How to Grow Leaders: The Seven Key Principles of Effective Leadership Development [Paperback]

Today's fiercely competitive business environment demands that professionals step-up and be counted if their company is to discover a recipe for success. Leadership qualities in professionals at all levels of the management hierarchy play a key role in business success. In this day and age when mediocre team management is a not an option comes the book How To Grow Leaders; another masterstroke by John Adair, the author of the best-selling classic - Not Bosses But Leaders.

Adair who transformed the understanding of how leadership works with his pioneering concepts and thoughts in Not Bosses But Leaders, marks a return with his latest work which explores exactly what we know about leadership and leadership development. Adair fittingly infers that the secret of business success is excellence of leadership at all three levels - strategic, operational and team, a nomenclature that is now beginning to catch on, much of the credit for which goes to him.

Adair has divided How To Grow Leaders into two parts, namely - 'Exploring leadership: A personal odyssey' and 'How to grow leaders: the seven principles'. In the first part of the book, he invites the reader to join him on a journey of discovery about the nature of leadership and how it can be taught. By the end of the first part one gets a unique insight into the heart of leadership following, in Adair's own words, 'three uphill paths - the Qualities approach (what a leader has to be), the Situational approach (what a leader has to know), and the Group or functional approach (what a leader has to do).' All of the three paths, according to the author must be thought of as whole, for when put together they constitute nothing less than the generic role of a leader.

In the latter part of the book Adair moves on to identifying the seven key principles of leadership development and answers vital questions on how to select, train and educate leaders at team, operational and strategic levels. Topics variously discussed in this book include: the manager as a leader, how people become leaders, training team leaders, how to manage leadership training, and learning to be a top strategic leader. The entire narrative is packed with motivational quotes from some of the greatest thinkers, innovators and leaders of our times.

This thought provoking and highly readable book underpins Adair's position as a world-renowned authority on the subject of leadership. How To Grow Leaders helps readers discover skills in themselves and those around them. The book does not harbour any pretences of transforming the reader, rather it makes one pause, think and appreciate the value of leadership skills and helps one to attempt to imbue certain qualities which are considered a prerequisite for succeeding.

The narrative is simple and the message is clear and concise; something which cannot be attributed to many of the myriad so-called leadership development programmes. Adair's book sets the record straight on readership development. It is one motivational course readers can undergo from the comfort of their own armchair provided the author's thoughts are read and appreciated fully. Absorbing as the book is, it would be hard not to.

John Adair published THE first book on Leadership Development in 1968, another one was published 5 years later. The library of congress now holds 94,000 volumes, leadership has been split into a complexity of over 420 "competencies" identified by a multitude of authors.
A simpler picture is needed. Some clear thinking and some proven research.

"How to Grow Leaders" delivers this in an engaging way, logical and drawing on a vast hinterland of knowledge.

The first part summarises what is needed in terms of Generic Qualities, Action and the situation to define excellent leadership at the team, operational and strategic level. He is nervous of the trend to look at "follower ship", and prefers the "willing partners" analogy for people who are well led.

Characteristics and qualities of Great Leaders according to John include;

• Exemplification of 4/5 qualities expected within the particular role or situation
• Generic Qualities including; Integrity, Trust, Mix of toughness & fairness, Personal warmth & humanity, Humility or a lack of arrogance.

John's 3 circles model focuses on what Leaders do; achieve tasks, focus on the needs of the individual and focus on the needs of the team.

Part 2 outlines the 7 principles for Growing Leaders, illustrated by case studies and tinged with the authors frustration at the lack of clarity and clear thinking evident in most organisations. First principle - the CEO must own the problem and opportunity.

Part 2 takes you through a prescription for leadership development and maps a personal intellectual journey of the worlds first leadership and leadership development expert.

It is an epic, written by a pre-eminet, multi-faceted man who embodies integrity and intellectual honesty.

As a whole the book pulls together strands of thinking from a global historical perspective yet is equally inspiring for an individual to read as those leading organisations,his ability to draw lessons from philosophy and history, together with snippets of wisdom (and the definition of the word) is an exciting journey through part 1 & 2.

John Adair demolishes the outputs of lazy thinking evident in the plethora of authors and organisations feeding on the great demand for leadership and he is particulaly scathing of US intellectual output.

A stimulating, informative read particularly for CEO's & Strategic Leaders.

I picked up this book to guide me how to grow leaders from my team. The book does offer on few of its pages good advice on what makes a good leader and how get the these characters out of individuals. However what disappointed me was that too many of the pages are spent on what the author has himself done during his long career and on advertising how he filled the vacuum in leadership training. If someone is interested in the history of the leadership training, yes, this book gives a lot, but it is too weak on the actual substance.