This pioneering work from leadership expert John Adair has transformed our understanding of how leadership works and how executives can become business leaders. Accessible guidance on exactly what you need to become a leader is presented in the form of a dialogue with a young business executive, and each fundamental aspect of leadership is discussed including the qualities of leadership, leadership styles, leadership functions, the difference between leadership and management, and strategic leadership. Not Bosses But Leaders is a timeless work of great vision with a solid practical core. Thought provoking and definitive, it springs from the day-to-day realities of management, and will enable you to greatly improve your leadership skills. It is the study of what a leader actually has to do.
Don’t let a bad boss or manager hold you back from being successful! Every day millions of people with high potential are frustrated and held back by incompetent leaders. New York Times bestselling author and leadership expert John C. Maxwell knows this because the number one question he gets asked is about how to lead when the boss isn’t a good leader. You don’t have to be trapped in your work situation. In this book, adapted from the million-selling The 360-Degree Leader, and now distilled down for busy professionals, Maxwell unveils the keys to successfully navigating the challenges of working for a bad boss. In How to Lead When Your Boss Can’t (or Won’t), Maxwell teaches you how to: position yourself for current and future success, take the high road with a poor leader, avoid common pitfalls, work well with teammates, and develop influence wherever you find yourself. Practicing the principles taught in this book will result in endless opportunities—for your organization, your career, and your life. You can learn how to lead when your boss can’t (or won’t).
You never dreamed being the boss would be so hard. You're caught in a web of conflicting expectations from subordinates, your supervisor, peers, and customers. You're not alone. As Linda Hill and Kent Lineback reveal in Being the Boss, becoming an effective manager is a painful, difficult journey. It's trial and error, endless effort, and slowly acquired personal insight. Many managers never complete the journey. At best, they just learn to get by. At worst, they become terrible bosses. This new book explains how to avoid that fate, by mastering three imperatives: · Manage yourself: Learn that management isn't about getting things done yourself. It's about accomplishing things through others. · Manage a network: Understand how power and influence work in your organization and build a network of mutually beneficial relationships to navigate your company's complex political environment. · Manage a team: Forge a high-performing "we" out of all the "I"s who report to you. Packed with compelling stories and practical guidance, Being the Boss is an indispensable guide for not only first-time managers but all managers seeking to master the most daunting challenges of leadership.
Answer the questions that arise when managers and workers need to adjust to unfamiliar leadership roles and rules in flattened organizational forms. Leading When You’re Not the Boss provides a conceptual framework that you can apply when assessing your own organizations and work. The book discusses the underlying ideas necessary for a shift from a culture of hierarchies to one of relationships and the establishment of intrapreneurial and holistic work environments. This book supports the trend in many corporations toward flattening parts of their traditional top–down hierarchical management systems into more egalitarian, democratized, and distributed organizational forms. It analyzes the weaknesses of "management" culture at a time of ever more rapid change and complexity in the business world and illustrates how flattened organizational units increase agility, innovation, and efficacy. Moreover, it discusses how individuals can exercise effective leadership despite lacking the command-and-control authority of conventional bosses and ways for organizations to cultivate effective "post-management" cultures. Especially in the technology sector, large projects have become too complex to be mastered by any single leader. Drawing on his experience as a senior manager and executive consultant for a number of Fortune Global 500 companies, Roger Strathausen analyzes the situations and benefits that motivate companies to adopt flattened organizational forms. He shows that empowering a multi-talented group to manage itself by horizontal cooperation can deliver products with more speed, efficiency, innovation, and nimbleness than a solo boss could, while yielding higher employee productivity and retention rates. With an entertaining mix of real-world examples and an episodic HBR-style fictitious case study, the author illustrates throughout the book how his leadership lessons can be serviceable only when intelligently tailored to the dynamic complexities of specific situations, including the personalities and competencies of the people involved. What You'll Learn How to tailor the techniques of shared leadership to specific business situations rather than treating them as iron rules How to flourish in nonhierarchical and ambiguously-hierarchical organizational contexts that encourage individual initiative for the joint benefit of the enterprise and personal professional growth How success and fulfillment at work are enhanced by organizational forms in which participants assess the situational relevance of their respective talents and actively apply them to group objectives in lateral cooperation with peers, as opposed to passively receiving orders from appointed bosses Who This Book Is For The primary readerships for this book are business leaders and managers at all levels in corporations and non-managerial professionals who work in self-directed teams. The secondary readerships are practitioners, consultants, and academics interested in the topics of human resources, organizational design, and the future of work.
Beginning with an exploration of leadership and moving on to his seven steps to growing leaders, Adair provides unique insight into the heart of leadership, helping readers discover skills in themselves and in those around them.
