[rating:3]
(New York: McGraw-Hill 2010)
352 pgs.
Barbara Kellerman is a respected author on leadership as well as a Harvard professor. She has also written Followership and Bad Leadership. In this particular work she develops what will certainly be a textbook for one of her classes. She has produced a primary source book in which she gathers the writings of various leaders to evaluate how leaders use thoughts and words (both written and spoken) to influence others.
The book is divided into three sections. The first is “About Leadership,” and it consists of 18 authors including the likes of Confucius, Machiavelli, Carlyle, Tolstoy, and Freud. These thinkers grappled with leadership and influence. The breadth of thought and people expanding many centuries makes for interesting and diverse reading. Kellerman offers introductory thoughts for each writer setting their work in context, and then offers concluding comments and summary at the close of each section.
The second section is entitled, “Literature as Leadership.” Kellerman is a traditionalist who believes there is a certain body of classic literature that any serious student of leadership must be cognizant of. She demonstrates how thinkers have exercised enormous influence. She presents a wide array of thought, including those championing causes as diverse as American independence, women’s suffrage, gay rights, animal rights and conservation. Her point is not to necessarily agree with each advocate but to demonstrate how people from diverse backgrounds use thought and literature to exert influence on others.
The final section is “Leader’s in Action.” It looks at people such as Elizabeth I, Churchill, Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela to demonstrate how they mobilized language to champion their causes.
Kellerman notes: “To be sure, even the biggest of big ideas must be born at the right time. Articulated too early they fall on deaf ears; too late, their moment in the sun has come and gone. But when the time is right as in ripe, big ideas, intellectual leaders, have power unlike any other” (xxiii). In an age when people, especially leaders, value action, this tome, coming from a Harvard professor, urges us not to underestimate the power of thinkers who know how to communicate.
This is a resource book more than an exposition on leadership. It lets you get a glimpse of people of influence and to hear them speak for themselves. You will undoubtedly not agree with all of their views. The article by Larry Kramer includes some graphic and profane vocabulary. If you were in need of some fresh ideas to enhance your current leadership, there are other books that seek to address today’s issues directly and you would probably be wide to turn to them first before picking up this volume. However, if you are interested in a broad survey of leadership thought in a more classical approach, you may find this a refreshing alternative from the numerous contemporary books on leadership.
In rating this book I can’t urge you to make it one of your next reads as it does not seek to address specific leadership issues like some of the other books we have reviewed. You may dislike or even be offended by some of the sections due to their perspective or language. So I will list it somewhere between a 2 and a 3 in that some may find its historic overview quite interesting while others will find it does not offer enough prescriptions for their liking.