Customer Reviews

The Powers to Lead

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Anything by Joe Nye stops my work and receives my undivided attention. This is an absolute gem of a book, a mix of world-class scholarship and world-class pragmatism. It goes to the top of my leadership list on Amazon.

The book opens with the observation that two thirds of US citizens believe their is a leadership crisis. The intellectual center of the book is its focus on "smart power" defined as a balanced mix of soft and hard power that is firmly grounded in "Contextual IQ," a term credited to Mayo and Nohria of Harvard.

The author defines leaders as those who help a group create and achieve goals. He states that leadership is an art, not a science. I especially liked the early phases, "good contextual intelligence broadens the bandwidth of leaders." He likens the relation of leaders and the led to surfers and the wave--can ride it but cannot move it this way and that.

Soft power, his signal contribution to the global dialog on international relations, is concisely defined as att5ractive power, yielding the power to ask instead of compell. He cites McGregor Burns in communicating that bullys who humiliate and intimidate are counter-productive, that "power-wielders are not leaders."

There is a fine review of leadership styles, attributes, and a reference to female leadership rising (I have long said that women make better intelligence analysts because they have smaller egos and a great deal more emphathy and intuition). He provides a matrix for evaluationg inter effectivenesss and ethics in relation to goals, means, and consequences.

I was struck the emphasis on emotional intelligence and the needed ability to rapidly evaluate loyalty networks that might not be immediately obvious. He distinguishes between public politics and private politics.

The book concludes with a really extra-special and lengthy disucssion of leadership ethics and morality. The last two pages prior to top-notch notes and bibliographies are 12 take-aways on leadership (he had the wit to avoid making them the 12 commandments) consisting of a fragment that I list below, and explicative annotation that I do not--the book is worthy of buying for these two pages and the moral-ethical conclusion alone, but certainly this is an important book that should be read any anyone seeking to lead others.

1. Good leadership matters
2. Leadership can be learned.
3. Leaders help create and achieve group goals.
4. Smart leaders need both soft and hard power skills.
5. Leaders depend on and are partly shaped by followers.
6. Appropriate style depends on context.
7. Consultative style costs time, but has three major benefits.
8. Leaders need both managerial and organizational skills.
9. Leadership for crisis conditions requires advanced preparations, emotional maturity, and the ability to distinguish between operational, analytical, and political contexts.
10. Information revolution is shifting context of postmodern organizations from command to co-optive style.
11. Reality testing, constant information seeking, and adjusting to change are essential but (buy the book).
12. Ethical leaders use consciences, common moral rules, and professional standards, but conflicting values can create "dirty hands."

I have just two nits with this book, neither of which is a buy-stopper:

A. On page 94 there is an annoyingly facile and superficial reference to the 9-11 commission citing cultural dissonance as one reason the FBI and CIA did not share information. As one who has both read and written extensively on this topic, not only have we all identified numerous examples of internal failures (e.g. the FBI rejected two walk-ins, one in Newark and one in Orlando, prior to the event; CIA sent line-crossers in and conclusively established there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction, but George Tenet parked his integrity on the same shelf Colin Powell used, and let the White House lie 935 times to the public and Congress). I have an edited book scheduled on Cultural Intelligence for 2009, this is an important topic, and merits better treatment from the author.

B. This book could usefully be expanded, or followed by another book, to integrate the books I list below, and the world-changing conditions they represent.
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization
The Knowledge Executive
The Collaborative Leadership Fieldbook
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
Five Minds for the Future
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Having said that, I consider this to be one of the author's top three immediately current and relevant books, and relatively priceless if we can get "Mr. Perfect" to read it (more than once), along with the author's two recent works, Understanding International Conflicts (6th Edition); and The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone.

The last time I checked, Amazon offers more than 56,000 books on subject of leadership in business. So, what does Joseph Nye offer in this book that makes a significant, indeed unique contribution to our understanding of why some leaders are so successful and many others aren't? Responding to that is the focus of the remarks that follow in this review.

In Nye's opinion, insufficient attention has been paid to "the questions of power and leadership in a context broader than that of modern organizations." He goes on to assert that effective leadership requires "a mixture [and balance] of soft and hard power skills that I call [begin italics] smart power [end italics]. The proportions differ with contexts." To Nye, a leader can be - but need not be only a single -- individual that "helps a group create and achieve shared goals." Moreover, a leader is not only "who you are but what you do" and what a leader does frequently is determined by the given circumstances. If "context is more important than traits," the most effective leaders are those who help to achieve goals in (to borrow a phrase from Robert Bolt) "all seasons." Nye therefore views leadership as a process with three key components: leaders, followers, and context.

