The Drama of Leadership

Rating:
Summary: Reality proves it!
Review: At least my experience fits exactly to what the author reflects on her 6 year study!! In an easy to read style and an exciting manner the author develops a theory that is flexible enough to allow for individual differences and structured enough to help analyzing your organization. I like the qualitative view on organization as this aspect is usually neglected. The last organization I worked for developped the exact same way as the example given in the book!

Rating:
Summary: GREAT BOOK with NEW INSIGHT.
Review: I love this book for its clarity and new thinking. The language is engaging and the description is clear. It take a standing on Leadership types and dare to fight the conventional wisdom of leader-vs-manager.

This is a book on the thinking about the Leadership type, which describes its stregth, needs and weakeness within corporations.

The Artist, Craftmans and Technocrats. Most readers would like to think that he/she is the crossing between Artist n Craftmans and the book do warn us on this. please double check yourself and think again honestly.

This is not a very deep book (like Mitszberg: The Rise and Fall of Strategic Thinking), but also not a shallow book (like FISH or W-M-M-CHEESE, ONE MINUTE SERIES), but just right in between. Enjoyable to read.

And if not for anything else. the above explanation of the 3 types alone would shred new lights in your view of the leaders. And worth your time invested in reading it. The other important thing to point is that Leadership Type is not teachable or even changeble, so much for the leadership seminars. ( I believe this to some extend, that entrepreneurs are similarly -mostly- BORN and not made!)

The book did not give u a HOW TO do something, but let you think about leadership adn how people differ from each others.

A mandatory reading for management leader. and Psychology student focusing on management.

Rating:
Summary: A good theory of leadership
Review: One star for this book can be only explained if it touches you. We must remember that so strong negative answer is usually employed when we don't want to see some part of the reality. In fact, the book can help us to understand some of the maladies of the mainstream theories of leadership. Very smart book for intelligent readers.

The main shortcoming of the book is inherent to any taxonomy. Why three? Why not four?... However, classification is useful and we do not decline to use it.

Rating:
Summary: Refreshing perspective
Review: Patricia dives in and gives a clear perspective of what happens when organisations become unbalanced.

Re. a previous reviewer's question re the number of types, the reason there are three types is that was the number indicated by the data, via factor analysis. (ref. Artists, Craftsmen, and Technocrats, Appendix C, p.235)

I look forward to her next book.

Rating:
Summary: Reality proves it!
Review: Wether you like or don't like the book may depend very much on wether you are a technocrat, an artist or a craftsman. But I like the book mainly because it almost perfectly describes and interprets the developments within some organizations which I had and have to deal with.

Are Pitcher's theories good enough to be used for predictions, i.e. about the development of carreers? The book passed that test too.

In Germany the well known weekly magazine DIE ZEIT (1997/09/12, page 26) recommended the German edition of Pitcher's book ("Das Führungsdrama") to their readers.