LEADERSHIP: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence June 15, 2010

LEADERSHIP
Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence

Authors: Kellerman, Barbaral
ISBN-13: 978-0-07-163384-0
ISBN-10: 0071633847
©2010 | 1st Edition | 352 pages , Hardcover
Pub Date: July 2010
Price: US$ 34.95
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Indispensable advice for business professionals—from history’s wisest leaders

A highly regarded scholar of leadership and the qualities shared by outstanding leaders, Barbara Kellerman provides expert analysis of the works of history’s greatest authorities on leadership—theorists and practitioners alike.

On Leadership contains writings from some of history’s most influential figures, ranging from Lincoln to Lenin, Hobbes to Havel, and Machiavelli to Marx. Kellerman chose her entries based on their contemporary significance regarding power, authority, and influence, and she clearly explains how today’s business leader can put the words of the masters to practical use.

Providing a remarkably wide scope of perspectives, including history, psychology, philosophy, and government, On Leadership is an eminently instructive book for any leader in any field.

Part I of Leadership consists of writings about leadership:

• Lao Tzu—on how to lead lightly
• Plato—on tyrants and philosopher-kings
• Machiavelli—on the preservation of power

In Part II, you’ll find examples of what Kellerman uniquely identifies as writing as leadership—works and words that thanks to their persuasiveness and power, changed the world:

• Thomas Paine—Common Sense
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton—”Declaration of Sentiments”
• Rachel Carson—Silent Spring

Part III presents leaders in action—individuals who seized the moment to captivate, motivate, and lead with their singular personal power to persuade:

• Abraham Lincoln—on war and redemption
• Elizabeth I—on gender and power
• Vaclav Havel—on the power of the powerless

The selections themselves, each a classic of the leadership literature, together with Kellerman’s expert commentary, make Leadership required reading for those who want to learn about, reflect on, and even apply the greatest leadership literature lessons, ever.

Endorsement

“Bravo to Barbara Kellerman! Building upon a lifetime of scholarship and upon a popular course she has created at Harvard, Kellerman brings between the covers of a single volume the world’s classic literature on leadership. Every thoughtful leader will find deep, rich rewards here.” — David Gergen, Director, Center for Public Leadership Harvard Kennedy School, Former Presidential Adviser

About the Author

Barbara Kellerman (Cambridge, MA) is the James MacGregor Burns Lecturer in Public Leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was the Founding Executive Director of the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, from 2000 to 2003; from 2003 to 2006, she served as the Center’s Research Director. Kellerman has held professorships at Fordham, Tufts, Fairleigh Dickinson, George Washington, and Uppsala Universities. She also served as Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Fairleigh Dickinson, and as Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at the Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland.

Kellerman received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. (1975, in Political Science) degrees from Yale University. She was awarded a Danforth Fellowship and three Fulbright fellowships. At Uppsala (1996-97), she held the Fulbright Chair in American Studies. Kellerman was cofounder of the International Leadership Association (ILA), and is author and editor of many books including Leadership: Multidisciplinary Perspectives; The Political Presidency: Practice of Leadership; and Reinventing Leadership: Making the Connection Between Politics and Business. She has appeared often on media outlets such as CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, NPR, Reuters and BBC, and has contributed articles and reviews to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, and Harvard Business Review.

Her most recent books are Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters (2004); a co-edited (with Deborah Rhode) volume, Women & Leadership: State of Play and Strategies for Change (2007); and Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders (2008). Kellerman speaks to audiences around the world, including in recent years in Berlin, London, Moscow, Rome, Sao Paolo, and Shanghai. She holds an Honorary Degree from Ripon College, and is currently ranked by Leadership Excellence as 6th on the list of the 100 “best minds on leadership.”

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