Product Description

What qualities make a leader succeed in business or politics? In an era when the information revolution has dramatically changed the playing field, when old organizational hierarchies have given way to fluid networks of contacts, and when mistrust of leaders is on the rise, our ideas about leadership are clearly due for redefinition.
With The Powers to Lead, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. offers a sweeping look at the nature of leadership in today's world, in an illuminating blend of history, business case studies, psychological research, and more. As he observes, many now believe that the more authoritarian and coercive forms of leadership--the hard power approaches of earlier military-industrial eras--have been largely supplanted in postindustrial societies by soft power approaches that seek to attract, inspire, and persuade rather than dictate. Nye argues, however, that the most effective leaders are actually those who combine hard and soft power skills in proportions that vary with different situations. He calls this smart power. Drawing examples from the careers of leaders as disparate as Gandhi, Churchill, Lee Iacocca, and George W. Bush, Nye uses the concept of smart power to shed light on such topics as leadership types and skills, the needs and demands of followers, and the nature of good and bad leadership in terms of both ethics and effectiveness. In one particularly instructive chapter, he looks in depth at contextual intelligence--the ability to understand changing environments, capitalize on trends, and use the flow of events to implement strategies.
Thoroughly grounded in the real world, rich in both analysis and anecdote, The Powers to Lead is sure to become a modern classic, a concise and lucid work applicable to every field, from small businesses and nonprofit organizations to nations on the world stage.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37405 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780195335620
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Leadership gurus since Machiavelli have argued over whether a leader should be loved or feared. In this evenhanded primer, Nye, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and soft power theorist, takes a resolute stand in between the two sides. Modern leadership, he contends, requires smart power, a judicious situational balance of hard power (getting people to do what you want, with carrots, sticks and bullying) and soft power (getting people to want what you want, with inspiration, charisma and propaganda). Nye embeds his argument in a lucid, if somewhat dry, survey of leadership studies, touching on everything from bonobo behavior to Freudian psychology, and illustrates it with references to noted leaders like former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, Lincoln, Hitler and Subcomandante Marcos. (George Bush's presidency provides a recurring object lesson in bad leadership.) The author takes a skeptical, down-to-earth view of leadership fads and hype. But he can't quite break free of mystical notions like vision or vague buzz concepts like contextual intelligence (a head-scratcher that boils down to judgment and wisdom); his smart power formula is therefore more truism than concrete guide to action. Nye's is a useful introduction to the theory, but not the practice, of leadership. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Nye, a distinguished academic, explores leadership as it relates to hard power (coercion) and soft power (influence and persuasion), and he calls the mixture of these powers smart power. He urges soft power whenever possible and defines power as the ability to obtain outcomes through others, noting the difference between wanting to dominate followers and sharing influence with them. Some leaders succeed in one context but fail in another, and Nye discusses contextual intelligence, which is an intuitive diagnostic skill that helps a leader to align tactics with objectives to create smart strategies in varying situations. It includes the ability to identify trends in complex circumstances and being adaptable while trying to shape events. The author quotes an ancient source, Lao Tzu: A leader is best when people barely know he exists; not so good when people obey and acclaim him; worst when they despise him. This excellent book offers important insight into leadership with valuable analysis and anecdotes for leaders and aspiring leaders. --Mary Whaley