How did Alan Mulally––an outsider to the auto industry—lead such a spectacular turnaround at Ford? How did Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack keep his company from imploding even as Lehman Brothers collapsed? What is it that enables such extraordinary leaders to galvanize their talents and energy, as well as the talents and energy of those who work for them, to achieve superior performance no matter what challenges they face? Rajeev Peshawaria has spent more than twenty years working alongside top executives at Fortune 500 companies and training them in leadership, including as Global Director of Leadership Development programs at American Express, as Chief Learning Officer at both Morgan Stanley and Coca-Cola, and as one of the founding members of the renowned Goldman Sachs leadership development program known as Pine Street. He knows precisely what makes the difference between those who are simply bosses and those who are superior leaders, and between those who continue to rise to the top levels and those who get stuck along the way. In this lively and remarkably empowering book, Peshawaria offers readers the opportunity to experience the highest level of leadership training available in the world. Introducing the three core principles he has observed are the foundation of the best leadership––that great leaders clearly define their purpose and values; that nobody can motivate another person because everyone comes premotivated; and that a leader’s job is not to directly produce results but to create the conditions that will harness the energy of others—he details his unique and proven program for achieving leadership excellence. Sharing a wealth of illuminating stories, from those of Mulally’s achievement at Ford and Mack’s at Morgan Stanley, to how Harvey Golub and Ken Chenault successfully restored American Express to long-term sustainable growth, how Neville Isdell turned the Coca-Cola Company around, and the continuing prowess of Jeff Bezos in growing Amazon.com, he first reveals how extraordinary leaders marshal and sustain the level of energy in themselves that is required and how they enlist a core group of proficient co-leaders. He then outlines how to harness the energy and talents of those at all levels of an organization, igniting their motivation by following his RED guidelines for addressing their core needs concerning their Role, their work Environment, and their career Development. Finally, he introduces his unique Brains, Bones, and Nerves framework for: developing a clear strategy for competitive advantage (the Brains); crafting an optimal organizational structure (the Bones); and fostering a highly cooperative and motivated company culture (the Nerves). Filled with specific tips about the vital questions to ask and simple but powerful steps to follow, Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders is a manager’s essential tool kit for long-term superior performance.
The Leadership of Muhammad is a very personal study of the life-story and leadership skills of the Prophet. John Adair served with a Bedouin regiment in the Arab Legion and this story is full of fascinating detail of desert life and Bedouin beliefs. A business book that crosses boundaries it highlights the key leadership skills displayed by Muhammad and allows you to share in his wisdom. John Adair weaves the story of Muhammad's life together with aspects of Bedouin culture and ancient proverbs to provide key points for leaders and aspiring leaders. He discusses tribal leadership and essential attributes such as integrity, moral authority and humility. Learning and leadership go hand in hand. You are not born a leader, but you can become one and it is never too late to learn. John Adair's study or Muhammad and the tribal tradition of leadership is an essential addtion to the leadership debate.
Nonprofit leadership is messy Nonprofits leaders are optimistic by nature. They believe with time, energy, smarts, strategy and sheer will, they can change the world. But as staff or board leader, you know nonprofits present unique challenges. Too many cooks, not enough money, an abundance of passion. It’s enough to make you feel overwhelmed and alone. The people you help need you to be successful. But there are so many obstacles: a micromanaging board that doesn’t understand its true role; insufficient fundraising and donors who make unreasonable demands; unclear and inconsistent messaging and marketing; a leader who’s a star in her sector but a difficult boss… And yet, many nonprofits do thrive. Joan Garry’s Guide to Nonprofit Leadership will show you how to do just that. Funny, honest, intensely actionable, and based on her decades of experience, this is the book Joan Garry wishes she had when she led GLAAD out of a financial crisis in 1997. Joan will teach you how to: Build a powerhouse board Create an impressive and sustainable fundraising program Become seen as a ‘workplace of choice’ Be a compelling public face of your nonprofit This book will renew your passion for your mission and organization, and help you make a bigger difference in the world.
If you take a chain, pile it up and then push it, what direction will it go? Nowhere you can predict and not very far. If you take it by the end and pull it, which way will it go? It will follow you. Leadership is not about what sets you apart from those you lead—it’s about what binds you together. It is not about controlling others—it’s about trusting others. It’s not about your achievements—it’s about unleashing your team’s greatness. In short, leadership really isn’t about you—it’s about your people. Take Bob Davids, co-author of this book and successful leader of six businesses in fields as diverse as engineering and winemaking. His achievements often came thanks to being able to refrain from acting when others might have found intervening irresistible. By trusting his employees to be better than him in their area of responsibility and letting them act, Bob unleashed the human greatness that no one else—including employees themselves—suspected. Yet to lead without acting does not mean doing nothing. It means creating conditions in which things happen by themselves. Leadership Without Ego is about a transformation of the concept of leadership in the past two decades: a change of beliefs about how best to lead, along with radically different leadership practices. The ideas in this book have already changed the fortunes of hundreds of businesses and the lives of tens of thousands of employees. They can do the same for your business, your people—and you.
Let's face it, 99% of all employees go to work for one reason and one reason only, and it's not you. Of course, it's a paycheck. They rarely, if ever, go to work to follow anyone for more than money. They certainly aren't there to follow the vision of the person in charge. But you can change that! In his first book, internationally recognized leadership coach and speaker, Dave Ferguson, cleverly defines the difference between a boss and a leader. In his simple, no-nonsense way, he uses his experience as a leader and as a leadership coach to help you first decide if you are a boss or a leader, then goes on to coach you on how to grow as a leader. This is a simple, easy to follow, guidebook on how to get your employees to follow you. It's not about how to be liked by your employees, nor is it how to manage or supervise people. This book is how to become a leader people will respect and be willing to follow. It's also about developing leaders and identifying potential leaders. If you are in a leadership position, or want to be in one, then this book is for you. It's also for you if you are a business owner, self-employed professional, executive or politician.
