Pastor and popular blogger, Ron Edmondson exposes some of the common misunderstandings of leadership through stories from his own experiences, helping leaders develop healthier patterns of individual leadership. Being a leader involves much more than holding a title. And simply having a leader doesn't ensure success. This reality has never been more prevalent in the church than now, when so many churches are considered to be plateaued or dying. Pastor and popular blogger, Ron Edmondson believes this is due to a misunderstanding of what leadership is and what it isn't. In his work with hundreds of pastors and churches, the most common need he encounters is the need for more effective leadership in the local church. Seminaries may prepare pastors to preach, just as colleges may prepare teachers to teach, but who prepares pastors to lead? Simply stated: The church needs better leadership. In The Mythical Leader, Edmondson exposes some of the most common misunderstandings of leadership, shares stories from his own experiences, and will help church leaders develop healthier patterns to improve their individual leadership. While most people may have a preliminary understanding of many of these myths, they often are not lived out with a great degree of depth in the life of the church leader. Don't fall prey to these myths! If gone untreated they can be the very thing that prevents a good leader from leading well.

Can we really run organizations without leaders? Yes, says organizational consultant Jeffery Nielson in this provocative book. According to Nielsen, it's time to stop structuring businesses as "rank-based" organizations run by a privileged elite who are so isolated from the front lines that they are downright counterproductive. Debunking the leadership myth, Nielsen calls for an end to leader-based corporate hierarchies, which foster secrecy, encourage miscommunication, and steal the joy and dignity from work. His new paradigm is the "peer-based" organization. No matter how you feel about Nielsen's theory of leaderless organizations, you are sure to find this book thought provoking. It will challenge your assumptions about the role of leadership in modern organizations.

From one of the world's preeminent political historians, a magisterial study of political leadership around the world from the advent of parliamentary democracy to the age of Obama. All too frequently, leadership is reduced to a simple dichotomy: the strong versus the weak. Yet, there are myriad ways to exercise effective political leadership -- as well as different ways to fail. We blame our leaders for economic downfalls and praise them for vital social reforms, but rarely do we question what makes some leaders successful while others falter. In this magisterial and wide-ranging survey of political leadership over the past hundred years, renowned Oxford politics professor Archie Brown challenges the widespread belief that strong leaders -- meaning those who dominate their colleagues and the policy-making process -- are the most successful and admirable. In reality, only a minority of political leaders will truly make a lasting difference. Though we tend to dismiss more collegial styles of leadership as weak, it is often the most cooperative leaders who have the greatest impact. Drawing on extensive research and decades of political analysis and experience, Brown illuminates the achievements, failures and foibles of a broad array of twentieth century politicians. Whether speaking of redefining leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Margaret Thatcher, who expanded the limits of what was politically possible during their time in power, or the even rarer transformational leaders who played a decisive role in bringing about systemic change -- Charles de Gaulle, Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela, among them -- Brown challenges our commonly held beliefs about political efficacy and strength. Overturning many of our assumptions about the twentieth century's most important figures, Brown's conclusions are both original and enlightening. The Myth of the Strong Leader compels us to reassess the leaders who have shaped our world - and to reconsider how we should choose and evaluate those who will lead us into the future.

How leaders from the best workplaces build trust in their organizations The Trustworthy Leader reveals the benefits organizations enjoy when trustworthy behavior is practiced consistently by their leaders. Drawing from examples from the Best Companies to Work For, Lyman, cofounder of Great Place to Work Institute, explains that being trustworthy means that leaders' behaviors are rooted in their commitment to the value of trust and not simply in an imitation of the practices of others. She identifies six elements that reflect a leader's trustworthiness: honor, inclusion, engaging followers, sharing information, developing others, and moving through uncertainty to pursue opportunities. Features leaders from great companies such as REI, Wegman's, R.W. Baird, TDIndustries, and more Based on more than 20 years of rigorous research into the value of trust in companies large and small and its link to financial and organizational performance Published to coincide with the release of the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For 2012 list This book offers a key to developing high levels of trust, a critical endeavor in an age when seemingly every day a story of a leader's lapse in ethical behavior makes headlines.

Establish credibility as the new family business leader Myths & Mortals, Family Business Leadership and Succession Planning provides insights and strategies for successors of family businesses. Successors often find themselves in the shadow of their parents making it difficult to establish credibility in the family business and tap into their own strengths. The stress of emulating a parent begins to clash with who they are and who they want to be as a leader. Written by internationally known business strategist and succession planning expert Andrew Keyt, this guide shows you how to establish credibility, take your place at the head of the table, and run your business your way. In groundbreaking research, Keyt interviewed more than 25 successors of family business legends including Massimo Ferragamo, Bill Wrigley Jr., Christie Hefner, and John Tyson to find out how they overcame the challenges successors commonly face.The analysis from that study formed the basis for the strategies presented here—to help you win the loyalty of those stuck in the old way of doing business, and still focused on their former leader's vision. You'll learn how to take charge without sacrificing your own leadership style, and how to get everyone on board with your vision for the business. Growing up in the shadow of legendary family business leaders creates a unique challenge for successors to the leadership position. You cannot remove the emotional power of family dynamics from the business, but you can change how you choose to react to it. To be successful, you need to create a sense of identity and credibility, and step out of the shadows of your forbears. This guide provides strategies for doing just that, so you can take the reins and be the effective leader your business needs. Overcome the obstacles successors commonly face Win over those still loyal to their former leader Build your own credibility, separate from your parents Develop your own leadership style and do business your way Credibility is elemental to business leadership, but establishing that credibility is the successor's biggest challenge. Myths & Mortals, Family Business Leadership and Succession Planning helps you plan around the obstacles and avoid common missteps so you can lead more effectively right out of the gate.

