Understanding Leadership : Paradigms and Cases

Rating:
Summary: An interesting read and great text book
Review: I've just finished my first semester teaching leadership with this book. The book surpassed my wildest expectations. It is the best text book I've used for any class. My students even liked it! It has just enough detail and theoretic background, but more importantly it allows one to adopt a more subjective and personal approach to the topic. This is just what is needed for beginning to learn leadership and just where most textbooks on this topic fail. The paradigms approach used in the book really stuck with the students and allowed them to think much more deeply about all the other readings that I used for class. (I'd suggest the Harvard Business Review book that collects several of the best HBR articles on leadership as a great companion piece.) This book provided a rich framework that made for excellent class discussions. I didn't use the cases extensively this semester, but the very positive reactions to the three that I did use will encourage me to use more of them when I teach the class next year.