With regard to "soft" and "hard" power skills, they can be learned and they can be mastered. They enable a leader to respond most effectively to a given situation. "Soft power is not merely the same as influence, though it is one source of influence. After all, influence can also rest on the hard power of threats or payments. Nor is soft power just persuasion or the ability to move people by argument, though that is an important part of it. It is also the ability to entice and attract. Attraction often leads to acquiescence. In behavioral terms, soft power is attractive power. In terms of resources, soft power resources are assets - tangible and intangible - that produce such attraction." Nye acknowledges that leaders also rely on "hard power" in certain situations to help achieve the given objectives with threats, intimidation, and perhaps even punishment. "Hard and soft power sometimes reinforce and sometimes interfere with each other." In this context, I recalled numerous situations in films and television shows when the "good cop, bad cop" strategy was used to obtain information.

"Almost every leader needs a certain degree of soft power" and a leader and a tyrant are polar opposites. Neither soft nor hard power is either good or bad, per se, nor is one always better than the other. To repeat, the ability to combine hard power and soft power into an effective strategy is "smart power." As Nye explains, "Leadership, like power, is a relationship, and followers also have power both to resist and to lead. Followers empower leaders as well as vice versa." There are no leaders without followers but, that said, "the power of leaders depends on the followers' objectives that are embedded in their culture." These are among Nye's core concepts and they will encourage those who read his book to re-consider (if not revise) their own ideas about leaders, followers, and contexts.

After I read Nye's book, I re-read two written by Howard Gardner, Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi and Leading Minds in which Gardner discusses Margaret Mead, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Robert Maynard Hutchins, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., George C. Marshall, Pope John XXIII, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., Margaret Thatcher, Jean Monnet, and Mahatma Gandhi. All but Gandhi among those in the first volume are generally viewed only as thought leaders, not as social or political activists as are the subjects in the second volume. Their relationships with followers are also quite different. What can be said of all the leaders whom Gardner discusses is that each mastered both hard and soft skills but applied them in quite different contexts to achieve quite different objectives.

I am grateful, to Joseph Nye for his thought-provoking, at times counterintuitive perspectives on leaders, followers, and contexts. As a result, I have not only reconsidered my own opinions about those components in the power relationship, I have also reconsidered my perspectives on leaders throughout history, notably Julius Caesar, Joan of Ark, Abraham Lincoln, and Harry Truman.

Leadership through persuasion and influence is the path favoured by leaders who use soft power to manage. A long-standing advocate of soft power, Joseph Nye, points out, in The Powers To Lead, that soft power is just one way to manage. The book recommends the use of smart power.
Success is obtained with smart power by combining hard and soft power skills in varying proportions, depending on the situation. Leadership with soft power transforms group members through the use of attraction, inspiration, persuasion, and charisma.
Hard power was used more by managers in prior eras of the industrial age. These leaders wanted to dominate their followers. They got what they wanted through coercion, bullying, and appealing to their opponents' tangible interests with rewards that had conditions attached.
Leaders who are better at using smart power have contextual intelligence. They know when to use soft or hard power to inspire their followers since they are aware of the distribution of power in their organization, its cultural values, and changes in their followers needs. Hard power is more appropriate when there is a need to appeal to tangible interests; whereas, soft power is effective when a leader can appeal to higher order values and noble purposes.
For example, when bargaining over wages, soft power is a good route to follow in a political nonprofit group where people work due to their own personal values. On the other hand, hard power bargaining, where tangible rewards are doled out, is likely necessary in a corporate for-profit setting where workers perceive that the owner is rich.
There are many examples in The Powers To Lead that are based on the author's experiences and observations in the public sector and international politics. The author, Joseph Nye, has experience as a professor, and former dean, of Harvard's School of Government, and as a senior official in two US presidential administrations.
Nye expands the scope of The Powers To Lead, so that it encompasses the use of smart power by all leaders, by including examples from the private sector. The examples from the private sector point to the need for increasing the use of soft power in business. One CEO in information technology notes that he would be kicked off the island if he used the hard power methods of management like those of Jack Welch of GE fame. Joseph Nye points out that only half the managers who were trained in hard power systems, like that at GE, went on to be successful leaders elsewhere. Nye also discusses managers who transfer between the public and private sectors and how some of them continue to be successful in their new endeavours.
The closing chapter of The Powers To Lead examines the morality of leaders who use smart power. Joseph Nye favours the use of soft power in the contemporary times since he feels that soft power is the best path to choose in a world which has a highly educated workforce, the spreading of democratic principles, and followers who need to perceive that they are making their own decisions. On the other hand, Nye feels it is morally right for a leader to use hard power when necessary.
Many other reviewers are also pleased to see The Powers To Lead written by a world class scholar, Joseph Nye. The book adds to our knowledge about leadership and brings together thinking from the public and private sectors. Some reviewers would like the book to include a more concrete action plan for leaders. As it is, political junkies can probably find Nye's opinions about their heroes. All reviewers agree that The Powers To Lead is an excellent, concise, contemporary treatise on the appropriate use of power by leaders.

