There’s something about leadership that intrigues me. I was an army child and that might help explain why I was expelled from school and had a rather unorthodox pre-academic career: I had fourteen jobs in nine years between leaving school and starting university, and several of those involved significant leadership roles that clashed with managerial authority. Both my undergraduate degrees and my doctorate were focused on trying to understand how authority worked, so it was almost inevitable that I ended up as a leadership scholar. But my greatest achievements have been co-founding the journal Leadership in 2005 and its related International Studying Leadership Conference, now in its 20th year.
Machiavelli is often despised as the man who promoted both authoritarian leaders and the notion that the ends justify the means, but this is to misunderstand the importance of the context within which he was writing: 16th century Florence – which was besieged by enemies on every side who proclaimed adherence to the Christian faith but acted as monsters. Machiavelli’s writing made two things clear to me. First, leaders and leadership cannot be understood if you abstract them from their context – when political morality is a contradiction in terms then leaders must be wary of sacrificing their followers for the sake of that same fallacious morality. Second, he lays out how dictators obtain and retain power – and in doing so establishes what we need to do to stop them or remove them.
Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince . . . a king . . . a president. When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic. In The Prince he envisioned would be unencumbered by ordinary ethical and moral values; his prince would be man and beast, fox and lion. Today, this small…
I first read this at school, and it fascinated and terrified me at the same time in portraying how power corrupts leaders, how language acts as a device to persuade us that day is night, and how even a morally upright stand against tyranny can descend into an even worse tyranny. The lessons are not just about the decay at the heart of the Bolsheviks in Russia but about how we need to think about leadership, especially political leadership. In democratic systems, we consistently strive to elect and promote the best leaders available, but perhaps this isn’t the most important point. Perhaps the point is to recognize that the main advantage of democracy is not getting the right people at the top but the ability to remove them when things go wrong.
The perfect edition for any Orwell enthusiasts' collection, discover Orwell's classic dystopian masterpiece beautifully reimagined by renowned street artist Shepard Fairey
'All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.'
Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the…
Who was the man who would become Caesar's lieutenant, Brutus' rival, Cleopatra's lover, and Octavian's enemy?
When his stepfather is executed for his involvement in the Catilinarian conspiracy, Mark Antony and his family are disgraced. His adolescence is marked by scandal and mischief, his love affairs are fleeting, and yet,…
I’m often asked which leaders I most admire, and my response is always hesitant, mainly because like everyone else, leaders are flawed, and because there are lots of people who are leaders that I admire but they are not always in the public eye and often very humble people. I was in the audience when Mandela came to Oxford University in 2002 and the students spontaneously started singing the South African national anthem as he walked in; it was an incredibly moving moment. This book represents both the best kind of leader and also the personal sacrifices that are a necessary – and often underestimated – aspect of a crucial element of leadership: purpose.
'The authentic voice of Mandela shines through this book . . . humane, dignified and magnificently unembittered' The Times
The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, A Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly re-creates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive, compelling and uplifting, A Long Walk to Freedom is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader.
I’ve known Donna for years and she’s one of the most thoughtful, caring, and critical scholars in the field. This book captures that approach perfectly – it grapples with complex theory but in a way that allows the non-specialist reader to unpick the complexities and see them illustrated with both mundane and profound examples. Moreover, it steers well away from the snake oil sales approaches that are so common amongst the literally thousands of ‘how to lead’ books that are published every year, often with little theoretical framework or empirical support.
'Adopting a post-positivist phenomenological perspective inspired by the writings of Husserl and Heidegger among others, Donna Ladkin crafts a series of philosophical questions that prompt the reader to deconstruct and reposition many habitually held views of leaders and leadership. Through her deep questioning, Ladkin reminds us that wisdom -- the virtue of practical circumspection -- is central to the ethical and aesthetic moment of leading. Rethinking Leadership is a refreshing and much-needed re-evaluation of the field, which should be read by anyone with a serious interest in the subject.' - Peter Case, University of the West of England, UK
Nick and Lesley Albert yearn to leave the noise, stress and pollution of modern Britain and move to the countryside, where the living is good, the air sweet, with space for their dogs to run free.
Suddenly out of work and soon to be homeless, they set off in search…
There is a genre in academic leadership writing that automatically correlates leadership with positive outcomes, to the point where anything deleterious is relegated to something other than leadership: the land of tyrants, psychopaths, and the like – the so-called ‘Hitler problem’. But this is to deny three crucial aspects of leadership: one, we cannot simply judge the morality of leaders by our own standards; two, many very successful leaders have indeed been tyrants; and three, all leaders embody a wide range of behaviors and actions that necessarily lead to good and less good outcomes. This book provides a thorough review of the whole area – and marks out what we need to be wary of.
How is Saddam Hussein like Tony Blair? Or Kenneth Lay like Lou Gerstner? Answer: They are, or were, leaders. Many would argue that tyrants, corrupt CEOs, and other abusers of power and authority are not leaders at all--at least not as the word is currently used. But, according to Barbara Kellerman, this assumption is dangerously naive. A provocative departure from conventional thinking, Bad Leadership compels us to see leadership in its entirety. Kellerman argues that the dark side of leadership--from rigidity and callousness to corruption and cruelty--is not an aberration. Rather, bad leadership is as ubiquitous as it is insidious--and…
What is leadership? How does one become a leader? Do we actually need leaders? In this Very Short Introduction, Keith Grint offers provocative answers to these questions, prompting readers to rethink their assumptions about what leadership is. Indeed, Grint argues that leadership is a very elusive quality, which explains why most books on leadership produce so much heat and so little light. Grint looks at the way leadership has evolved from its earliest manifestations in ancient societies, highlights the early ideas about leadership found in Plato, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and others, considers how social, economic, and political forces can undermine particular modes of leadership, and discusses the practice of management, its history, future, and influence on all aspects of society.
Doctors at War: The Clandestine Battle against the Nazi Occupation of France takes readers into the moral labyrinth of the Occupation years, 1940-45, to examine how the medical community dealt with the evil authority imposed on them. Anti-Jewish laws prevented many doctors from practicing, inspiring many to form secret medical…
In 2038 a devastating pandemic sweeps across the world. Two decades later, Britain remains the epicenter for the Fornax variant, annexed by a terrified global community.
David Malik is as careful as any man to avoid contact with the virus. But when his sister tests positive as an asymptomatic carrier,…