Leadership Books - Page 5

The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age

John Heider

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent book for a certain leadership 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

First, if you're looking for a straight translation of the Tao te Ching, this isn't it. If, however, you want a book that roughly translates one of the world's great texts into modern leadership language, this book is great.
Broken into simple chapters to match the Ching, it easily conveys very profound ideas for group facilitation and leadership. Like the Tao te Ching, it's emphasis is on the yin or gentler aspects of leadership. It's good to balance this with a more yang book (Good to Great, Leadership is An art, etc.) to get a rounded perspective on leadership.
However, since most leadership in Western culture is very yang oriented, this will provide a good balance and deep insights that will assist most of us in becoming better leaders.

Editorial Review:

The Tao of Leadership is an invaluable tool for anyone in a position of leadership. This book provides the most simple and clear advice on how to be the very best kind of leader: be faithful, trust the process, pay attention, and inspire others to become their own leaders. Heider's book is a blend of practical insight and profound wisdom, offering inspiration and advice. This book is used as a Management/Leadership training text by many Fortune 500 corporations, including IBM, Mitsubishi, and Prudential.

The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make

Hans Finzel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Although leadership is the hot topic on conference agendas and book tours, most people who find themselves in positions of leadership have little or no training for the role. So they wing it, following examples set for them by others, and continue to make the same old mistakes.

Now with additional and newly updated material, this leadership classic speaks to a new generation, revealing the most common errors that leaders consistently make regardless of training or age and ways to stop these bad habits from undermining their positive talents and accomplishments. Challenging questions and meaningful quotes within each chapter make The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make as relevant today as ever whether the reader is leading a company, a ministry, a Girl Scout troop, or a family!

Features and Benefits

• A classic book on leadership, exceeding over 100,000 copies in sales.
• Updated for a new generation.
• Endorsements from nationally known leadership experts, including John C. Maxwell.
• Engaging, easy-to-read style with universal appeal.

The Leadership Moment: 9 True Stories of Triumph & Disaster & Their Lessons for US All

Michael Useem

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great leadership stories! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

As part of an assignment for a Leadership/Small Group Communication course, I was directed to select the book of my choice from an Amazon book search under the topic of leadership. After poring through the descriptions of just a few of the 116,000 books in this category, I quickly identified the type of book I was looking for. I wanted something less academic/theoretical and more real life. I figured any lessons on leadership would be easier to grasp if they accompanied the stories of real people. Michael Useem's The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All fit the bill.

The Leadership Moment is a book of nine stories of real individuals who were faced with leadership challenges or put into positions where their decisions as leaders would greatly affect the outcome or survival of companies, countries and often, many other lives. The stories cover attempts to cure disease, retreating from a fire, returning a malfunctioning spacecraft to earth, ascending a mountain, leading men to battle, restructuring large corporations, the downfall and rise of a large company, working towards development of women in the third world and ending a civil war. Each story identifies a leader put into a critical do or die situation where their decisions and leadership qualities either led to success and meeting objectives, or led to failure and the demise of the company or death of those they were leading.

What I really liked about the book was the real life examples and the vast range of examples that Useem used. While many of us in the corporate world identify leadership as the ability to bring in financial returns or climb the corporate ladder, this book shows how leadership comes up in vastly different situations.

Useem's writing style flows well and is easy to follow. The stories are interesting and descriptive. For each story, he points out several leadership objectives that are implicated in the story. I enjoyed the book, and was able to identify how some of his leadership objectives could apply to my own career. I recommend this book to anyone looking for an interesting read on leadership.

Editorial Review:

Unusual and inspiring, these nine dramatic stories about leaders who faced crises are intended for people not only in business but in all walks of life.

Launching a Leadership Revolution: Mastering the Five Levels of Influence

Chris Brady, Orrin Woodward

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Sooner or later, we are all called to lead in some capacity. Leadership skills are vital in corporate settings, small businesses, church or community organizations, and even within the home. Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward have recognized this need and have jointly created an in-depth, step-by-step guide for developing leadership skills.

Utilizing an abundance of historical examples, the authors have developed a unique 5-step plan that charts a course for creating and maintaining strong leadership in any organization. The plan guides the reader through the "Five Levels of Influence":

- Learning: a leader must be able to learn from anyone
- Performing: perservere through failure to find success
- Leading: extend your ability by expanding your team
- Developing Leaders: learn to trust your people
- Develop Leaders who Develop Leaders: create a legacy

This book is full of prescriptive advice, quotes and anecdotes that illustrate their principles.

