Product Description

Roberts's sensational New York Times bestseller shows how the legendary military commander's principles of leadership can be applied to contemporary business situations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32894 in Books
• Published on: 1990-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 110 pages

Review
H. Ross Perot ...The principles are timeless. -- Review

About the Author
Wess Roberts, Ph.D. is the international best-selling author of Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun, Straight A's Never Made Anybody Rich, and Victory Secrets of Attila the Hun.


Dr. Roberts has held senior management positions at major insurance and financial service companies on the West Coast. He served as a major in the U.S. Army where he was assigned for three years to the U.S. Army Combat Arms Training Board. As an adjunct professor at Southern Utah University, Utah State University, and Nova University, Dr. Roberts has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in business, education and psychology. He currently makes his home in Utah, where he writes and lectures on a variety of business and leadership topics.

Customer Reviews

The Title Grabbed Me, But You Should Be More Careful!
As a person who majored in history, I knew that very little is known about Attila the Hun. Having deliberately avoided the book for over a decade, it suddenly occurred to me that there might be a lot of interesting information here that I had been ignoring. So I read the book. I goofed! I should have skimmed a couple of chapters first.

There is nothing in here about Attila that I did not know when I started. And the leadership secrets are not based on anything Attila said, but the author's conclusions about what leaders should do. Each chapter is introduced with a little Attila vignette to help justify the title of the book, and provide some context. Sometimes it works, and often it doesn't.

Let me explain my rating system for the book. As a leadership book, I rated this book as two stars. The reason I rated it so low is that the book has over 200 aphorisms in it that are vague, pretty disconnected from today's world and usually contradict one another. For example, each of them is phrased in terms of what Attila and a Hun should do. On the other hand, at some point, I began to read the book as a satire on leadership books, and I thought it was pretty funny. On that account, I rated it as four stars. I would have rated it higher if it had been shorter or the chapter sequencing had made more sense to me. The chapter on surviving defeat comes after the chapter when Attila voluntarily removed himself from Italy after meeting the Pope, many years after the defeat that is discussed in the next chapter. But that comes as no surprise since the author has told you about both of these things many times before in this short book. If you average a 2 and a 4 star, that's a 3 star rating.

On the positive side, Attila did show remarkable flexibility in learning new strategies and tactics after the battle of Chalons (which was a horrible defeat for the Huns). If the book had focused on the lessons of that battle and its aftermath, this book could have been a lot more valuable.

However, if the Attila the Hun analogy fits, wear it. Any approach that helps you overcome your stalled thinking is a good one. This one didn't happen to carry me away.

If you do decide to read the book, the best two chapters are 9 and 10 on the responsibilities of a leader and decisiveness.

Donald Mitchell

Coauthor of The Irresistible Growth Enterprise and The 2,000 Percent Solution

(donmitch@fastforward400.com)

Informative, sometimes funny, book
I'm surprised at the negative reviews for this book. A lot of this book is written tongue-in-cheek (I doubt any manager wants to be known as the "scourge of God"): a sense of irony doesn't hurt when reading it. Anyway, I thought a lot of the maxims (this book is basically a book of maxims) were quite helpful: when to reward your employees, when not to; how greatness can be achieved through extreme of personality. I guess a lot of readers don't like the take-charge attitude of the author but in my mind it can spur on action. But I am not a manager and may be speaking from ignorance. In any case, I enjoyed this book as a vacation from the many predictable books you read on leadership. I also recommend Lincoln On Leadership by Donald Phillips.

suspension of disbelief
Whether or not the book has factual historical basis is beside the point. I approached this book with what they call in filmmaking as "suspension of disbelief". When read against the backdrop of ordinary experiences, most of the author's analogies and aphorisms amazingly make sense. Attila can exact obedience by just killing rivals and subordinates -- hardly the epitome of the leader. But he rose and survived among unthinking barbarians -- he demonstrated leadership even before he became one. To survive and lead amid trying circumstances is the essence of this book. The author detailed out the mechanics of Attila's leadership which is so credible you would willingly believe. Management gurus dissect leadership in complex paradigms and theories. Wess Robert's Attila simplified these in absolute truths--loyalty, courage, desire, emotional/physical stamina, empathy, decisiveness, anticipation, timing, competitivenes, self-confidence, accountability, responsibility, credibility, tenacity, dependability and stewardship. Attila exuded benign leadership when he gave up Rome and the world because of the word of the Pope. It would be hard to find another parallel in history.