Product Description

Leading-Edge Thought From the World's Best Business Minds "A one-stop shopping guide that shows how leaders can be successful in the year 2000 and beyond."
--American Society for Training and Development

Discover what Stephen Covey, Ken Blanchard, Peter Senge, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, and other business-world luminaries have to say about the direction of leadership for the future. The Drucker Foundation brings together the best business minds in more than 30 never-before-published essays, each one offering a special perspective on leadership and a unique glimpse into the future.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #285565 in Books
• Published on: 1997-08-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780787909352
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Booklist
The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management was founded in 1990, with its mission to "help the social sector achieve excellence in performance and build responsible leadership." Hesselbein, former CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA and now head of the Drucker Foundation, and her coeditors have attracted an impressive roster of contributors. Thirty-seven notables, such as Peter Senge, Charles Handy, Rosabeth Kanter, and Stephen Covey, offer their views on leadership, examining what the organization of the future will be like and how leaders might be developed. Though they target present and potential leaders of so-called third-sector organizations, these 31 previously unpublished essays will be of definite interest to those in government and the corporate world as well. David Rouse

Review
"An exciting exposition of numerous ideas on leadership that can nourish the reader spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally. The book is richer for its contributions from diverse leadership thinkers--academics, consultants, and practitioners.... It can offer a challenge to the reader wishing to become more like the leaders whom these numerous authors profile." -Academy of Management Executive

"The Leader of the Future is a thought-provoking collection of essays that gets readers up to speed on the most important trends facing today's leaders. It's a one-stop shopping guide that shows how leaders can be successful." -Training & Development

From the Author
The Leader of the Future

For over twenty years, I’ve worked with organizations of all kinds as a leadership development consultant and executive coach. Throughout this time, I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter what kind of organization you work in; you will find opportunities to learn about leadership from all organizations--public, private, and nonprofit.

In The Leader of the Future, my co-editors, Frances Hesselbein and Dick Beckhard, and I have gathered together acclaimed authors who offer their unique perspectives on leadership. These authors demonstrate how leaders emerge from within organizations, how leadership roles are defined, and how leaders inspire hope and purpose. Peter Drucker begins the book by breaking the myth that only a lucky few can decipher the leadership code by pointing out and explaining two interesting aspects of leadership: first, that leadership must and can be learned; and second, that there isn’t one specific style, trait, or personality that determines successful leadership.

The Leader of the Future is a book about the future quality of our lives, our businesses, our organizations, and our society, and the leadership required to move us into the exciting unknown. In it, we’ve gathered the best ideas of the best authors, practitioners, consultants, academics, and philosophers to help today’s executives and managers fathom the future of leadership.

--Marshall Goldsmith

Customer Reviews

"Leadership must be learned and can be learned"
'The Leader of the Future' adresses a significant and timely topic. It should be on every manager's must-read list.

Peter F.Drucker writes in his foreword, "Leadership must be learned and can be learned-and this, of course, is what this book was written and should be used for." And hence, he defines simple but basic characteristics of effective leaders:

1. The only definition of a 'leader' is someone who has 'followers.' Some people are thinkers. Some are prophets. Both roles are important and badly needed. But without followers, there can be no leaders.

2. An effective leader is not someone who is loved or admired. He or she is someone whose followers do the right things. Popularity is not leadership. 'Results' are.

3. Leaders are highly visible. They therefore set 'examples.'

4. Leadership is not rank, privileges, titles, or money. It is 'responsibility.'

After this excellent foreword, Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith and Richard Beckhard divide this seminal book into four parts. Here, they note that "These parts have been chosen in a somewhat arbitrary manner. We deliberately gave the authors a free hand, and our revisions have been only mirror. The authors are all experts in their own right, and we wanted you to hear their views in an unfiltered form."

It is a great chance to read never before published essays of 37 distinguished authors under one roof.

Highly recommended.

the best of the leader books
Having read about 6 leadership books in a row, I can say with this limited perspective that this is the best overall. These are great essays by a wide variety of major leaders -- every person has something significant to say about leadership and taken together, the reader can put together a detailed and rich picture about what makes a real leader. One encouraging thought is that great leaders benefit by having and creating other leaders -- no need to fear too many good leaders. So, everyone can benefit by learning how to become a leader and the change will be better for everyone involved. Each essay is short, so taken together, they are very digestible. The writing is good all around, but it's really the insights and examples from proven leaders that makes this so easy to use as a blueprint or study of leadership. Top notch ideas, well presented. Any one who serves or hopes to serve as a leader would do well by reading this book.

The Future Is Now
The Drucker Foundation in 1996 asked leadership experts and proven leaders in the private sector to contribute to a leadership compendium, the proceeds of which would be donated to charity. The theme is clear from the title: what will the leader of the future look like, and what skills will he or she need? Over 30 authors answered the call and together provide a surprisingly consistent - if occasionally contradictory - view of tomorrow's organizations and their leadership needs.

The benefit of this approach is that it forces the authors to cut to the chase. Far too many leadership/management books waste space with folksy anecdotes and maddening metaphors. These are, thankfully, generally absent from The Leader of the Future, leaving almost 300 pages of substance for the reader. Another plus is the reader's ability to find new leadership authors that appeal to him or her that might otherwise have gone overlooked.

According to these experts, the business world is changing at a pace not seen in generations. (This refrain, I admit, gets old rather quickly and makes the experts seem like leaders of the past at points.) In order for organizations to survive and thrive, they need a new type of leadership. Today, CEOs and heads of organizations are the leaders. Tomorrow, they argue, CEOs will need a new set of skills, and anyone at any level in the organization will be called on to lead. Globalization, technology, mobile jobs, and an unprecedented amount of information mean that no one person can be "the" decisionmaker. Instead, organizations need to behave like market-economy nation-states: they need to be less hierarchical, allow internal competition, give their employees more decisionmaking authority, and train their employees to make informed decisions.

The idea of training is key - virtually all of the authors agree that leaders are made, not born. At the same time, they argue that all leaders have certain qualities, including high energy, vision, and other qualities that are hard to teach. Perhaps this is why one chapter focuses on the underanalyzed quality of followership. Certain segments are broad and theoretical, others offer concrete proposals to develop leaders of the future.

What does all of this mean for the average reader? Many organizations are still hierarchical with strict rules and regulations. There is, one could argue, only so far we can go towards decentralizing, flattening and empowering. But that would be yesterday's way of thinking. The leader of the future will find ways to work within these constraints, will have a vision of the organization that will guide him or her, and will allow for the empowerment of subordinates. This somewhat populist view of the leader of the future will at a minimum provoke the reader to consider what kind of leader he or she is and whether he or she is prepared to be a leader of the future.

The Leader of the Future is one of the few books on leadership that is worth buying. Borrow it or buy it, but read it today to be prepared for tomorrow.