Art and Science of Leadership (5th Edition)

Afsaneh Nahavandi

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Very comprehensive text on Leadership 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I was recommended to get this book for my class, but overall this is a great resource on topic of Leadership.

Art and Science of Leadership (4th Edition) 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Overall good book on the topic; covers quite a lot of material. Not as thorough as it could be on topics such as MBTI but sufficient material exists elsewhere. Too expensive for a paperback.

Editorial Review:

Nahavandi’s text has an application emphasis with a cross cultural perspective on leadership.

Coverage includes individual differences and traits, power and leadership, using resources effectively, and participative management and teams.

For any leader, or potential leader, who wants better decision making capability, more satisfied employees, better quality products and services, and more satisfied constituencies and customers.

Christian Reflections on The Leadership Challenge

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Christian Reflections on The Leadership Challenge is a faith-based companion to the best-selling leadership book of all time--The Leadership Challenge.  Grounded in Jim and Barry’s time-tested research, Christian Reflections on The Leadership Challenge describes their Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership ® --Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart—and offers practical guidance and inspiring examples about how Christian leaders can have a powerful impact in their workplaces, communities, and congregations by bringing their faith into their leadership.

In addition to Jim and Barry’s foundational wisdom, the book brings together five leaders who reflect on the Five Practices from a Christian perspective.  John C. Maxwell, David McAllister-Wilson, Patrick Lencioni, Nancy Ortberg, and Ken Blanchard share insights and stories culled from personal experience and the lives of other Christian leaders who have accomplished extraordinary things in churches, communities, classrooms, and corporations.  Their thoughtful reflections on the role of faith in leadership will propel leaders and aspiring leaders

Leading from Within: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead

Sam M. Intrator, Megan Scribner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Leading from Within is a wonderful collection of  ninety-three poems from well-loved poets, each of which is accompanied by a brief personal commentary from a leader explaining the significance and meaning of the poem in his or her life and work. The contributors represent a wide range of professions including Vanguard Group founder John Bogle, MoveOn.org cofounder Joan Blades, several members of Congress, Christian activist Brian McLaren, business guru Peter Senge, and many other leaders from business, medicine, education, nonprofits, law, politics and government, and religion. In their reflections, these leaders explore how they have been inspired by poets such as T.S. Eliot, Mary Oliver, William Stafford, Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda, Robert Frost, Rumi, May Sarton, Wallace Stevens, Wendell Berry, and Rainer Maria Rilke.

"Leading from Within is perhaps the most soulful treatment of leadership ever composed. Leadership is first an inner quest, and there is absolutely no better place to explore your inner territory than in the pages of this book. This is an evocative work of art; do yourself an immense favor, and engage with these amazing and diverse leaders and their poems."—Jim Kouzes, coauthor of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge and A Leader's Legacy

"Leading from Within makes brilliant use of the world's great poets to inspire us to lead with our hearts as well as our heads. It calls to the deeper purpose and meaning within all of us to use our gifts to serve others." —Bill George, author, True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership

"This is a superb collection of poems and deeply personal reflections from a wide range of real leaders. It is a gift to all of us who believe in bringing our hearts to our work." —Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.)

"The entries in this wonderful anthology are a joy to read and all the more interesting because of their special meaning to the leaders who recommended them. It is a book that every nonprofit leader should place among those they draw upon for inspiration every day."—Diana Aviv, president and CEO, Independent Sector

"Leading from Within offers a candid view straight into the heart and soul of leaders striving to do good and effective work in the world. The poems and commentaries remind us that leadership is always deeply personal and chock-full of dilemmas that must be addressed by creativity, passion, imagination, and courage."—Jeff Swartz, president and CEO, Timberland