Review

"Mr. Nye has performed a valuable service in rounding up and summarizing the various academic studies and theories of leadership into a single, slim volume. He examines different approaches to leadership, the morality of leadership and how the wider context can determine the effectiveness of a particular leader. There are plenty of anecdotes and examples, both historical and contemporary, political and corporate."--The Economist
"This excellent book offers important insight into leadership with valuable analysis and anecdotes for leaders and aspiring leaders."--Booklist
"The Powers to Lead at once ranges broadly and is concise. Anecdotes run from Lyndon Johnson and Jack Welch to Mahatma Gandhi...and the book treats the latest "leadership as process" theories alongside Machiavellian realism and Lao Tzu's self-effacing style. All these, together with many sensible suggestions for advancing oneself, are presented with a clear focus on power and group needs."--New York Sun
"One of the first to include new scholarship on the youngest emerging leaders, Nye readily demonstrates his ability to traverse the intellectual and pragmatic without becoming esoteric or pedantic...Highly recommended."--CHOICE
"A lucid...survey of leadership studies, touching on everything from bonobo behavior to Freudian psychology... with references to noted leaders like former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, Lincoln, Hitler and Subcomandante Marcos."--Publishers Weekly
"Finally, a book that analyzes what leadership really means and how it relates to power. It will be invaluable for both political and business leaders alike. Nye developed the concept of hard and soft power, and now he shows how the best leaders use both in a smart way."--Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein: His Life and Universe, and President, the Aspen Institute
"The Powers to Lead is an outstanding primer on leadership and all its dimensions. Nye cuts through the many bromides surrounding the subject to present a sharp, gracefully written introduction to leadership that will benefit anyone from Washington to Wall Street."--General Brent Scowcroft, former U.S. National Security Advisor
"Nye has written better and more creatively on the importance of soft power as a political and diplomatic weapon than anyone else. Now he brings this knowledge and all his governmental and academic experience to bear on the oldest question in politics-how do leaders emerge and what distinguishes the good ones from the bad? There couldn't be a better primer for a presidential election year, in which all of us, whether or not we are American citizens, have such a big stake."--Chris Patten, Chancellor of Oxford University
"This book will change not only the way leaders think about how they themselves should use power-but also how they can respond more creatively and effectively to others' power moves. This book will-and should-find a permanent place on the bookshelves of academics and practitioners alike."--Roderick M. Kramer, William R. Kimball Professor of Organizational Behavior, Stanford Graduate School of Business
"This book represents an important intellectual odyssey. Nye has long been acclaimed as one of the world's foremost thinkers about international affairs, helping us understand, for example, the differences between soft and hard power. Now, to our great good fortune, he has turned his mind to the vexing questions of how power relates to leadership. The result is a conceptual tour de force-one of the best works on leadership since James MacGregor Burns wrote his breakthrough book three decades ago. What a splendid journey!"--David Gergen, Professor of Public Service and Director, Center for Public Leadership, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government

Customer Reviews

Superb Mix of Scholarship & Pragmatism
Anything by Joe Nye stops my work and receives my undivided attention. This is an absolute gem of a book, a mix of world-class scholarship and world-class pragmatism. It goes to the top of my leadership list on Amazon.

The book opens with the observation that two thirds of US citizens believe their is a leadership crisis. The intellectual center of the book is its focus on "smart power" defined as a balanced mix of soft and hard power that is firmly grounded in "Contextual IQ," a term credited to Mayo and Nohria of Harvard.

The author defines leaders as those who help a group create and achieve goals. He states that leadership is an art, not a science. I especially liked the early phases, "good contextual intelligence broadens the bandwidth of leaders." He likens the relation of leaders and the led to surfers and the wave--can ride it but cannot move it this way and that.

Soft power, his signal contribution to the global dialog on international relations, is concisely defined as att5ractive power, yielding the power to ask instead of compell. He cites McGregor Burns in communicating that bullys who humiliate and intimidate are counter-productive, that "power-wielders are not leaders."

There is a fine review of leadership styles, attributes, and a reference to female leadership rising (I have long said that women make better intelligence analysts because they have smaller egos and a great deal more emphathy and intuition). He provides a matrix for evaluationg inter effectivenesss and ethics in relation to goals, means, and consequences.

I was struck the emphasis on emotional intelligence and the needed ability to rapidly evaluate loyalty networks that might not be immediately obvious. He distinguishes between public politics and private politics.

The book concludes with a really extra-special and lengthy disucssion of leadership ethics and morality. The last two pages prior to top-notch notes and bibliographies are 12 take-aways on leadership (he had the wit to avoid making them the 12 commandments) consisting of a fragment that I list below, and explicative annotation that I do not--the book is worthy of buying for these two pages and the moral-ethical conclusion alone, but certainly this is an important book that should be read any anyone seeking to lead others.

1. Good leadership matters
2. Leadership can be learned.
3. Leaders help create and achieve group goals.
4. Smart leaders need both soft and hard power skills.
5. Leaders depend on and are partly shaped by followers.
6. Appropriate style depends on context.
7. Consultative style costs time, but has three major benefits.
8. Leaders need both managerial and organizational skills.
9. Leadership for crisis conditions requires advanced preparations, emotional maturity, and the ability to distinguish between operational, analytical, and political contexts.
10. Information revolution is shifting context of postmodern organizations from command to co-optive style.
11. Reality testing, constant information seeking, and adjusting to change are essential but (buy the book).
12. Ethical leaders use consciences, common moral rules, and professional standards, but conflicting values can create "dirty hands."

