- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy The Diamond Jubilee A Classical Celebration Album for just £2.50 Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
Leadership: A Very Short Introduction
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Leadership: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
The subject of leadership raises many questions: What is it? How does it differ from management and command? Are leaders born or bred? Who are the leaders? Do we actually need leaders? Inevitably, the answers are provocative and partial; leadership is a hugely important topic of debate. There are constant calls for 'greater' or 'stronger' leadership, but what this actually means, how we can evaluate it, and why it's important are not very clear. In this Very Short Introduction Keith Grint prompts the reader to rethink their understanding of what leadership is. He examines the way leadership has evolved from its earliest manifestations in ancient societies, highlighting the beginnings of leadership writings through Plato, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli and others, to consider the role of the social, economic, and political context undermining particular modes of leadership. Exploring the idea that leaders cannot exist without followers, and recognising that we all have diverse experiences and assumptions of leadership, Grint looks at the practice of management, its history, future, and influence on all aspects of society.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
According to this book there are over 53,000 books on the topic of leadership on Amazon. This is a worthy addition to that list. The author skilfully combines academic and popular styles to build up the reader's knowledge of the subject of leadership. He touches on topics as diverse as Plato's republic, Hitler youth and "Lord of the Rings" to illustrate the differing types of leadership styles and how these have historically changed depending on the social context. There is an excellent use of compact and informative diagrams which illustrate the author's points. Whilst I might disagree with the author on some topics, such as his views on the "Great Men" style of leadership - he makes his arguments clearly and well. Apart from a minor quibbles about at times poor referencing of source material in the text, a recommended read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I once (returning to work) had a conversation with a man who had recently been made 'Partner'. I asked him what one had to do to achieve such and he replied that one had to have 'Partnership Quality'. His obvious inability to explain the reason for his success, continued to puzzle me. That he was later thrown out, unceremoniously by his Partners, suggests that my incomprehension was not misplaced.
There are as the author notes, endless books here on Leadership, with the unspoken aspiration that all proper people are Natural Leaders or should at least aspire to Leadership; but one cannot have Leaders without many Followers and those books merely appeal to their readers insecurity. From my experience, most leaders are jealously insecure self-opinionated bullies and damaging to the organisation they lead, and I have never been able to determine whether that sort of person seeks leadership or whether leadership brings about those regrettable characteristics.
Some VSIs are a little short; some a little long, but this one although just right puts out in its last chapter the most tantalising possibilities for further consideration as it considers Sacrifice, Scapegoats, Sacrilege, and Exclusion. In short: This book builds to a climax!
If I have to find any fault with the book, a tendency to swallow whole Feminist Ideology, is unfortunate, but rather par for the course, generally, these days, in Academia, I regret to say.
There are as the author notes, endless books here on Leadership, with the unspoken aspiration that all proper people are Natural Leaders or should at least aspire to Leadership; but one cannot have Leaders without many Followers and those books merely appeal to their readers insecurity. From my experience, most leaders are jealously insecure self-opinionated bullies and damaging to the organisation they lead, and I have never been able to determine whether that sort of person seeks leadership or whether leadership brings about those regrettable characteristics.
Some VSIs are a little short; some a little long, but this one although just right puts out in its last chapter the most tantalising possibilities for further consideration as it considers Sacrifice, Scapegoats, Sacrilege, and Exclusion. In short: This book builds to a climax!
If I have to find any fault with the book, a tendency to swallow whole Feminist Ideology, is unfortunate, but rather par for the course, generally, these days, in Academia, I regret to say.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Rudderless
27 Sep 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
"Leadership" seems to be one of those concepts that pop up time and again in almost all spheres of life. In business, education, politics, and all sorts of other fields of human endeavor leadership is touted as one of the most important and valuable characteristics that any individual could be blessed with. There are whole sections of some bigger bookstores dedicated to "leadership" literature, and the number of books published on the subject seems to be increasing exponentially. I have been interested for a while to learn if there is something more profound behind the whole notion of leadership than what my common sense was telling me, and was hoping that this very short introduction would shed some light on it. Unfortunately, I don't think that I am anywhere more enlightened on this topic then before, and I am starting to feel the same way that many serious social scientists have felt for a while: leadership is more hype than substance, and it is one of the biggest unpaid promissory notes in all of social science.
