DOCUMENT RESUME ED 458 690 EA 031 403 AUTHOR O'Toole, James TITLE Leadership A to Z: A Guide for the Appropriately Ambitious. Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series. ISBN ISBN-0-7879-4658 PUB DATE 1999-00-00 NOTE 332p. AVAILABLE FROM Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 ($22) .Tel: 800-956-7739 (Toll Free); Fax: 415-433-0499; Web site: http://www.josseybass.com; e-mail: [email protected]. PUB TYPE Books (010) Opinion Papers (120) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC14 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Administrative Principles; *Administrator Guides; Educational Administration; Elementary Secondary Education; Leaders Guides; Leadership; Leadership Training ABSTRACT This book identifies what leaders need to do to create high-performing, self-renewing organizations. The emphasis is on action rather than theory, and the short passages are designed for quick perusal. The book emphasizes the notion that most elements of leadership can be learned; the only inherent character trait needed for effective leadership is ambition. The text contains 92 insights on the elements of leadership. The following categories, listed alphabetically, are discussed: business success, behavior, cascading leadership, change, coherence, commitment, communication, contradictions, controls, conviction, the Coolidge Syndrome, the definition of leadership, delegation, denial, details, differences, effectiveness, ego, energy, engaging the middle, expectations, fear and failure, focus, followership, generosity, getting started, globalism, grandstanding, hierarchy, hope, how not to create followers, inequality, intelligence, joint leadership, knowing when to leave, leaders of the 20th century, listening, management of change, muddled teams, needs of followers, obsession, paradoxes, perfection, performance, perks, power, purpose, questions, reframing, repetitions, resilience, resources, symbolism, teaching, theories of leadership, tomorrow's leaders, tough guys, transforming leadership, trust, vision, what leaders do, why leaders will not lead, the x-factor, and zenith. (RJM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCEAND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIALHAS BEEN GRANTED BY A Gfeef- TO THE EDUCATIONALRESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 1 JAMES O'TOOLE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION Jossey-Bass Publishers CENTER (ERIC) XThis document has been reproduced ath received from the person or organization San Francisco originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. 2 Copyright © 1999 by James O'Toole and Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco, California 94104. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly, call (888) 378-2537, fax to (800) 605-2665, or visit our website at www.josseybass.com. Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of Jossey-Bass books are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details and discount information, contact the special sales department at Jossey-Bass. Manufactured in the United States of America. The text is printed on acid-free recycled paper containing a minimum of 10 percent postconsumer waste. Interior design by Paula Goldstein "Come to the Edge" from Selected Poems by Christopher Logue. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Limited. "Health Chief Vows 'Brutal' Shake-Up if Managers Resist Change" by Carl Ingram, copyright 1996, Los Angeles Times. Reprinted by permission. "Larry Bird Almost Runs a Democracy" by G. Vecsey, copyright 1998 by the New York Times Co. Reprinted by permission. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data O'Toole, James. Leadership A to Z: a guide for the appropriately ambitious /James O'Toole. 1st ed. p. cm. (Jossey-Bass business & management series) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-7879-4658-3 1. Leadership. 2. Decision making. 3. Executive ability. 4. Management. I. Title. II. Series. HD57.7 .087 1999 658.4'092dc21 99-6416 first edition HB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 3 To Marilyn 4 Memorandum on Appropriate Ambition 1 C Cascading Leadership 30 A Change: No Task of Leadership ABB's Benchstrength 8 (or Is It?) 32 ABCs of Business Success 15 Changing Oneself36 Apologia 17 Coherence 38 Commitment40 B Communication 43 Behavior (the Measure of Leadership) 22 Comparative Advantage Brownian Motivation (Challenging, (Why Leadership Is Needed Stretching, and Other Nonviolent Now in Silicon Valley)46 Ways to Overcome Resistance to Contradictions, Anyone? 