LEADERSHIP
Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence

Authors: Kellerman, Barbaral
ISBN-13: 978-0-07-163384-0
ISBN-10: 0071633847
©2010 | 1st Edition | 352 pages , Hardcover
Pub Date: July 2010
Price: US$ 34.95
Learn More

Indispensable advice for business professionals—from history’s wisest leaders

A highly regarded scholar of leadership and the qualities shared by outstanding leaders, Barbara Kellerman provides expert analysis of the works of history’s greatest authorities on leadership—theorists and practitioners alike.

On Leadership contains writings from some of history’s most influential figures, ranging from Lincoln to Lenin, Hobbes to Havel, and Machiavelli to Marx. Kellerman chose her entries based on their contemporary significance regarding power, authority, and influence, and she clearly explains how today’s business leader can put the words of the masters to practical use.

Providing a remarkably wide scope of perspectives, including history, psychology, philosophy, and government, On Leadership is an eminently instructive book for any leader in any field.

Part I of Leadership consists of writings about leadership:

• Lao Tzu—on how to lead lightly
• Plato—on tyrants and philosopher-kings
• Machiavelli—on the preservation of power

In Part II, you’ll find examples of what Kellerman uniquely identifies as writing as leadership—works and words that thanks to their persuasiveness and power, changed the world:

• Thomas Paine—Common Sense
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton—”Declaration of Sentiments”
• Rachel Carson—Silent Spring

Part III presents leaders in action—individuals who seized the moment to captivate, motivate, and lead with their singular personal power to persuade:

• Abraham Lincoln—on war and redemption
• Elizabeth I—on gender and power
• Vaclav Havel—on the power of the powerless

The selections themselves, each a classic of the leadership literature, together with Kellerman’s expert commentary, make Leadership required reading for those who want to learn about, reflect on, and even apply the greatest leadership literature lessons, ever.

Endorsement

“Bravo to Barbara Kellerman! Building upon a lifetime of scholarship and upon a popular course she has created at Harvard, Kellerman brings between the covers of a single volume the world’s classic literature on leadership. Every thoughtful leader will find deep, rich rewards here.” — David Gergen, Director, Center for Public Leadership Harvard Kennedy School, Former Presidential Adviser

About the Author

Barbara Kellerman (Cambridge, MA) is the James MacGregor Burns Lecturer in Public Leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was the Founding Executive Director of the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, from 2000 to 2003; from 2003 to 2006, she served as the Center’s Research Director. Kellerman has held professorships at Fordham, Tufts, Fairleigh Dickinson, George Washington, and Uppsala Universities. She also served as Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Fairleigh Dickinson, and as Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at the Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland.

Kellerman received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. (1975, in Political Science) degrees from Yale University. She was awarded a Danforth Fellowship and three Fulbright fellowships. At Uppsala (1996-97), she held the Fulbright Chair in American Studies. Kellerman was cofounder of the International Leadership Association (ILA), and is author and editor of many books including Leadership: Multidisciplinary Perspectives; The Political Presidency: Practice of Leadership; and Reinventing Leadership: Making the Connection Between Politics and Business. She has appeared often on media outlets such as CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, NPR, Reuters and BBC, and has contributed articles and reviews to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, and Harvard Business Review.

Her most recent books are Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters (2004); a co-edited (with Deborah Rhode) volume, Women & Leadership: State of Play and Strategies for Change (2007); and Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders (2008). Kellerman speaks to audiences around the world, including in recent years in Berlin, London, Moscow, Rome, Sao Paolo, and Shanghai. She holds an Honorary Degree from Ripon College, and is currently ranked by Leadership Excellence as 6th on the list of the 100 “best minds on leadership.”

