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Stanley McChrystal, the retired US Army general and bestselling author of Team of Teams, profiles thirteen of history’s great leaders, including Walt Disney, Coco Chanel, and Robert E. Lee, to show that leadership is not what you think it is—and never was.
Stan McChrystal served for thirty-four years in the US Army, rising from a second lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division to a four-star general, in command of all American and coalition forces in Afghanistan. During those years he worked with countless leaders and pondered an ancient question: “What makes a leader great?” He came to realize that there is no simple answer.
With Plutarch’s Lives as his model, McChrystal looks at paired sets of leaders who followed unconventional paths to success. For instance . . . Walt Disney and Coco Chanel, Maximilien Robespierre and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Boss Tweed and Margaret Thatcher, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr., and finally explores his former hero, Robert E. Lee, from his exceptional military career to leading an army to defeat in service of an immoral cause. He uses their stories to explore how leadership works in practice and to challenge the myths that complicate our thinking about this critical topic.
Leaders will help you take stock of your own leadership, whether you’re part of a small team or responsible for an entire nation.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
October 23, 2018 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780525534389
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780525534389
- File size: 29152 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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September 15, 2018
Debunking myths about leadership.Drawing largely on standard biographies, four-star general McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, 2015, etc.), former Navy Seal Eggers, and Marine Corps veteran Mangone offer lively, succinct profiles of 13 leaders from diverse fields with the goal of examining assumptions about leadership as well as "challeng[ing] traditional leadership models." Structured to emulate Plutarch's Parallel Lives, the book pairs leaders to compare and contrast their qualities: Walt Disney and Coco Chanel represent business founders; Albert Einstein and Leonard Bernstein, geniuses; French revolutionary Robespierre and Iraqi jihadi Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, zealots; 15th-century Chinese fleet commander Zheng He and 19th-century American abolitionist Harriet Tubman, heroes; New York politician "Boss" Tweed and Margaret Thatcher, power brokers; and Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Jr., reformers. Confederate general Robert E. Lee, once "a symbol of stoic commitment to duty" whom McChrystal grew up admiring, merits a chapter of his own. Rather than devise a checklist of leadership traits, the authors ask why each individual emerged from their particular context as a leader: "What was it about the situation that made this style of leadership effective?" They dispel the idea of leadership "as a process-driven, action-oriented practice...of influencing a group toward some defined outcome." Instead, they assert that leaders provide "a meaningful sense of direction" that is "clarifying and comforting." In all cases, they see that to understand the power of a leader, "one must look away from the leader and toward the followers and institutions that enable them." Leaders may be courageous and charismatic, but beyond those attributes, "they deliver something" that followers need or desire. Followers, therefore, must hold leaders accountable and "shape and confine their leaders' styles." Leadership, the authors maintain, cannot be reduced to a formula but "is contextual and dynamic" and "more about the symbolism, meaning, and future potential leaders hold for their system, and less about the results they produce."A convincing rebuttal of the "Great Man" theory of history.COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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