Leadership for Leaders

Overview

This challenging book is based on research carried out over seven years with over 2,500 senior managers in ten different companies, in USA and Europe. Michael Williams establishes and explains the 7 key competency clusters that matter most today:

• Goal orientation
• Integrity
• Close engagement with others
• ‘Helicopter’ perception
• Resilient resourcefulness
• Personal ‘horsepower’
• Resonant communications

He also shows how much talent lies untapped in organisations and proposes methods of mobilising all this potential. He demonstrates how, for ultimate success, the key competencies need to be linked closely to:

• Personal consistency
• Discipline and integrity
• Intolerance of mediocrity
• A concern to build mutual trust
• Focused passion for the business
• Recognition of the importance of emotional intelligence

Content

Introduction

ONE: Close-quarter leadership

• Leading at close quarters
• Emotional intelligence – the basis of close-quarter leadership
• Leaders with high EQ and ‘Cutting Edge’
• Chapter one references
  

TWO: Leadership theories, role models – and common sense

• Professor John Adair
• Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard
• Noel Tichy
• Jim Collins
• Low-key ‘thinking’ leadership
• Experience and theory – a necessary synthesis
• Chapter two references
  

THREE: Leadership and the achievement ethic

• The work of professor Tom Paterson – a treasure unearthed
• Inward leader role
• Outward leader role
• Exemplar leader role
• Eccentric leader role
• Facilitator/follower
• Leaders as ‘re-inventors’
• Chapter three references
  

FOUR: ‘Buy-in’, not by-pass: the rules of engagement

• The leader’s role in engaging people and securing ‘buy-in’
• Change-leader strategy
• Buy-in strategy
• Knowledge and skill strategy
• Team building strategy
• Consolidation
• Reward strategy
• Chapter four references
  

FIVE: Great leaders develop more great leaders

• What do we mean by ‘talent’?
• When leaders’ strengths become weaknesses
• Leaders developing leaders
• Leadership potential
• Chapter five references

SIX: Leading innovation – taking the organization forward

• What inhibits or stimulates innovation
• S-T-R-E-T-C-H objectives: The stuff of innovation
• Imagination and creativity
• Innovation: Risk – reward correlations
• Chapter six references

SEVEN: Leadership – a matter of mindset

• ‘Horsepower, horsepower, horsepower’
• Developing a new leadership mindset
• Emotional intelligence: A cornerstone of the leadership mindset
• Chapter seven references
  

EIGHT: Making it happen – the leader’s job

• The leadership arenas
• Leaders as net-workers
• Leading the way to tomorrow
• Who have I learned – and continue to learn – from, about being a leader?
• Chapter eight references

Reviews

‘Mike Williams has written an outstanding book on leadership. It is clear, readable and full of sound advice. Both those on the threshold of leadership and those someway down the road should read these pages, for they will not find a more inspiring guidebook to the challenges of modern leadership in print today.’

Professor John Adair

‘Leadership for Leaders is a very informed, thoughtful and practical guide for private and public sector leaders. It will help them to better appreciate both the theory and the practice of this immensely important and vast subject. It’s clear that the book is a work of synthesis based on much experience and reflection. A very fine achievement.’

Yury Boshyk, formerly Professor at IMI Geneva and IMD Lausanne and Chairman of Global Executive Learning and the annual Global Forum on Executive Development and Business Driven Action Learning

‘I found this book to be both an informative and enjoyable read and, in answer to the question you pose at the beginning ‘Will it help to develop the leaders, who develop the people, who develop the business?’, the answer is a firm ‘yes’. I think from the ‘practitioner’s’ perspective, the book maps a clear path through the myriad of theories and concepts which abound about leadership. I particularly found Chapter 2 to be very useful in this context. Where the book is very good is that it gives the practising CEO some food for thought, rather than dictating theory to them. The “Dimensions to Management and Leadership’” Model (fig10 p58 ) and the summary chart (pp108 – 109), listing the thirteen activities for leaders to explore as to how they can foster talent, are both excellent examples of the guiding thought process, familiar throughout the book. Very enjoyable.’

Paul Winter, CEO, The Leadership Trust

Author

Mike Williams

Mike Williams has been a successful consultant for more than 25 years, specialising in leadership, team and organisational development. He has worked extensively with major corporations in the USA and both western and eastern Europe, including IBM, ICI, British Alcan, AT&T/ISTEL, GUS, McCain’s and Shroders.