Balance is a mythical beast. We always say we need to achieve it for equilibrium in our work, life, or family time, but balance doesn't really exist. In The Myth of Balance, Frank Bealer explains how a simple four-word formula can prepare you for the unexpected and not-so-unexpected events that distract you in the most inconvenient moments. Next time, be ready to slay the beast of balance with this time-tested approach.

Leadership Principles from a Renowned Agent of Change Cultures and organizations do not change without strong leadership. While many leadership books focus on management or administration, the central focus of The Conviction to Lead is on changing minds. Dr. Mohler was the driving force behind the transformation of Southern Seminary from a liberal institution of waning influence to a thriving evangelical seminary at the heart of the Southern Baptist Convention. Since then he has been one of the most prominent voices in evangelicalism, fighting for Christian principles and challenging secular culture. Using his own experiences and examples from history, Dr. Mohler demonstrates that real leadership is a transferring of conviction to others, affecting their actions, motivations, intuition, and commitment. This practical guide walks the reader through what a leader needs to know, do, and be in order to affect change.

What story would Eve have told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her? What if women had been the storytellers? Elizabeth Lesser believes that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history, humankind would have followed different hero myths and guiding stories—stories that value caretaking, champion compassion, and elevate communication over vengeance and violence. Cassandra Speaks is about the stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values we live by. Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity. We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about what happens when women are the storytellers too—when we speak from our authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the tales we tell about what it means to be human. Lesser has walked two main paths in her life—the spiritual path and the feminist one—paths that sometimes cross but sometimes feel at cross-purposes. Cassandra Speaks is her extraordinary merging of the two. The bestselling author of Broken Open and Marrow, Lesser is a beloved spiritual writer, as well as a leading feminist thinker. In this book she gives equal voice to the cool water of her meditative self and the fire of her feminist self. With her trademark gifts of both humor and insight, she offers a vision that transcends the either/or ideologies on both sides of the gender debate. Brilliantly structured into three distinct parts, Part One explores how history is carried forward through the stories a culture tells and values, and what we can do to balance the scales. Part Two looks at women and power and expands what it means to be courageous, daring, and strong. And Part Three offers “A Toolbox for Inner Strength.” Lesser argues that change in the culture starts with inner change, and that no one—woman or man—is immune to the corrupting influence of power. She provides inner tools to help us be both strong-willed and kind-hearted. Cassandra Speaks is a beautifully balanced synthesis of storytelling, memoir, and cultural observation. Women, men and all people will find themselves in the pages of this book, and will come away strengthened, opened, and ready to work together to create a better world for all people.

For fascism, myth was reality—or was realer than the real. Fascist notions of the leader, the nation, power, and violence were steeped in mythic imagery and the fantasy of transcending history. A mythologized primordial past would inspire the heroic overthrow of a debased present to achieve a violently redeemed future. What is distinctive about fascist mythology, and how does this aspect of fascism help explain its perils in the past and present? Federico Finchelstein draws on a striking combination of thinkers—Jorge Luis Borges, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Schmitt—to consider fascism as a form of political mythmaking. He shows that Borges’s literary and critical work and Freud’s psychoanalytic writing both emphasize the mythical and unconscious dimensions of fascist politics. Finchelstein considers their ideas of the self, violence, and the sacred as well as the relationship between the victims of fascist violence and the ideological myths of its perpetrators. He draws on Freud and Borges to analyze the work of a variety of Latin American and European fascist intellectuals, with particular attention to Schmitt’s political theology. Contrasting their approaches to the logic of unreason, Finchelstein probes the limits of the dichotomy between myth and reason and shows the centrality of this opposition to understanding the ideology of fascism. At a moment when forces redolent of fascism cast a shadow over world affairs, this book provides a timely historical and critical analysis of the dangers of myth in modern politics.

My mouth watered when first I saw the publication of this title, as it promised a next step in the exploration of cultural phenomena from within a culture s view and vision of itself. George Simons, Delta Intercultural Academy Essential reading for all practitioners and researchers who seek to gain greater insights on cultural differences and leadership competencies. Rosalie Tung, Simon Fraser University, Past President, Academy of Management and author of 11 books including Learning from World Class Companies This fascinating collection of local mythology shows how widely leadership models differ across nations, and how deeply these differences are rooted. True global leadership is based on empathy with local variety. Geert Hofstede, Maastricht University, The Netherlands, author of Culture s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations I have yet to come across a more captivating study of global leadership patterns. The reader is taken into largely unchartered territory linking globalisation, culture and leadership. Delving deep into folklore, mythology and spirituality we begin to understand how these are manifested in human behaviour and are exhibited in leadership styles. A must-read! S. Ramadorai, CEO of Tata Consultancy Services . . . intriguing and worthy book . . . If you are a voracious reader of books on leadership and management style, this 4 part book does provide copious food for thought. The extensive bibliographies at the end of every article/chapter offer excellent suggestions for your further reading and research and it s a great series of 21st century critical commentaries. The Barrister Magazine This ground-breaking book explains how deep-seated cultural mythologies shape contemporary global leaders and provides insights into navigating the dynamics and complexities in today s era of globalization. The authors use myths to uncover core characteristics and values from 20 different cultural contexts spanning all major regions of the world the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and Asia and the Pacific Rim that have evolved over generations and continue to shape global leadership models. Commentaries are included from practicing managers and leaders to provide real world insights on the implications of the ideas discussed. International managers and executives, public officials, business consultants and corporate trainers will welcome the insights on cross-cultural leadership styles. The book will also find interest from researchers and students across a broad array of professional and social science disciplines.