When managers are called on to display leadership they do so in a particular environment. That environment is often toxic and difficult to penetrate. Leaders need to be able to navigate dirty waters. They also need to see that their job is to clean away the toxic garbage which the organisation - the system - surrounds their people with, rather than managing the people.
Moral: ‘Manage the fishtank, not the fish’.
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The Search for Leadership is a practical book that answers the question ‘how?’. How can we improve leadership in, of, by and for organisations – organisations in all sectors of business, economic, and political and public life?
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The organisation is not a passive vessel waiting to have leadership poured into it. The organisation is an active player that has to contribute to leadership appropriately if it is to receive its due from managers. This explains why this book is as much about organisations (their needs, challenges and dynamics, and their infuriating flaws and neuroses), and the part they must play, as it is about leadership itself.
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2009 might seem like a year to look for heroic, archetypal leaders to lead us out of the fear and uncertainty wrought by depression, war, terror and climate change and into the high mountain pastures of peace, equality, fraternity and liberty. Or is it rather a year for even the most gifted leaders to invite us to consider and change the system?
As the world awaits redemption from President Obama, it also becomes clear that he can only be as good as the system that surrounds him - including the advisers, procedures, powers, planning mechanisms, policy bodies, laws, media, political climate and others' expectations.
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On every page there's room for you to leave your thoughts about the book and its themes. Please do.
The organisation is not a passive vessel waiting to have leadership poured into it. The organisation is an active player that has to contribute to leadership appropriately if it is to receive its due from managers. This explains why this book is as much about organisations (their needs, challenges and dynamics, and their infuriating flaws and neuroses), and the part they must play, as it is about leadership itself.
=============
2009 might seem like a year to look for heroic, archetypal leaders to lead us out of the fear and uncertainty wrought by depression, war, terror and climate change and into the high mountain pastures of peace, equality, fraternity and liberty. Or is it rather a year for even the most gifted leaders to invite us to consider and change the system?
As the world awaits redemption from President Obama, it also becomes clear that he can only be as good as the system that surrounds him - including the advisers, procedures, powers, planning mechanisms, policy bodies, laws, media, political climate and others' expectations.
=============
On every page there's room for you to leave your thoughts about the book and its themes. Please do.