Author, statesman, university dean and agency director Joseph S. Nye Jr. has led - and has closely observed leadership - from the highest levels. His earlier writings forged the theory of "soft power" to denote persuasive leadership. In this book, Nye traces leadership lessons from Sun-Tzu to George W. Bush, citing historical events and their impact over the span of centuries. He defines which qualities mark successful and failed leaders. Nye's writing style is dense, and almost every sentence is a thesis. You may find yourself holding a page open with a fingertip as you gaze up from the book, digesting all that Nye conveys and applying his illustrative lessons to whatever dilemmas you might face as a leader or a follower. And to Nye - as he makes clear - everyone is usually both. getAbstract recommends Nye's compelling insights to CEOs, executives and managers who want to become more effective leaders, to anyone who aspires to lead, and to everyone who needs to learn the art of following.

Author gives a lot of examples. The book is not for small buisness owners. Political leaders may learn something from it.

I feel it worthy to state that humans have been contemplating leadership techniques for centuries. In Joseph Nye Jr.'s excellent book, "The Powers to Lead" (Oxford University Press, New York, 2008, pg.11) he states, "Part of ancient Chinese wisdom is represented by Sun-Tzu, who wrote The Art of Warfare six centuries before the Christian era and concluded that the highest excellence is never having to fight because the commencement of battle signifies a political failure." And (pg. 21) "We can think of leadership as a process with three key components: leaders, followers, and contexts." Both of these are powerful statements but represent early teachings of great masters. The I Ching includes the martial within the cultural, and in classical Chinese political ideology, military strategy was a subordinate branch of social strategy. Thus context was of great interest to leaders of that age. Although The Art of Warfare states in the opening chapter: "The Way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so that they will share death and share life, without fear of danger" (Strategy Assessments), this was not necessarily through coercion, because many of the qualities needed for crisis management were also qualities needed for ordinary management. A complete education in China was believed to encompass both cultural and martial arts. A person might be both a military and civilian leader, simultaneously or at different times. In Chinese, this was called the combination of wen and wu. Mr. Nye does a compelling job of bringing the concepts of hard, soft, smart power and contextual intelligence into recent centuries, but reading the essays of great statesman and warriors like Zhuge Liang or Liu Ji (second century B.C.E) will transport you to a time when the powers to lead exercised keen judgment and applied leadership styles as needed to fit the situation at hand. Try also reading the Masters of Huainan for a unified science of life and leadership. Thanks Mr. Nye for bringing these concepts forward in time.

