Category: Leadership

The Charisma Factor: How to Develop Your Natural Leadership Ability asserts that charismatic leadership has been mischaracterized by being limited to a gift of the select few. In the book, the authors attempt to identify the traits of charismatic leaders that can be emulated by any leader. Richardson and Thayer, the authors first contend that…

The Way of the Shepherd: 7 Ancient Secrets to Managing Productive People by Kevin Leman and William Pentak provides timeless council on leadership from the sage Dr. Neumann, highly successful CEO, who mentors a young business reporter fresh from college. Recently acquiring a new assignment at a large firm, the young protégé becomes quickly aware that…

Compendium of Harvey’s The Abilene Paradox counters the litany of books on conflict management, divulging the insidious side of agreement management. The author, Jerry Harvey, contends that group agreement can be no less debilitating, and provides some prescriptive antidotes. Setting around a domino table in the sweltering summer heat of Coleman, Texas, Dr. Harvey endures…

Compendium on Senges’ The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization addresses the essentials of a healthy, growing organization. He asserts that when personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking converge, a dynamic is unleashed to move any institution forward. For him, the often overlooked, fifth discipline is…

Compendium on Kim & Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant is a persuasive call for schools and businesses to rethink their market strategies. W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne (K&M), the co-authors and Harvard Business pro-fessors, contend that successful companies in the new economy are not those…

Supervision for Learning: A Performance-Based Approach to Teacher Development and School Improvement by James MAseltine and Judith O Faryniarz In Supervision for Learning, the authors reaffirm the latest research on teacher accountability and the impact on student learning. They advocate a system entitled, “Performance-Based Supervision & Evaluation (PBSE).” In this system, the place to begin the…

Compendium on Friedman’s The World is Flat. In this New York Times’ Best Seller, Thomas Friedman argues that there has been a fundamental shift in both global macro- and microeconomic structures. Using an array of examples making this shift, he warns those who have failed to recognize the course change. Friedman believes the world is flat…

Summation of Collins’ Good to Great In this book, the author studied hundreds of the top companies in the country and contends that there are predictors that make a company move from being merely a good company to one that is great. First, Collins notes that turning around the fortunes of a company relies heavily…