- Paperback: 282 pages
- Publisher: Ballantine Books Inc.; Reprint edition (1 May 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0345402545
- ISBN-13: 978-0345402547
- Product Dimensions: 13.7 x 1.9 x 21 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,055,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Leading Change
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Product Description
Product Description
"[An] important new book . . .Mr. O'Toole puts soul and values squarely back into a vital topic, leadership."
--Tom Peters
The New York Times Book Review
"A deeply philosophical and eminently practical study of leadership as change."
--James MacGregor Burns
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, and author of Leadership
Current management philosophy advocates an outmoded Machiavellian approach to running organizations: Leaders are told in countless books that they can only accomplish their goals by being tough, manipulative, dictatorial, or paternalistic as the situation requires.
In Leading Change, noted management theorist James O'Toole proposes a provocative new vision of leadership in the business world--a vision of leadership rooted in moral values and a consistent display of respect for all followers. As O'Toole brilliantly demonstrates, values-based leadership is not only fair and just, it is also highly effective in today's complex organizations.
When leaders truly believe that their prime goal is the welfare of their followers, they get results. The finest leaders--from political giants like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln to contemporary CEOs like Max De Pree and James Houghton--have always shared leadership with their followers. They create organizations that encourage change and self-reevaluation; they foster an atmosphere of open-mindedness and fresh thinking, in which assumptions can be challenged and goals reassessed.
Grounded in the ideas of moral philosophy, Leading Change powerfully transcends the standard how-to management primer to define a challenging new approach to leadership. As O'Toole so persuasively argues, growth and change are possible, indeed necessary, and they will be effected by individuals who have the stature and the courage to lead morally. This important book, at once thought-provoking and totally practical, is bound to take its place as one of the landmark business volumes of our times.
"Jim O'Toole has written the essential work for organizations to survive and thrive in today's changing world. His intellectually penetrating thinking shows us how the sometimes conflicting problems we wrestle with--often in piecemeal fashion--fit together to form a complete picture, even as the picture itself continues to change. His message is so critical to the very existence of every organization that any leader who fails to heed his advice condemns his or her company to mediocrity and/or early death. It's that basic."
--Warren Bennis
Professor and founding chairman of the Leadership Institute
at the University of Southern California
Author of An Invented Life and Why Leaders Can't Lead
--Tom Peters
The New York Times Book Review
"A deeply philosophical and eminently practical study of leadership as change."
--James MacGregor Burns
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, and author of Leadership
Current management philosophy advocates an outmoded Machiavellian approach to running organizations: Leaders are told in countless books that they can only accomplish their goals by being tough, manipulative, dictatorial, or paternalistic as the situation requires.
In Leading Change, noted management theorist James O'Toole proposes a provocative new vision of leadership in the business world--a vision of leadership rooted in moral values and a consistent display of respect for all followers. As O'Toole brilliantly demonstrates, values-based leadership is not only fair and just, it is also highly effective in today's complex organizations.
When leaders truly believe that their prime goal is the welfare of their followers, they get results. The finest leaders--from political giants like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln to contemporary CEOs like Max De Pree and James Houghton--have always shared leadership with their followers. They create organizations that encourage change and self-reevaluation; they foster an atmosphere of open-mindedness and fresh thinking, in which assumptions can be challenged and goals reassessed.
Grounded in the ideas of moral philosophy, Leading Change powerfully transcends the standard how-to management primer to define a challenging new approach to leadership. As O'Toole so persuasively argues, growth and change are possible, indeed necessary, and they will be effected by individuals who have the stature and the courage to lead morally. This important book, at once thought-provoking and totally practical, is bound to take its place as one of the landmark business volumes of our times.
"Jim O'Toole has written the essential work for organizations to survive and thrive in today's changing world. His intellectually penetrating thinking shows us how the sometimes conflicting problems we wrestle with--often in piecemeal fashion--fit together to form a complete picture, even as the picture itself continues to change. His message is so critical to the very existence of every organization that any leader who fails to heed his advice condemns his or her company to mediocrity and/or early death. It's that basic."
--Warren Bennis
Professor and founding chairman of the Leadership Institute
at the University of Southern California
Author of An Invented Life and Why Leaders Can't Lead
From the Inside Flap
In his sixteenth–century masterpiece, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli advised leaders to "learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it according to the necessity of the case.′′ Under the guise of modern–day "situational leadership,′′ organizations still take refuge in this outdated theory. James O′Toole argues that such amoral leadership is ineffective. Instead, he shows that successful leadership is ultimately rooted in high moral purpose and the consistent display of respect for followers.In Leading Change, O′Toole transcends how–to management primers by offering an unorthodox approach to leadership based on the lessons of history, moral and political philosophy, and the practical experience of men and women across cultures and circumstances—including the Rushmorean presidents. As a springboard for this provocative treatise on overcoming resistance to change, O′Toole uses artist James Ensor′s painting, Christ′s Entry into Brussels in 1889. He explains how modern men and women can lead effectively from the middle of today′s inattentive crowd of individualists by enlisting and including all followers in the process.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
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When threatened by a proposed change-particularly when unable to refute the proposal logically and panic starts to set in-we unconsciously revert to the lowest level of defense: challenging the validity of the examples used to illustrate the general proposition. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
When threatened by a proposed change-particularly when unable to refute the proposal logically and panic starts to set in-we unconsciously revert to the lowest level of defense: challenging the validity of the examples used to illustrate the general proposition. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Although written in plain English, the underlying concepts of O'Toole's Values-Based Leadership are difficult to comprehend. This is because they are so different from the way most manager/leaders have been socialized to behave.
O'Toole's book is full of examples from philosophy, politics, business, and art that lay the groudwork for his argument that respecting all people and including them in leadership decisions is the best way for leaders to achieve success.
As a side-note, the O'Toole is fond of using Latin expressions and of advising the reader that he is not of the Christian faith, and referring to any other leadership style than values-based as "full of the testosterone of alpha males." He also was quite patronizing to female leaders, in my opinion, and I found the use of his feminine style being the superior style quite irritating.
Of the many books available on leadership today, I would not rate it a must-read , but as an excellent ancillary book to experience an alternative opinion to autocratic leadership style.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book will be very helpful for those leaders who desire to create an environment that draws the best out of people. While many leaders resort to top-down approaches of leadership (dog eat dog), O'Toole demonstrates how a leadership that seeks to find the best in people, encourage people and value their input, yileds both more satisfaction and better results in the long run.
Format:Paperback
"Leading Change" is a must read (and know) for anyone who would be a leader in the post- industrial era when change is the only constant. O'Toole makes the cogent and eminently believeable argument that a morals-based leadership philosophy is the only way to succeed in any endeavor as we move away from an industrial paradigm. It marches in lock-step with reviews of the involvement modern generations want in their lives. No longer is it moral to treat followers as anything but co-equals in the process (if it ever was). . . command and control, the anything goes of contingency, and situational (leadership) ethics must die, or the organization that practices it will. This work of O'Toole fits perfectly with the last four chapters of Jospeh Rost's work on "Leadership for the 21st Century," Peter Senge's "Fifth Discipline," all of Max DePree's works, Collins and Porras' "Built to Last," and Greenleaf's "Servant Leadership." Any real leader will know these four books forwards and backwards as they go the heart of leadership in the real world of today, and certainly tomorrow.
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