Managing Leadership: Toward a New and Usable Understanding of What Leadership Really Is--and How to Manage it [Paperback]

Author Jim Stroup brings to the topic of organizational leadership over 30 years of experience as a student of and participant in leadership in military, civilian, and governmental organizations around the world. In a compellingly drawn argument, Stroup provides a clear and actionable solution to the leadership crisis facing the owners, directors, and managers of contemporary organizations.

Learn why today's concept of individual leadership has to be scrapped:
§ It places on "leaders" untenable burdens that irresistibly lead to isolation, loss of direction--and disloyalty.
§ It represents the surrender of our organizations, their owners and stakeholders to the "leaders" and their "vision".
§ Managers must regain control of today's organizations in all fields.

Discover how to:
§ Properly understand what leadership in an organization really is.
§ Manage leadership as a resource like any other in the organization.
§ Guide today's organizations out of the individual leadership crisis and into the intelligent management of leadership.

Managing Leadership will show owners and managers how to take back control of their organizations and direct them with effective, no-nonsense managerial integrity.

Why this book was written

For well over thirty years, I have had the good fortune to participate at all levels in organizations of all types throughout the world. During this time, I have also been able to observe and consult with many of these organizations. In the course of this, I have typically detected in them an inconsistent, or even harmful, approach to organizational leadership. Often, this was expressed by a failure to acknowledge, at all, the importance of the influence of leadership in the organization. On other occasions, it was represented by a formulaic and no-exceptions application of a personal general philosophy on the subject to all particular individual and institutional leadership issues. (In truth, that approach, rather than reflecting an actual philosophy of the topic, exposed the leader's discomfort with it, and should more properly be seen as a device for avoiding having to even struggle with the subject of leadership.) Somewhat more promisingly, experiential or academically derived theories of leadership sometimes were found to have been consciously developed and applied. Unfortunately, they consistently fell short of the mark, operated in a peculiarly irrelevant fashion within the organization, or were actively harmful to the organization's effectiveness and ability to pursue its aim. Graduate, postgraduate, and focused professional study of the topic has not alleviated my concern. Rather, most of this study has exacerbated that concern, and led to a conviction that much of what has been done in the field has not only led us off the mark, but has contributed to the leadership crises we are experiencing today.

This book will argue that the modern school of individual leadership has failed to grasp the true nature of organizational leadership. In turn, this leadership movement has led astray the leaders it purports to coach, as well as their organizations and all of those who depend upon them. In some cases, the results have been not only unfortunate, but spectacularly so. In all cases, however, I believe that the focus on the individual leader at the top creates unsustainable burdens and pressures on that person. These erode the ability to maintain perspective and safeguard the proper relationships between the modern senior executive and the organization. The result, at a minimum, is inconsistent and generally inferior levels of productivity in virtually every plane of organizational functioning.

The argument will be made that leadership in an organization is in no wise an individual characteristic, and certainly not a characteristic of any particular individual. While it is expressed through individuals, it is itself an innate quality of the joining together of numbers of people in a collaborative effort in an organizational setting. It arises from, communicates itself among, and is expressed through all members of the organization in varying degrees according to the general level of group cohesion in the organization, and the abilities and circumstances at any given time of the individuals concerned. Thus, it is potentially more comprehensive and powerful an asset for the organization than the leadership generated by any individual leader, however capable such a person might be.

The management of this organizational leadership thus serves a number of purposes. It relieves the senior executive of the untenable burdens and expectations of individual leadership that he has assumed, or that have been placed upon him. It obviates and reverses the erosion of the integrity of the organization that arises when its focus is misdirected from its purpose to that of its leader. In addition, it makes available to the intelligently managed organization a source of leadership that is potentially far more powerful. The key is in recognizing what it is, and learning how to bring it into the service of the organization.

This book, then, aims to present a new view of what organizational leadership really is, and how to manage it. In so doing, it is hoped that management will reclaim its natural supremacy over leadership in an organizational setting. Further, the book is a call to raise our organizations out of the thralldom to individual leadership into which they have fallen, and to restore them to intelligent, responsible, owner-focused management.