53 Change) 23 Controlling 55 Controls 58 Conviction 61 Coolidge Syndrome 63 ix 5 Definition of Leadership 68 Hangings, Public134 Delegation 69 Hierarchy137 Denial ("What Hump?") 71 Hope 140 Details 75 How Not to Create Followers142 Differences 78 How to Create Followers 145 Dunlap, "Chainsaw" Al (the Real Lesson)80 Inequality 150 Intelligence 151 Early Wins84 Iteration and Institutionalization 154 Effectiveness86 Ego 89 Energy92 Joint Leadership158 Engaging the Middle 96 Expectations, Management of99 KISS 162 Knowing When to Leave164 Fear and Failure104 Focus 107 Followership 109 Leaders (Who's Who in the Twentieth Century) 168 Lenin, Hitler, et alio170 Generosity114 Listening 173 Getting Started 117 Globalism120 Grandstanding 124 Management of Change (vs. Strategic Guvmint Work 127 Leadership) 176 Metrics I (Evaluating Individual Leadership) 181 X LEADERSHIP ATO Z Metrics II (Assessing an Organization's Strategic Leadership Second Acts244 Quotient) 185 SHITMs 247 Muddled Teams Sound Bites250 (the Hewlett-Packard Way) 187 Symbolism254 Needs of Followers 192 Teaching258 Team (Selection of the)260 0 Theories of Leadership (Top Ten List)263 Obsession 196 Tomorrow's Leaders? 266 Tough Guys269 Townsend, Robert 272 Paradoxes 200 PeopleSoft? 202 Training (Why It Isn't a Useful Part 276 Perfection 206 of Leadership Development) Performance (Hard-Edged) 208 Transforming Leadership280 Perks 212 Transformations, Continued 286 Perspectives214 (and Continual) 291 Power! 217 Trust Purpose 220 Up and Out (and Sideways) 296 Questions (Asking of) 224 V Vision 300 R&R 230 Reframing 232 Repetition, Repetition, Repetition ... 236 What Leaders Do, a Checklist Resilience 238 (and an Index) 306 Resources 240 Why Leaders Won't Lead310 Contents 7 X X-Factor314 You, the Leader 320 Zenith 324 Memorandum from Warren Bennis327 Acknowledgments335 xii LEADERSHIP ATO Z Memorandum on Appropriate Ambition To: The Reader From: The Author Subject: The Appropriate Ambitions of a Leader The purpose of this book is to identify clearly what leaders need to do in order to create high-performing, self-renewing organizations. While most leadership books focus on who leaders are (their character, personality, style, and charisma), the accenthere is on what leaders do. The shift in emphasis has a practical intent: although it is possible for you to learn from what others do, it is highly unlikely that you can become someone you aren't. In fact, I believe only one inherent character trait is essential for effective leadership, and that is ambition. Obviously, you can't "learn to do" ambition, but I'm assuming you already have that trait or you wouldn't have bought this book! Nonetheless, it is perfectly understandable if you felt a hint of ambivalence about the "A" word on the cover when you picked it up at the bookstore. After all, you probably 1 10 don't think of yourself as ambitious. Relax. Even the saintly Mohandas K. Gandhi had ambition. When asked why he had abandoned a successful law career (and a well-cushioned lifestyle) to pursue a risky, self-sacrificing career of political leadership, the Mahatma unhesitatingly replied with that single, stark, and appropriate word "Ambition!" Granted, it is not necessarily an attractive personal trait, that desire for power, distinction, and public approvalovertly ambitious politicians and business leaders earn society's opprobrium, if not its well-deserved contempt. Julius Caesar, after all, was assassinated because, Antony states in his elegy, "Brutus says he was ambitious; / And Brutus is an honorable man." Nonetheless, Gandhi chose exactly the right word to describe the force that compelled him to risk alleven his lifein the pursuit of a worthy goal. By his early forties, he had come to feel terror at the prospect of living to old age in conventional comfort. He trembled when he imagined himself on his deathbed uttering the most tragic of all last words: "I could have done much more with my life." "Could have," "should have," "might have"Gandhi rejected that sorry mantra. He was not going to die knowing he could have brought independence to India. Instead, he eagerly embraced the challenge of leadership. But his ambition was not strictly personal. He had high aspirations for his country: he was convinced that India could overcome its negative sense of economic, cultural, and political dependence on Britain and then become a self-sufficient, self-confident, and self-governing member of the community of sovereign nations. And he was willing to devote the entirety