as they are) that Dr. Roberts makes in the book.
I don't read too many management guru books (I read "Attila" as an assignment for a class), but if this is what our corporate managerial class is reading, then we are in more trouble than I thought.

Well... where to begin??? Wess Roberts is really a good example of an initial interesting idea milked and warped to horrible proportions; neither the historical metaphor nor the advice he gleans from it really ascends above the line of a comic book. Read the "Economists" review of this book and their trashing of its author -- who appears to be rather less than he appears. I can add little except to say that I bought it in a rush in an airport and then after the first page I realised there was something terribly wrong with this book (it is written for about someone who has a 12 year old reading comprehension level).

If you are a person who sees the world in a Manichean world view of "good and evil"/ "us and them" then you may ultimately see some kind of value in this book. All research however indicates that a successful business relationship is formed on the basis of honesty, trust and committment to a win-win relationship with the client. Without that fundamental understanding business and corporations do not advance. Those companies that practise the Attila mindset will ultimately remain Neanderthals and will condemn themselves to always being small-time, cheesy presenters with a life time of believing in the simplistic explanations for complex behaviour.

I would have given it a 0 if I could have. This book has the distinction of not even being worthy to grace the shelves of my personal business library. Spend your money on Drucker or even Napolean Hill. You will get a better return.

This book offers a no frills and unorthodox view on leadership practices. I recommend this book to any one that is tired of the chop shop run of th emill leadership book. Quick read.

Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun is a great book. It contains a good combination of ancient history and modern management. Wess Roberts uses a fresh and entertaining approach. It was unlike any business related book I have read. It was like reading a story book. It was really interesting and very enlightening. The concepts were presented in a clear and easy to understand manner. The ideas were somewhat basic but they prove to be essential.