I have just two nits with this book, neither of which is a buy-stopper:

A. On page 94 there is an annoyingly facile and superficial reference to the 9-11 commission citing cultural dissonance as one reason the FBI and CIA did not share information. As one who has both read and written extensively on this topic, not only have we all identified numerous examples of internal failures (e.g. the FBI rejected two walk-ins, one in Newark and one in Orlando, prior to the event; CIA sent line-crossers in and conclusively established there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction, but George Tenet parked his integrity on the same shelf Colin Powell used, and let the White House lie 935 times to the public and Congress). I have an edited book scheduled on Cultural Intelligence for 2009, this is an important topic, and merits better treatment from the author.

B. This book could usefully be expanded, or followed by another book, to integrate the books I list below, and the world-changing conditions they represent.
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization
The Knowledge Executive
The Collaborative Leadership Fieldbook
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
Five Minds for the Future
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Having said that, I consider this to be one of the author's top three immediately current and relevant books, and relatively priceless if we can get "Mr. Perfect" to read it (more than once), along with the author's two recent works, Understanding International Conflicts (6th Edition); and The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone.

Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls...
I had hoped that the silliness of "soft power" would be contained in political science. Surely the mature disciplines of leadership and management theory would be spared Joseph Nye's prose. What of McGregor's "Theory X and Theory Y," the Management Grid of Blake and Mouton, Karl Weick's Social-Psychology of Organizing, and the collective works of Drucker? Does Abraham Maslow ring a bell? Humanistic theory? Matrix management? Addled by years of "soft academic living" at Harvard, has Nye forgotten how to do a literature search?

Enough! Do you think we walk the halls of academe, like mindless zombies, muttering "Command & Control...?" Joe! We've been there and done that! Please, leave us alone!

"If you cut us, do we not bleed?" Ouch! An Emeritus from the English Department just hummed a copy of The Merchant of Venice at me, muttering: "Don't send him our way! He'll write a book about "Smart Shakespeare." But as famous Notre Dame coach once said, "Nobody, but nobody comes into our house and pushes us around!" No, we're not gonna take it!

Shades of the 1960's! I wake to a nightmare of angry sociologists and cultural anthropologists waving their dissertations and pitchforks in the hall, shouting "Yankee go home!" (He was from Harvard, you know. Maybe that explains it.) But it is not a dream. Nye has struck again, jumping disciplines like an academe pandemic. I can hear mocking laughter from the Political Science Department: "See! See what we have had to put up with?!!" Indeed! Misery does love company! The man has no shame. What's next, "soft fusion?" Take cover Gell-Mann, I hear he's gunning for a Nobel in physics. Ha! You laugh! "Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." Ouch! That Emeritus should be pitching for St. Louis!

Many Centuries earlier....
I feel it worthy to state that humans have been contemplating leadership techniques for centuries. In Joseph Nye Jr.'s excellent book, "The Powers to Lead" (Oxford University Press, New York, 2008, pg.11) he states, "Part of ancient Chinese wisdom is represented by Sun-Tzu, who wrote The Art of Warfare six centuries before the Christian era and concluded that the highest excellence is never having to fight because the commencement of battle signifies a political failure." And (pg. 21) "We can think of leadership as a process with three key components: leaders, followers, and contexts." Both of these are powerful statements but represent early teachings of great masters. The I Ching includes the martial within the cultural, and in classical Chinese political ideology, military strategy was a subordinate branch of social strategy. Thus context was of great interest to leaders of that age. Although The Art of Warfare states in the opening chapter: "The Way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so that they will share death and share life, without fear of danger" (Strategy Assessments), this was not necessarily through coercion, because many of the qualities needed for crisis management were also qualities needed for ordinary management. A complete education in China was believed to encompass both cultural and martial arts. A person might be both a military and civilian leader, simultaneously or at different times. In Chinese, this was called the combination of wen and wu. Mr. Nye does a compelling job of bringing the concepts of hard, soft, smart power and contextual intelligence into recent centuries, but reading the essays of great statesman and warriors like Zhuge Liang or Liu Ji (second century B.C.E) will transport you to a time when the powers to lead exercised keen judgment and applied leadership styles as needed to fit the situation at hand. Try also reading the Masters of Huainan for a unified science of life and leadership. Thanks Mr. Nye for bringing these concepts forward in time.