This book has a decidedly non-academic feel to it. This in itself is not a problem, as some of the best books in this series have been written by the non-academic authors. However, this book has a very "self help" feel to it, with a lot of jargon and graphs that look like they have been taken straight out of PowerPoint presentations. There are very few hard facts in the whole book, and the level of analysis seems to be very superficial. There are numerous instances throughout the book where the author jumps to some ridiculous conclusions based on the scantiest of evidence or, even worse, without even making a perfunctory effort to actually construct a cogent argument. The worst of these offenses is a purported link between a particular leadership style and the 2008 economic crisis. I have never heard of this particular theory behind what happened in 2008, and it seems extremely implausible that something as ethereal as a form of leadership could be the root cause for such a devastating event, but I would be willing to listen to a cogent argument based on verifiable facts. However, the author doesn't even deign to connect the dots and portrays the conclusions as so evident that they don't even merit being clearly stated.
Some of the material in the book is interesting enough. I did learn a lot about different historical leaders and their achievements. This, however, could have been better handled by a proper book of history.
As mentioned before, some of the big questions that I have about leadership have not been properly addressed in this book. What is leadership? Is it a proper social science construct, and if so how can we best describe it and hopefully measure it? Is it innate or is it more determined by the environmental forces? If the former, can leadership be learned? Is leadership something that everyone should ideally have, or is it better to have just a few chosen individuals or groups exhibit it? I am still trying to find the answers to these and many more questions, and I hope to come across a book that provides at least some of them.
This book has a decidedly non-academic feel to it. This in itself is not a problem, as some of the best books in this series have been written by the non-academic authors. However, this book has a very "self help" feel to it, with a lot of jargon and graphs that look like they have been taken straight out of PowerPoint presentations. There are very few hard facts in the whole book, and the level of analysis seems to be very superficial. There are numerous instances throughout the book where the author jumps to some ridiculous conclusions based on the scantiest of evidence or, even worse, without even making a perfunctory effort to actually construct a cogent argument. The worst of these offenses is a purported link between a particular leadership style and the 2008 economic crisis. I have never heard of this particular theory behind what happened in 2008, and it seems extremely implausible that something as ethereal as a form of leadership could be the root cause for such a devastating event, but I would be willing to listen to a cogent argument based on verifiable facts. However, the author doesn't even deign to connect the dots and portrays the conclusions as so evident that they don't even merit being clearly stated.
Some of the material in the book is interesting enough. I did learn a lot about different historical leaders and their achievements. This, however, could have been better handled by a proper book of history.
As mentioned before, some of the big questions that I have about leadership have not been properly addressed in this book. What is leadership? Is it a proper social science construct, and if so how can we best describe it and hopefully measure it? Is it innate or is it more determined by the environmental forces? If the former, can leadership be learned? Is leadership something that everyone should ideally have, or is it better to have just a few chosen individuals or groups exhibit it? I am still trying to find the answers to these and many more questions, and I hope to come across a book that provides at least some of them.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
excellent place to start
11 Sep 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The authors do an awful lot in a small, handy book. For anyone new to the field of leadership studies, this book will get you oriented as well as point you to further resources.
As leadership studies quietly formalizes into its own field of study, materials such as this have become necessary -- not only as a way to crystallize what is being done, but to attract newcomers who have had enough of the airport bookstore variety. There is an actual field of study here, and these fellows do a fine job acquainting the reader with the basics.
Lightweight, small, accessible -- the book lives up to its title.
As leadership studies quietly formalizes into its own field of study, materials such as this have become necessary -- not only as a way to crystallize what is being done, but to attract newcomers who have had enough of the airport bookstore variety. There is an actual field of study here, and these fellows do a fine job acquainting the reader with the basics.
Lightweight, small, accessible -- the book lives up to its title.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
