The Powers to Lead (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: soft power skills, contextual intelligence, soft power resources, Franklin Roosevelt, World War, Lyndon Johnson (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Leadership gurus since Machiavelli have argued over whether a leader should be loved or feared. In this evenhanded primer, Nye, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and soft power theorist, takes a resolute stand in between the two sides. Modern leadership, he contends, requires smart power, a judicious situational balance of hard power (getting people to do what you want, with carrots, sticks and bullying) and soft power (getting people to want what you want, with inspiration, charisma and propaganda). Nye embeds his argument in a lucid, if somewhat dry, survey of leadership studies, touching on everything from bonobo behavior to Freudian psychology, and illustrates it with references to noted leaders like former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, Lincoln, Hitler and Subcomandante Marcos. (George Bush's presidency provides a recurring object lesson in bad leadership.) The author takes a skeptical, down-to-earth view of leadership fads and hype. But he can't quite break free of mystical notions like vision or vague buzz concepts like contextual intelligence (a head-scratcher that boils down to judgment and wisdom); his smart power formula is therefore more truism than concrete guide to action. Nye's is a useful introduction to the theory, but not the practice, of leadership. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

Nye, a distinguished academic, explores leadership as it relates to hard power (coercion) and soft power (influence and persuasion), and he calls the mixture of these powers smart power. He urges soft power whenever possible and defines power as the ability to obtain outcomes through others, noting the difference between wanting to dominate followers and sharing influence with them. Some leaders succeed in one context but fail in another, and Nye discusses contextual intelligence, which is an intuitive diagnostic skill that helps a leader to align tactics with objectives to create smart strategies in varying situations. It includes the ability to identify trends in complex circumstances and being adaptable while trying to shape events. The author quotes an ancient source, Lao Tzu: A leader is best when people barely know he exists; not so good when people obey and acclaim him; worst when they despise him. This excellent book offers important insight into leadership with valuable analysis and anecdotes for leaders and aspiring leaders. --Mary Whaley

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195335627
• ISBN-13: 978-0195335620
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #124,317 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Mix of Scholarship & Pragmatism, February 26, 2008

By	Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

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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.

1.0 out of 5 stars Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls..., October 16, 2009

By	John Marke (Pacific, Mo United States) - See all my reviews

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!

4.0 out of 5 stars Many Centuries earlier...., March 29, 2009

By	Mike Weislik "Presidio World College" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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.