Achieve Leadership Genius
How You Lead Depends on Who, What, Where, and When You Lead
by
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WHY SHOULD YOU READ THIS BOOK? If you’ve read books on leadership or studied the topic in the past, most likely you found leadership advice falling into two categories. The first is a general normative approach to leadership that recommends what leaders should be and do: The Leadership Secrets of . . . (fill in the blank with ancient Chinese philosophers, retired corporate CEOs, or current-day athletic coaches). This one-size-fits-all approach can be inspiring and thought-provoking, as when Warren Bennis, the leadership guru who made leadership a legitimate academic topic, writes about managers doing things right and leaders doing the right thing.3 Or when Kouzes and Posner encourage you to lead from the heart.4 The intention of this generalized leadership perspective is to provide insight, provoke thought, and inspire you to lead. Its downfall is that often it becomes a cookie-cutter strategy that in reality is too broad, conceptual, or theoretical to apply in a given situation. The second type of leadership approach takes a narrower, more subject-oriented approach: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Self Leadership and The One Minute Manager, or Leading Change.5 This more prescriptive approach can be useful, as when it suggests specific techniques and skills for leading in a given situation. The intention of this second, more targeted leadership perspective is to provide tactical or prescriptive leadership behavior that can be applied to a particular situation. Its downfall is that it fails to connect the dots so you can see how your efforts are interrelated depending on who, what, where, when, and why you are leading. One of our pet peeves is the way organizations teach leadership skills in isolation without an organizing framework that integrates, leverages, and thereby sustains the leader’s skill-building over time. Now here comes this book introducing what we will call the Leadership in Context approach. Why get excited? Because this is the first time a model of leadership has combined both generalized and prescriptive leadership approaches, integrated the scholarly work and research of the past 100 years of leadership study with personal experiences of seasoned leaders and coaches, and organized it all into one overarching framework that helps you make sense of leadership. Leadership in Context is a new approach to leadership that you can actually use. To be forthcoming, it is important to also tell you what Leadership in Context isn’t. As you can tell from the size of the book, it isn’t simple, simplistic, or even necessarily easy. There’s a reason for that. No one said genius was easy.
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About the Book
What does it really take to become a great leader? You need a framework for leading that gives you clarity when chaos is all around you. The framework, called “Leadership in Context” already exists. It’s up to you to master it and put it to work. Drawing on over forty years of research and personal experience, the authors of Achieve Leadership Genius have helped people develop the skills they need to achieve organizational and personal goals. This guide will teach you • how to lead individuals, teams, organizations, alliances, and above all, yourself; • the five crucial leadership practices that work no matter who you’re leading; • how to handle the unique issues that arise in every leadership context and situation. You’ll also discover high-level and micro-level techniques that will help you break through the barriers that prevent you from leading. With practice and internalization, you can make these techniques work for you. Stop making excuses, and start benefiting from a new model of leadership. It’s not too late to Achieve Leadership Genius.
About the Author
Dr. Drea Zigarmi is a founding associate of the Ken Blanchard Companies and co-creator of Situational Leadership II, a developmental leadership model. He co-authored Leadership and the One Minute Manager and, most recently, The Leader Within. He has trained 50,000 managers. Susan Fowler is the creator and lead developer of the Ken Blanchard Companies Situational Self Leadership, a self-leadership and personal empowerment program. Fowler’s publications include The Team Leader’s Idea-a-Day Guide (with Drea Zigarmi) and Empowerment (with Ken Blanchard). Dr. Dick Lyles is president and CEO of Leadership Legacies, focusing on developing a new generation of leaders. He co-founded Maric College in San Diego and past president of the Ken Blanchard Companies. He is the author of Winning Ways: Four Secrets for Getting Great Results by Working Well with People.