Table of Contents

PART I: CONTEMPLATING LEADERSHIP

Chapter 1. Lao Tzu
Chapter 2. Confucius
Chapter 3. Plato
Chapter 4. Plutarch
Chapter 5. Machiavelli
Chapter 6. Hobbes
Chapter 7. Locke
Chapter 8. Carlyle, Spencer, James, and Tolstoy
Chapter 9. Weber
Chapter 10. Freud
Chapter 11. Follett, Barnard, and Drucker
Chapter 12. Burns
Chapter 13. Milgram and Arendt

PART II: EXERCISING LEADERSHIP

Chapter 14. Wollstonecraft
Chapter 15. Paine
Chapter 16. Marx and Engels
Chapter 17. Stanton
Chapter 18. Stowe
Chapter 19. Lenin
Chapter 20. DuBois
Chapter 21. Hitler
Chapter 22. Alinsky
Chapter 23. Fanon or Friere
Chapter 24. Carson
Chapter 25. Friedan
Chapter 26. Kramer
Chapter 27. Singer

PART III: LEADERS

Chapter 28. Julius Caesar (Shakespeare)
Chapter 29. Hamilton and Madison
Chapter 30. Lincoln
Chapter 31. Mao
Chapter 32. Gandhi
Chapter 33. F. D. Roosevelt
Chapter 34. Churchill
Chapter 35. King
Chapter 36. J. F. Kennedy
Chapter 37. Mandela
Chapter 38. Havel

The Extraordinary Coach
How the Best Leaders Help Others Grow

Authors: Zenger, John; Stinnett, Kathleen
ISBN-13: 978-0-07-170340-6
ISBN-10: 0071703403
©2010 | 1st Edition | 320 pages , Hardcover
Pub Date: June 2010
Price: US$ 32.95
Learn More |  Book Preview

An “interactive” approach to coaching from one of today’s most forward-thinking leadership gurus

John Zenger established himself as a top-tier leadership expert with his groundbreaking books The Extraordinary Leader and The Inspiring Leader. Now, he teams up with executive coach Kathleen Stinnett to put you on the fast track to expertise in business coaching.

The Extraordinary Coach works as an immersion course in coaching, providing the skills you need to become a highly effective leader in no time flat.

As with his other books, Zenger researched thousands of assessments from the most effective coaches. Then he and Stinnett combined the research with the latest findings from the world of clinical psychology to map out the real success secrets of today’s best coaches.

The book features worksheets, checklists, and assessments. It teaches readers the strong correlations between coaching effectiveness and employee engagement, explains how to identify and evaluate the benefits and risks to themselves personally of retaining or losing key employees, and thoroughly prepare for coaching conversations with employees and colleagues. In addition, The Extraordinary Coach includes a list of important question to ask during coaching conversations. This interactive package is an accessible book full of practical tools and compelling insights geared to the manager whose job it is to develop their employees.

This practical, multi-layered training guide provides the tools you need, including:

• Companion Video (on their website) showing “real” coaching in action
• Conversation Guide offering framework for any possible scenario
• Application Worksheets to help prepare yourself for upcoming coaching situations
• List of Questions to ask in their own coaching conversations

Building a firm foundation in the correlation between coaching effectiveness and employee engagement, you will quickly and effectively master the critical skill of coaching. The Extraordinary Coach will ensure you make a powerful contribution to the long-term success of your organization.

About the Authors

Jack Zenger (Orem, UT) is the co-founder of Zenger/Folkman and the co-author of The Extraordinary Leader and The Inspiring Leader. He was inducted into the Human Resources Development Hall of Fame in 1994 and received the Thought Leader Award from his industry colleagues in 2005.

Kathleen Stinnett (Santa Barbara, CA) is a senior consultant and executive coach with Zenger/Folkman. She serves on the faculty of the Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara, where she leads foundational workshops required for the professional certification program. In 2005, Kathleen earned the Master Certified Coach credential (MCC) through the International Coaching Federation.

More titles by John Zenger

1. 9780071621243     The Inspiring Leader: Unlocking the Secrets of How Extraordinary Leaders Motivate
2. 9780071628082    The Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders
3. 9780071435321     The Handbook for Leaders

]]> http://mattscot.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/why-is-it-called-a-workout/ Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:53:16 +0000 mattscot http://mattscot.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/why-is-it-called-a-workout/ Yeah, a lot of people do this activity known as a ‘workout’. But how many actually enjoy it?

Perhaps more people would do it, if it were enjoyable. And perhaps even more people would do it, if it wasn’t called a workout. What if we called it what it is? PLAY.

For many Americans, work is a four-letter word with such a negative connotation that it can be synonymous with other four-letter words that are not suitable for print (at least on this blog!). Stresses of the job make it difficult to even get out of bed and go to work. I am one of those people. Sounds odd coming from a guy in search of a job, right?

