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Rating: 
Summary: Managers can read books, you know!
Review: I get the feeling that some of the comments by readers suggest that managers cannot understand academic books. We can, if we buckle down and read them. Sure, the quick one-liners of a Covey or a Blanchard are cool and easy to understand. After a while, though, those books become a bit empty. Too much of "how too" and not enough of "why".
I kind of liked the challenge of reading a book that is written by researchers. All of the chapters (14 in total) were quite easy to follow except for the second chapter (about definitions of leadership), which I skipped, and also the last part of the third chapter (on using science to study leadership). The other chapters were very applied. I liked the chapters on traits, information processing, contingency models, transformational and visionary leadership, culture, and ethics. The Bennis chapter is pretty good too.
Rating:
Summary: A book to help you evaluate other leadership books.
Review: Some of the reviewers below are bit too excited about this book. Okay, it is a good book but a bit heavy (I got a hard cover)! For the almost 500 pages you do get good bang for your buck ($50/500=$0.10 per page). What I liked about the book is the way it's laid out. It's pretty well organized and covers leadership from many angles. That's an advantage of this book. It doesn't have one message but many messages. The authors of the chapters know what they are talking about. The editors are psychologists/leadership specialists and have good credetials from Yale University. The downside (for some an advantage) is that it looks more at leadership models and says a lot about the state-of-the-art regarding leadership research but not about practice (well the book is not about that and the authors don't claim to do that).
This book will help you if you want to know what leadership model to invest your money in. It's a bit like a consumer car guide. Tells you what's good and what's not so good. If you have this book then you know how to spend your money wisely on other leadership books.
Rating: 
Summary: Helpful for those interested in the history of leadership.
Review: This book has been very helpful. Especially the first chapter. It's the first time, really, that I have understood how leadership, as a body of research, evolved. Antonakis, Ciansiolo, and Sternberg divided the ways in which leadership models have been developed into 8 schools, classifying them according to the period they generated research interest and specifically how popular they were. Their classificaiton scheme has made me able to sort out and distinguish the various models of leadership. The leadership schools include:*Trait (traits/attributes of leaders)
*Behavioral (types of behaviors linked to leadership)
*Contingency (how the situation is a moderator of leadership)
*Contextual (contextual factors inhibiting leadership displayed)
*Skeptics (those arguing that leadership doesn't matter/exist)
*Relational (describing the nature of relations between leaders/followers)
*New Leadership (charismatic and transformational leadership)
*Information processing (cognitive perspectives of leadership) The book is based on the above 8 schools, and more. I think the book is realy useful for someone who is interested in leadership from a historical or a research perspective.
Rating:
Summary: Helpful for those interested in the history of leadership.
Review: This book has been very helpful. Especially the first chapter. It's the first time, really, that I have understood how leadership, as a body of research, evolved. Antonakis, Ciansiolo, and Sternberg divided the ways in which leadership models have been developed into 8 schools, classifying them according to the period they generated research interest and specifically how popular they were. Their classificaiton scheme has made me able to sort out and distinguish the various models of leadership. The leadership schools include: *Trait (traits/attributes of leaders)
*Behavioral (types of behaviors linked to leadership)
*Contingency (how the situation is a moderator of leadership)
*Contextual (contextual factors inhibiting leadership displayed)
*Skeptics (those arguing that leadership doesn't matter/exist)
*Relational (describing the nature of relations between leaders/followers)
*New Leadership (charismatic and transformational leadership)
*Information processing (cognitive perspectives of leadership) The book is based on the above 8 schools, and more. I think the book is realy useful for someone who is interested in leadership from a historical or a research perspective.
Rating:
Summary: Not the kind of book you?d buy at an airport bookstore!
Review: This book provides an accessible review of leadership. Various models are presented that take stock of the past and the present. Proposed future models and approaches and also discussed. The book will appeal to practitioners but it is mostly targeted to researchers or human resources specialists. More than half the chapters will be easily read by practitioners (e.g., the chapter by Bennis on authentic leadership, Eagly and Carli on gender differences, Den Hartog and Dickson on leadership and culture, Cuilla on ethics, London and Maurer on leadership development, Sashkin on transformational leadership, etc.). The more scientific chapters are also readable and quite useful. Not in the sense that they give a toolbox to managers about what to do to improve their leadership but on knowing which leader models are related to effectiveness (useful for interventions), traits or personality characteristics that predict leadership (useful for selection), and so forth. This book is definitely not a "how to guide" that you'd find at an airport bookstore. Rather, it is a book you'd find at a business school library. As a director of organizational development in a large manufacturing multinational, I recommend this book in particular because the authors have ensured to present models that have been demonstrated to work based on scientific criteria. In one of the chapters (on Methods for Studying Leadership, I believe) they make the analogy that using leadership products is like using medicines. Educated and discerning people would not take medicines prescribed by a witchdoctor. Unfortunately, practitioners listen more to witchdoctors (consultants who are rather convincing and motivated to make a quick buck) and less to medical doctors (trained specialists who know what works).
Rating:
Summary: Not the kind of book you¿d buy at an airport bookstore!
Review: This book provides an accessible review of leadership. Various models are presented that take stock of the past and the present. Proposed future models and approaches and also discussed. The book will appeal to practitioners but it is mostly targeted to researchers or human resources specialists. More than half the chapters will be easily read by practitioners (e.g., the chapter by Bennis on authentic leadership, Eagly and Carli on gender differences, Den Hartog and Dickson on leadership and culture, Cuilla on ethics, London and Maurer on leadership development, Sashkin on transformational leadership, etc.). The more scientific chapters are also readable and quite useful. Not in the sense that they give a toolbox to managers about what to do to improve their leadership but on knowing which leader models are related to effectiveness (useful for interventions), traits or personality characteristics that predict leadership (useful for selection), and so forth. This book is definitely not a "how to guide" that you'd find at an airport bookstore. Rather, it is a book you'd find at a business school library. As a director of organizational development in a large manufacturing multinational, I recommend this book in particular because the authors have ensured to present models that have been demonstrated to work based on scientific criteria. In one of the chapters (on Methods for Studying Leadership, I believe) they make the analogy that using leadership products is like using medicines. Educated and discerning people would not take medicines prescribed by a witchdoctor. Unfortunately, practitioners listen more to witchdoctors (consultants who are rather convincing and motivated to make a quick buck) and less to medical doctors (trained specialists who know what works).
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: This book seems to be different. It is an edited book on leadership that covers important themes. Normally, edited books are put together in a slap-bang way--what makes them sell is the weight of the individuals chapters. How the chapters are put together is oftentimes irrelevant. This book is not like that at all. This book's strength is that the chapters cover the range of theories and approaches necessary to really understand what leadership is about in coordinated way. It is similar to Yukl's book (Leadership in Organizations) but written by many authors. More importantly, this book is written by individuals who rely on the scientific literature--it is grounded in research and not opinion. It is not a "pop" psychology guide like much of the stuff out there today (e.g., the hype about emotional intelligence, Level 5 leaders, or whatever, which has almost put me off reading books on leadership). Nor is this book a overly technical academic guide. It is a serious, scientific reference book on leadership. I am fascinated by leadership as a topic, both from an academic and a practical point of view. I own many books on leadership and this, I can predict, will be a good one. Buy it...if only for Warren Bennis's concluding chapter "The crucibles of authentic leadership." When you read it you'll see what I mean!!
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: This is quite an interesting book on leadership. Most chapters are quite easy to follow if you are not an expert on leadership.
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