Joseph Nye's newest book, The Powers to Lead, is as crucial to the application of leadership in the twenty-first century as an understanding of the technical and social evolution of the last ten years is to its success. This compound simile is more than a poignant summary of his work; it's a framing of the very research question Nye articulates as his motives for writing it: What is required of leaders within the context of our new information-based and network-oriented society?
Using history as relevant parameters, his personal and professional experiences as an intuitive guide, and the evolving realities of the day as an oracle to bet on, Nye submits that the era of paradigm leadership is over, and now is a time for leaders to recognize that the balance of "soft and hard power" has shifted toward the relations-fostering, personally empowering side of soft power; though, the key, in the end is to produce the right combination of the two, which he deems "smart power", for the optimal outcome to the situation at hand.
With the spread of information becoming so prevalent not only in society in general but in the workplace specifically, Nye conveys the role of a leader as no longer being the arbiter of that information but, instead, being the mediator of it, influencing its purpose and value. While some authors have tried--unsuccessfully--to articulate a similar message, their abstract and detached approach often overshadowing the virtue of their points and rue the day. Nye's method, however, of thoughtful and hyper-relevant examples satiates the common reader's need for correlation and illustration. Nye's constant analytical inclusions of both historical and contemporary figures is neither haphazard nor frivolous; perfectly placed within the context of his discussion, he knows that using these specific examples will allow him to not only further define the concept at hand but also draw in years of history to truly accentuate his point.
As he encourages aspiring leaders to do when refining their own approaches, he does in methodologically evaluating the balance of soft and hard power: observe what has worked and use it; avoid past failures. Nye's many references to various points within today's comprehensive literature on leadership reflects this point well--he acknowledges these are points that will foster the skills necessary to thrive under the conditions of the twenty-first century.
The organization of The Powers to Lead is what differentiates it from other volumes on leadership. Nye's constant and clear demarcation between the leader, his style, and his objectives--what I would consider the true "leadership triad"--ensures the reader will never miss the point at hand. Leadership, as he would advance, must be understood, and likewise employed, within the context of the objective and the person, and the chronology of his piece is designed to flow from one context to the next to subliminally substantiate his claim. In doing so, Nye is constantly building the repertoire necessary to reach the final goal: striking the balance between soft and hard power within the context of the situation.
While still articulating definition between distinctive forms of leadership, Nye's message is not lost among the jargon and rhetoric that plague so many other authors of the topic. The reason is found in his style. He is both poignant and persuasive. Masterfully crafting a very logical chain of progression, he lays a proven record of skill sets, denotes their successful and unsuccessful employment throughout history, and articulates how their use in the context of today's society will prove to be effective in discerning the power balance. Leadership is a highly personal matter for many, and by not speaking at, but rather with, the reader, Nye is able to accomplish the two major goals of any writer: captivate and persuade.

Joseph Nye's latest book on the leadership question seems superfluous and perhaps time wasting. It is not wise to tread a domain where the unknown and uncertain factors preponderate and things are less deterministic. Good leaders can be created in the areas of business management but not in the domain of politics. Alexander the Great or Caesar hardly had any theoretical knowledge of soft and hard power and a theoretical knowledge of diplomacy. Coming to the question of his modern leadership where Dr. Nye attributes leadership qualities to role of being a mediator rather than a 'dictator', it must be remembered that leadership means leading those who are to be led. Ironically, common people alike understand the language of force and coercion to a greater extent than pursuasion and moral appeals. This is more so in the modern era because both the stakes and gains are higher now. Joseph Nye's suggestions may throttle creativity.

Gautam Maitra
Author of 'Tracing the eagle's Orbit: Illuminating Insights into Major US Foreign Policies since Independence.'

I had hoped that the silliness of "soft power" would be contained in political science. Surely the mature disciplines of leadership and management theory would be spared Joseph Nye's prose. What of McGregor's "Theory X and Theory Y," the Management Grid of Blake and Mouton, Karl Weick's Social-Psychology of Organizing, and the collective works of Drucker? Does Abraham Maslow ring a bell? Humanistic theory? Matrix management? Addled by years of "soft academic living" at Harvard, has Nye forgotten how to do a literature search?

Enough! Do you think we walk the halls of academe, like mindless zombies, muttering "Command & Control...?" Joe! We've been there and done that! Please, leave us alone!

"If you cut us, do we not bleed?" Ouch! An Emeritus from the English Department just hummed a copy of The Merchant of Venice at me, muttering: "Don't send him our way! He'll write a book about "Smart Shakespeare." But as famous Notre Dame coach once said, "Nobody, but nobody comes into our house and pushes us around!" No, we're not gonna take it!

Shades of the 1960's! I wake to a nightmare of angry sociologists and cultural anthropologists waving their dissertations and pitchforks in the hall, shouting "Yankee go home!" (He was from Harvard, you know. Maybe that explains it.) But it is not a dream. Nye has struck again, jumping disciplines like an academe pandemic. I can hear mocking laughter from the Political Science Department: "See! See what we have had to put up with?!!" Indeed! Misery does love company! The man has no shame. What's next, "soft fusion?" Take cover Gell-Mann, I hear he's gunning for a Nobel in physics. Ha! You laugh! "Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." Ouch! That Emeritus should be pitching for St. Louis!