In my professional life, I’ve always sought out positions that sounded like fun. As a mascot, Iwas lucky enough to get paid to dress up in a larger-than-life costume and play with kids on a daily basis.  For me, writing this blog and the profession of journalism  is a playful form of expression that is akin to figuring out a puzzle of a story and then piecing the words together to share the completed puzzle with others.

While others might find it difficult to connect play with their work, there are a ton of literary resources that provide suggestions for finding fun at work. One of my favorite resources is Kevin Carroll’s Red Rubber Ball at Work (www.rrbatwork.com).  Carroll profiles several successful business people and what they did to translate their favorite form of play into work.  Another great read that I highly recommend is Mike Veeck’s Fun is Good (www.funisgood.net).  Veeck, the son of legendary baseball owner Bill Veeck, and a marketing guru in his own right, shares his “Fun is Good” philosophy about creating a work culture where fun is encouraged.

So, back to this idea of ‘working out’. Just as some people find it difficult to go to work, others find it difficult to work out, as they haven’t discovered the joy within the activity.  Next time you see an adult (or even myself) running, it’s likely you will see their face contorting into a gruesome physical display of their effort. Would it be that way if they enjoyed it? If it was more a game?

For enthusiasts of this ‘sport’, running is a game. And, as is the case with all games, there are rules involved, both spoken and unspoken.  As I’ve begun this journey, I’ve done a lot of reading to better understand what running is and what it has become.  I picked up two books last night that will undoubtedly become resources that I will draw upon for running and for this blog: Running for Mortals (www.runningformortals.com) by husband and wife team, John “The Penguin” Bingham and Jenny Hadfield and The Runner’s Rule Book (www.runnersrulebook.com) by Mark Remy.

In Running for Mortals , Bingham was a self-described couch potato who got into running at the age of 43. Hadfield is a fitness expert, who also happens to be the trainer involved ith the active.com contest that I’m hoping to be a part of.

In the introduction, Bingham and Hadfield address the child-like joy of running.  As I mentioned, the look on an adult runner’s face is one of disgust. Compare that to the face of a toddler just learning to run. The joy is readily apparent, because “we knew as small children that running for no apparent reason at all was one of life’s greatest pleasures.” On any playground, you can see children laughing as they engage in a game of chase or tag.

But over time, something happened that caused us to stop running. Maybe, “we really weren’t all that good at it.”  Or ”we stopped because we were afraid of the comparisons that others would make. we stopped because we were afraid we’d look silly or slow, or that others would make fun of us.”  That didn’t stop some of us, but perhaps team sports did. As Hadfield writes, ” For me running was a form of punishment I had to endure in sports. If we missed serves, we had to run laps. If we missed a layup, we had to run laps. We had to run laps to warm up for a softball game.”

As a participant in a variety of team sports growing up, I can certainly see the argument here. But in my case it was simply due to an injury, that I gave up on running, because the I didn’t want to subscribe to my dad’s mantra of “No Pain. No Gain.”  Sure, through puberty and the addition of more responsibilities as an adult, our bodies and our minds change in ways that make running or any other form of physical exertion a difficult task. But there is something to be said for the joy of running as a child. To steal a line from Springsteen, ” ’cause tramps like us, baby, we were born to run.”

Mark Remy, the executive editor of RunnersWorld.com and author of The Runner’s Rule Book, immediately addresses the need for fun in running in the first two rules. Rule 1.1 simply states “Have Fun”. Remy writes, that running “is inherently, liberatingly fun. There is fundamental joy in movement, in forward motion. After all, there aren’t many animal impulses that we can act on in public without getting arrested.”

Rule 2.2 is “Expand your definition of fun.” Remy writes, “As a runner, your definition of fun-which previously might have included such activities as visiting water parks, watching screwball comedies on DVD, (etc…) must be…well, let’s call it broadened.” Remy suggests that runners might find fun in the following ways:

“Waking up at 5:30 a.m. to run 10 miles; Running in blistering heat;  Running in the rain; Running in 400-meter circles; Feeling as if your lungs are about to explode; Paying a race director good money for the privilege of turning your own toes black and blue; or any combination (of these) .”

While I’m not quite on the same page as Remy with these suggestions, I’m hopeful that I’ll be there someday soon.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find some fun. Maybe, I’ll go for a run.