Warren G. Bennis and Robert Townsend, Reinventing Leadership: Strategies to Empower the Organization. Collins Business, 2005.
Referenced in: Empowering Leadership
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
This is a readable and often witty distillation of the principles which Bennis, author of On Becoming A Leader, and Townsend, author of Up the Organization, have discussed in their other books.
Reinventing Leadership is arranged in the format of questions such as “What is the difference between Managing and Leading” (which includes Bennis’ classic distinctions and interdependencies), followed by short answers and interviews between Bennis and Townsend, followed by dialogue starters, role-plays, that encourage assessment and spirited debate among reader groups. The content focuses on the changing leadership context through several themes:
- Social architecture that generates intellectual capital
- Moving from control-order-predict (COP) bureaucracy to acknowledge-create-empower (ACE)
- Positive self-regard in leaders
- Energizing followers to make vision a reality
- Demonstrating trust in those you lead
- Creating permissive and empowering environments
- Managing crises successfully to foster change
- Finding the treasures that lie on the other side of failures and obstacles
Chapter 7, “Leading the Transformation,” is an excellent brief description of the characteristics of effective new-era organizations. “The 21-day Plan” in the appendix, should probably be called “The 21-Phase Plan” as it takes years to accomplish what is laid out, but it is a useful set of exercises. For those who want quick access to the insights of two seasoned leaders and authors, this is a good place to start. Those who have read their previous works may appreciate the abridgement as a kind of “Cliff’s Notes” to Bennis and Townsend.
From the Publisher
In Reinventing Leadership, Bennis and Townsend discuss their concise leadership plan for the 21st century that reinvented leadership strategies and aims to empower both employees and organization. They focus on:
- moving away from conventional standards of business practice
- building trust
- finding a mentor to encourage reflective backtalk
- rewarding accomplishment
About the Author
Warren G. Bennis is university professor and founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. He is also chairman of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School and Distinguished Research Fellow at the Harvard Business School. He has written more than twenty-five books on leadership, change, and creative collaboration including Leaders, which was recently designated by the Financial Times as one of the top 50 business books of all time. His most recent book is Geeks & Geezers.
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