Dimensions
152 x 229 x 23mm
Developing as a leader has become a mantra in our culture -- a path to power and money, a road to personal and professional success, and a mechanism for creating change. But there's a problem: the leader-centric framework to which the leadership industry is tightly tied, rests on two critical, but largely unexamined, assumptions. The first is that leadership can be taught. The second is that leadership is crucial at all.
In THE END OF LEADERSHIP AS WE KNOW IT, Barbara Kellerman posits that the study and teaching of leadership -- the so-called "Leadership Industry" -- is highly suspect and has produced very little evidence that leadership can actually be taught. She makes a compelling argument that though leaders always were and still are the focus of our collective attention, they have never been as central as we generally believe. Even in times past, when leaders had far more power, authority, and influence than they generally do now, they were vulnerable to forces beyond their control, forces that limited their options and constrained their behaviors. In the 21st century these forces are stronger, more variegated, and more numerous than they ever were before. Leadership as we generally conceive of it is a thing of the past -- and this book offers an alterative model for the future of leadership that better reflects the political and organisational realities we find ourselves in today.
