Citing examples from business, history, literature, the arts, and from his own psychoanalytic and management-consulting practice, the author identifies distinct leader types. He shows that entrepreneurs posses many of the qualities of the imposter, including a capacity for self-dramatization and a deep understanding of how to profit by others' wishes and desires.
Unlike other books written on "toxic leaders," this book takes issue with the predominant view that "toxic leaders are bad" and destructive to their companies. Rather, the author argues that even highly productive leaders have some toxic qualities central to their success story. The book redirects the conversation about toxicity in a more productive direction, as toxic leaders are not just viewed as villains and liabilities, but are also considered as potential assets, innovators, and rebels. Working on the premise that "toxicity is a fact of company life," the book provides organizations with a model and blueprint on the advantages to be gained from skillful anticipation, control, and handling of troubled and difficult leaders. In contrast to dysfunctional organizations that ignore toxicity or dwell on the perceived destructive impact of toxic leaders, successful companies come up with resourceful, innovative strategies for turning seeming deficits into opportunities.
Reflections on Character and Leadership is the first of the three books in the Manfred kets de Vries on the Couch series. Here, Kets de Vries looks at entrepreneurship, the pathology of leadership, and the personality of the leader. The reader will visit the disturbed inner worlds of leaders like Alexander the Great, Shaka Zulu and Robert Maxwell, discover how to distinguish between a cold fish and a live volcano, and identify impostors, despots, organizational fools and global leaders. The book highlights the basic principles of the clinical paradigm—the process of putting organizations and the individuals who lead them on the psychoanalyst’s couch. It includes studies of personality archetypes and the effects they have on organizational life and culture—and the effects that organizations have on them. Referring frequently to key management concepts, Kets de Vries looks not only at what happens when things go wrong, but also at how to create the psychological and organizational space to make sure that things go right. About the series: The series offers an overview of Kets de Vries’s work spanning four decades, a period in which he has established himself as the leading figure in the clinical study of organizational leadership. The books in this series contain a representative selection of Kets de Vries’ writings about leadership from a wide variety of published sources and cover character and leadership in a global context, career development and leadership in organizations. The original essays were all written or published between 1976 and 2008. Updated where appropriate and revised by the author, they present a digest of the work of one of the most influential management thinkers of the present day.
This book deals with the exposing of various impostors and hoaxes. One of Bram Stoker's last works, it is a survey of various charlatans, rogues, and other practitioners of make-believe. With a cheerfully withering eye for their cons, Stoker introduces us to many famous fakers including: royal pretenders (such as Perkin Warbeck, who claimed King Henry VII's throne), the Wandering Jew, John Law, Arthur Orton, women masquerading as men, hoaxers, Chevalier D'eon, the Bisley Boys, and others.
Drawing on the lives of some of the greatest political, intellectual and religious leaders of modern times, and the author’s personal experience, Virtuous Leadership demonstrates that leadership and virtue are not only compatible, they are actually synonymous. Virtuous Leadership defines each of the classical human virtues most essential to leadership – magnanimity, humility, prudence, courage, self-control and justice. It demonstrates how these virtues promote personal transformation and the attainment of self-fulfillment. It also considers the Christian supernatural virtues of faith, hope and charity without which no study of leadership can be complete. The book’s final section, Towards Victory, offers a methodology for the achievement of interior growth tailored to the needs of busy, professional people intent on imbuing their lives with a transcendent purpose. Thus, the aim of Virtuous Leadership is ultimately practical. It is meant to be your guidebook in the quest for excellence.
This revised edition, like the original, concerns the problems of harmonizing effective governmental administration with the requirements of a democracy. It features a new chapter on the impact of management and theories of management upon public personnel administration, including discussion of the Model Public Personnel Law of 1940, the Watergate scandals and President Carter's personnel reforms of 1978
The author tracks the course of the book from its origins in 1239 to its most salient episodes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, introducing colorful individuals obsessed with possessing the legendary work--and the equally obsessive passion of those who wanted to punish people who sought it. This account sheds light on the power of atheism, the threat of blasphemy, and the persistence of free thought during a time when the outspoken risked being burned at the stake.
