Customer Reviews

The Tools of Leadership: Vision, Inspiration, Momentum

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One of three short books by Landsberg on key skills for leaders and managers. The others are The Tao of Motivation and The Tao of Coaching. All three are notable for their directness and brevity and all provide an extremely useful guide to important skills. Each is written around a brief story about 'Alex', on his journey from manager to CEO, with each episode designed to illustrate some aspect of the coaching/motivation/leadership challenge. Each episode is followed by a two page summary of the particular skill needed to meet the challenge. Each book has a useful bibliography to guide the reader to more detail where desired and a suite of Appendices covering further details on key aspects of skill.
There is naturally some overlap between the books, but each is valuable in its own right and the set combine to provide a thoughtful, practical and readily referenced guide to the key elements in the human side of management and leadership.
The Tools of Leadership is written around a detailed exploration of the attitudes, skills and tools needed to be effective in building vision, inspiration and momentum and in balancing the use of these and the use of power.

"The Tools of Leadership" follows the VIM model (Vision -> Inspiration -> Momentum) in all its details. It is a very powerful leadership model and applicable in the field. On top of this model, also power and influencing elements regarding leadership are nicely explained together with cultural aspects.

Like his other 2 books, also this book is a fast and easy read. It offers a really great introduction to leadership!

Max Landsberg offers 3 books actually called "The tools of leadership", "The tao of motivation" and "The tao of coaching". Each book follows a similar pattern of telling, explaining and even showing funny cartoons to illustrate the stories even further. Each sub story is lovely presented and packaged so you can easily digest the lessons. The 3 books are excellent as a first and basic introduction to leadership, coaching or motivating staff. Each of them is highly recommended!

Contents
Introduction
Part 1 - Gearing up
1 VIM: Vision, Inspiration and Momentum
2 The techniques of leadership
3 Preparing: focus, urgency and factions
4 Shaping the teams
Part 2 - The heart of leadership
Vision
5 Creating meaning
6 Seeding and testing
7 Sculpting skills
Inspiration
8 Inspiration - building trust
9 Engaging and uniting
10 Repeating and reinforcing
Momentum
11 Encouraging initiative
12 Galvanising progress
13 Clearing the way
Support for Vision, Inspiration and Momentum
14 Urging and celebrating
15 Living the values
16 Corralling attention
Part 3 - Other tools and skills
17 Leading or managing?
18 Roles and delegation
19 Phasing and timing
20 Power and influence
21 Culture
22 The VIM of self-leadership
Epilogue

Considering that this is an international delibery was OK, the book conditions was perfects!! good deal

This small book (it has barely 175 pages from front to back) clearly outlines the fundamentals of leadership through a short story that runs throughout the book.

The book makes leadership = product of (vision, inspiration and motivation).

I enjoyed the author's writing style: Each little-piece of the story is followed by a couple of pages (usually only two pages) that elucidate the essential aspects of leadership taught in the preceding little-piece of the story. This makes the book a case-study in learning leadership. The writing is clear and simple.

I had issues with some of the diagrams, because the diagrams don't have enough explanations around them. But, then I figured, maybe the author wants me to think through the diagrams to really understand the concept they present. But, in spite of this, I would suggest that the next edition have more explanation for each of the diagrams.

Also, although the same fundamental principles (l = vim) apply to entrepreneurs as well, I would have loved to have some more discourse on entrepreneurial leadership.