Rating: 
Summary: A new, Improved, & User-Friendlier incarnation
Review: Serious scholars of leadership will already be well-acquainted with the path-breaking work of Ron Heifetz. His "Leadership W/out Easy Answers" and other significant contributions to "The Harvard Business Review," for instance, have already established him as one of the foremost authorities in the field. I believe that "Leadership W/out Easy Answers" is one of the top 5 works on leadership. I recommend it highly to any and all leaders, managers, and students with professional aspirations. "Leadership on the Line" reiterates several of the previous book's compelling themes--but with a more informal, user-friendlier tone. I'd recommend that discerning readers sample this (more recently published) one first, and then proceed to Heifetz's earlier title (publ'd in 1994) if they're curious to read more.
In their "Introduction" to this new volume, Heifetz and Linsky explain that "We wanted this second book to be more focused, more practical, and more personal [than "L'ship W/out Easy Answers"]. We hope this book will be accessible, eminently usable, and inspiring in your work and life." Happily, they've accomplished their mission this time around, too!
This narrative is even more readable, more anecdotal, and less jargon-laden than its "more academic" predecessor. It should thus reward an even broader audience of readers (including more committed "generalists").
If one of James MacGregor Burns's seminal contributions to the field was the distinction between transactional and transformational leadership, Heifetz's elucidation here of "adaptive vs. technical leadership" merits similar distinction, in my view. "Leadership on the Line" speaks to the heart and soul as well as the mind. Most of us are likely to have plenty to glean from the incisive leadership insights it offers.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally, a book on the risks of normal leadership
Review: Some may find this read difficult, with strained examples and perhaps a hidden agenda. At first I did too, but in reading the last chapter, I became convinced that the authors, Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, are sincere and have a genuine concern for the risks of leadership.
The book is written in three sections: 1) the dangers of leadership, 2) advice on how to handle those dangers, and 3) how leaders contribute "to their own demise."
These days many leaders conduct their craft without an awareness of the dangers of the position. This book will make the reader well aware of these dangers. In order to get things done leaders have to cause change, problem solve, if you will. The authors define a critical difference between the technical and adaptive aspects of problems.
Changing the technical aspects of a situation are easy, but when a leader seeks to cause an adaptive change, all heck breaks out and the risk to the leader increases exponentially. An adaptive change requires a change in attitude, values, and/or customs. Many of the difficult problems leaders face require a change in long held beliefs, tradition, and sometime security-the result, resistance.
This book alerts the leader to the perils of real leadership and provides solid advice on how to survive in the hostile environment sometimes created by real leadership.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Thank you for the line of survival. I am better able to comprehend the mind set and behaviors that contribute to a persons inhibitions to lead. I am now better equipped to lead in the midst of an ever changing environment.
Rating: 
Summary: No-nonsense guide to the art of leadership
Review: This book educates to inspire and lead. It is a motivated effort of describing individual challenges and strategic problems that crop up while attempting to put forth a positive sway. It is crucial to anyone attempting massive changes in the approach their company does business. Unlike many books about leadership, this is more pragmatic about the risks and rewards linked to reform an organization. Ability & Courage to innovate despite of a conventional ladder,is all about true leadership. This is a no-nonsense guide to the art of leadership combining vibrant stories with logical conclusions. Vivek Dixit, Stanford.edu
Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: This book is not neccessarily comprehensive on the topic of leadership. As a person who has read around 10 books on leadership, I am beggining to realize the topic is far more complex to be contained in a single book. This book addresses on aspect of leadership, change managment, better than any book I have read. As the book points out, leadership is about change (which is too categoric for me to totally agree). A good leader brings change only at a rate which the stakeholders of the change can absorb it, and failure to do so will result in the ousting of the leader. This simple concept was quite revealing to me and deserving of the price of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Exercise your leadership!
Review: This book you may change your definition of "leadership" slightly. In this book we can see not only how Presidents exercised their leadership but also that middle management class people are on the line as well to achieve their goals and they definitely used their leadership. Those people are analyzed in the same manner regardless of their social status.
Same people, both famous and anonymous, appear in the book again and again in different occasions as different examples. The authors weaved them into the narrative story. Sometime they failed, the other time they succeeded. You would feel them closely, even Presidents.
Further more, we need to be our own master and for that sake we need to be able to manage ourselves. It means you must exercise leadership for yourself! Since same people and story appeared several times, it might bother you. But finally the message of this book would be embedded in you.
Rating:
Summary: "Staying in the game"...and then winning it
Review: Those who read Heifetz's previously published Leadership Without Easy Answers will be interested to know that the final section in that brilliant book ("Staying Alive") led to the development of this book which Heifetz co-authored with Linsky. "We wanted this second book to be more focused, more practical, and more personal. We hope this book will be accessible, eminently usable, and inspiring in your life and work." The material is presented within three Parts: The Challenge (which explains "why leadership is so dangerous and how people get taken out of the game"), The Response (which provides "a series of action steps designed to reduce the risk of getting pushed aside"), and Body and Soul ("which discusses "ways that people contribute to their own demise"), followed by a Notes section filled with especially informative annotations. Pogo once said "we have met the enemy and he is us." More often than not, I think that is true. I also think that most human limits are self-imposed. That is probably what Henry Ford had in mind when he observed "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right." According to Heifetz and Linsky, "To lead is to live dangerously because when leadership counts, when you lead people through difficult change, you challenge what people hold dear -- their daily habits, tools, loyalties, and ways of thinking -- with more to offer perhaps than a possibility. Moreover, leadership often means exceeding the authority you are given to tackle the challenge at hand. People push back when you disturb the personal and institution equilibrium they know. And people resist in all kinds of creative and unexpected ways that can get you taken out of the game: pushed aside, undermined, or eliminated." Throughout human history, most of the greatest leaders were "eliminated" precisely because they were perceived to be intolerable threats to what James O'Toole calls "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." Draw up a list of the 10-15 greatest leaders in history. How many of them died of natural causes? On my own list, only Winston Churchill and he was twice voted out of office amidst ridicule and even contempt. One of this book's greatest value-added benefits is the brief summary of key ideas which concludes each chapter. I strongly recommend that the book be re-read within 2-3 weeks; also, that at least the chapter summaries be reviewed weekly thereafter. It is important to understand that Heifetz and Linsky view the subject of leadership in a much wider and deeper context than one normally encounters in a business book. Consider these brief remarks with which they conclude: " Opportunities for leadership are available to you, and to us, every day. But putting yourself on the line is difficult work, for the dangers are real. Yet the work has nobility and the benefits, for you and for those around you, are beyond measure. We have written this book out of admiration and respect for you and your passion. We hope that the words on these pages have provided both practical advice and inspiration; and that you have better means now to lead., protect yourself, and keep your spirit alive. May you enjoy with a full heart the fruits of your labor. The world needs you." Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read Heifetz's previous book, Leadership Without Easy Answers. Also David Maister's Practice What You Preach, James O'Toole's Leading Change, and Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan's Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done.
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