LEADERSHIP: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience

Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience provides an academic perspective on leadership. Designed as a textbook for academic courses, Leadership, includes pedagogical tools such as chapter summaries, discussion questions, suggested readings, and key terms and concepts.

Designed as a textbook for a college course, the premise of this book is "Being able to analyze your experiences from multiple perspectives may be the greatest single contribution a formal course in leadership can give you." (p. 18)

The book's 17 chapters are divided into five parts. The first six chapters focus on the process of leadership. The next three chapters focus on the leader. The next three chapters focus on the followers. The next two chapters focus on the situation. And the last three chapters talk about how to put it all together.

Chapters 9, 12, and 14 focus on leadership skills and are particularly interesting.

The basic skills in Chapter 9 include: communication, listening, assertiveness, and feedback.

The basic leadership skills in Chapter 12 include: building technical competence, building effective relationships with superiors, building effective relationships with peers, setting goals, and delegating.

Chapter 14 discuss skills such as: conducting meetings, encouraging creativity, managing conflict and negotiating, managing stress, and diagnosing performance problems.

As with any good book on leadership, this book has quotes from great leaders in each chapter.
Some of my favorites are:

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18." Einstein

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other." John F. Kennedy

"Remember the difference between a boss and a leader: a boss says "Go!" --a leader says, "Let's go!" E.M. Kelly

"So near is a falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge." Cicero

Chapter 9 of Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience has a highlighted reprint from "Organizational Dynamics" entitled the Abilene Paradox. I have repeatedly referred to the Abilene Paradox when mentoring young leaders, and even some not-so-young leaders. If you would like to know more about the Abilene Paradox click here: Abilene Paradox.