The Powers to Lead

Joseph S. Nye

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

What qualities make a leader succeed in business or politics? In an era when the information revolution has dramatically changed the playing field, when old organizational hierarchies have given way to fluid networks of contacts, and when mistrust of leaders is on the rise, our ideas about leadership are clearly due for redefinition.
With The Powers to Lead, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. offers a sweeping look at the nature of leadership in today's world, in an illuminating blend of history, business case studies, psychological research, and more. As he observes, many now believe that the more authoritarian and coercive forms of leadership--the hard power approaches of earlier military-industrial eras--have been largely supplanted in postindustrial societies by soft power approaches that seek to attract, inspire, and persuade rather than dictate. Nye argues, however, that the most effective leaders are actually those who combine hard and soft power skills in proportions that vary with different situations. He calls this smart power. Drawing examples from the careers of leaders as disparate as Gandhi, Churchill, Lee Iacocca, and George W. Bush, Nye uses the concept of smart power to shed light on such topics as leadership types and skills, the needs and demands of followers, and the nature of good and bad leadership in terms of both ethics and effectiveness. In one particularly instructive chapter, he looks in depth at contextual intelligence--the ability to understand changing environments, capitalize on trends, and use the flow of events to implement strategies.
Thoroughly grounded in the real world, rich in both analysis and anecdote, The Powers to Lead is sure to become a modern classic, a concise and lucid work applicable to every field, from small businesses and nonprofit organizations to nations on the world stage.

The Bass Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications

Bernard M. Bass, Ruth Bass

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Editorial Review:

For thirty-three years and through three editions, Bass & Stogdill's Handbook of Leadership has been the indispensable bible for every serious student of leadership. Since the third edition came out in 1990, the field of leadership has expanded by an order of magnitude. This completely revised and updated fourth edition reflects the growth and changes in the study of leadership over the past seventeen years, with new chapters on transformational leadership, ethics, presidential leadership, and executive leadership. Throughout the Handbook, the contributions from cognitive social psychology and the social, political, communications, and administrative sciences have been expanded.

As in the third edition, Bernard Bass begins with a consideration of the definitions and concepts used, and a brief review of some of the betterknown theories. Professor Bass then focuses on the personal traits, tendencies, attributes, and values of leaders and the knowledge, intellectual competence, and technical skills required for leadership. Next he looks at leaders' socioemotional talents and interpersonal competencies, and the differences in these characteristics in leaders who are imbued with ideologies, especially authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, and self-aggrandizement. A fuller examination of the values, needs, and satisfactions of leaders follows, and singled out for special attention are competitiveness and the preferences for taking risks. In his chapters on personal characteristics, Bass examines the esteem that others generally accord to leaders as a consequence of the leaders' personalities.

The many theoretical and research developments about charisma over the past thirty years are crucial and are explored here in depth. Bass has continued to develop his theory of transformational leadership -- the paradigm of the last twenty years -- and he details how it makes possible the inclusion of a much wider range of phenomena than when theory and modeling are limited to reinforcement strategies. He also details the new incarnations of transformational leadership since the last edition.

Bass has greatly expanded his consideration of women and racial minorities, both of whom are increasingly taking on leadership roles.

A glossary is included to assist specialists in a particular academic discipline who may be unfamiliar with terms used in other fields.

Business professors and students, executives in every industry, and politicians at all levels have relied for years on the time-honored guidance and insight afforded by the Handbook.

Leadership Handbook of Management and Administration

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Superb Reference Manual for Church Leaders 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book is one of a series of three works edited by James D. Berkley. Various church leaders give their input on a vast array of topics related to church management and administration. Had I known a reference work of this scope was available, I would have purchased it when initially published.

This work is divided into seven parts: personal management, transitions, leadership, paid-staff supervision, volunteer-staff supervision, management, and finances. Contributing authors include: Leith Anderson, Peter Drucker, Jack Hayford, Aubrey Malphurs, Joseph Stowell, and Chuck Swindoll. Each part of this volume is filled with words of wisdom from men and women who excel in their fields.

I highly recommend this book, and the two other volumes in the series, for all experienced and inexperienced church staff members. There is something here for everyone that will help in working with the various nuts and bolts of ministry. I know of no other title that compares to scope and excellence found here.

Editorial Review:

This substantial resource offers pastors and church leaders practical insight into the daily issues of running a church. Conceived and compiled by the editors of Leadership journal, this book covers the full spectrum of ministry practice. Readers will learn about perennial topics such as time management, negotiating the terms of a call, handling crisis and conflict, hiring and managing staff, conducting special fund drives, spending church money, and dealing with tax and law considerations. This revised and expanded edition of a proven ministry resource contains new contributions from prominent ministry leaders. Contributors include Leith Anderson, Rick Warren, Brian McLaren, Luis Palau, John Ortberg, Aubrey Malphurs, and many others.