Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?: What It Takes to Be an Authentic Leader

by Gareth R. Jones and Rob Goffee

Book Overview

Too many companies are managed not by leaders, but by mere role players and faceless bureaucrats. What does it take to be a real leader--one who is confident in who she is and what she stands for, and who truly inspires people to achieve extraordinary results? Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones argue that leaders don't become great by aspiring to a list of universal character traits. Rather, effective leaders are authentic : they deploy individual strengths...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1578519713
• ISBN13: 9781578519712
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

This will be one of the top leadership books that you will read.

This is a fantastic book that underlines what makes an authentic great leader. Discusses in details why being yourself within the office environment makes you a standout boss. The fact that the book is supported by actual examples from real leaders across the world makes the points more believable and convincing. I'd recommend this work to anyone who strives to be a future leader.

At last, leadership explained!

At last someone has written a book on leadership! So many so called "leadership" books are actually dealing with management. However, Goffee and Jones with their description of "authentic leadership" have clearly defined the essential fundamental interrelationship between the person aspiring to lead and those who might decide to follow. The book is crammed full of actual case studies of people who have both succeeded and failed as leaders, with the author's explanation as to why. I found the concepts easy to understand and follow. It is a little slow reading at times, due to the numerous case studies. However, it is worth persevering, as the case studies do illustrate the author's points very well. Although Goffee and Jones assiduously avoid giving leadership recipes - they rightly maintain that leadership is contextual - there are some good learning points for aspiring leaders. Chapter four for example - Read and Rewrite the Context - has some gems. In this chapter, they describe three levels of analysis for leaders; key leaders who may make the biggest impact on one's performance, important teams, and thirdly the context and constraints within which one must operate. This should be an essential text for anyone who is looking to take on a leadership role within family, community, organisation or country. Highly recommended. Bob Selden, author What To Do When You Become The Boss: How new managers become successful managers

Philosophical take on authentic leadership

Authors Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones provide a welcome balance to the many books advising that leadership is a matter of adopting this or that characteristic or technique. They emphasize the situational nature of leadership, the extent to which it depends on followers in a particular organizational context. They infer some basic principles for authenticity and leadership from what seems to be a solid body of empirical observation and interviews, including generally pointed, well-chosen anecdotes showing good leaders in action. We recommend this thoughtful book, which offers an insight that few books on leadership dare to voice. The authors unabashedly assert that even great leadership may not lead to good business results. They further state that an excessive emphasis on results is one of the great obstacles standing in the way of authentic, moral leadership.

No photocopy for leadership success

Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones' WHY SHOULD ANYONE BE LED BY YOU? WHAT IT TAKES TO BE AN AUTHENTIC LEADER tells why simply copying leadership strategies isn't a guarantee of success - and how authentic leadership resides in individuals who display their authenticity to others. Examples throughout illustrate over twenty-five years of joint experience between the authors who use their research, consulting experience and leadership skills to argue for the merits of authentic leadership and how to achieve it.

The four qualities of inspirational leaders

Gareth Jones is director of Human Resources and Internal Communications at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and a former Professor of Organizational Development at Henley Management College in Oxfordshire, England. Robert Goffee is Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School. They are the founding partners of Creative Management Associates, an organizational consulting firm in London, England. This article, published in Harvard Business Review's September-October 2000 issue, discusses the research of the authors into leadership (as academics, consultants, and executives).The authors argue that inspirational leaders share four shared (unexpected) qualities: Leaders show and reveal their weaknesses, rely heavily on intuition and associated timing, manage with tough empathy (passionately and realistically), and reveal (and capitalize on) their differences. Goffee and Jones discuss each of these qualities in detail, explaining why these qualities are so important and how leaders show them. There is a short history of leadership and a discussion of some popular myths about leadership: 'Everyone can be a leader', 'leaders deliver business results', 'people who get to the top are leaders', and 'leaders are great coaches'. In addition, there is a short discussion on female leadership, whereby the authors' advice is that female leaders should stay true to themselves. The final conclusion of the article is that the four discussed qualities cannot be used mechanically. Their advice to executives is: "Be yourselves - more - with skill."This article is much in line with the latest thinking in leadership: Emotional intelligence (EQ/EI) is as important, or even more important, than traditional intelligence (IQ). I see big relations with the Harvard Business Review-articles by Daniel Goleman (What Makes a Leader?, 1998) and Jim Collins (Level 5 Leadership, 2001), which also emphasize the softer, emotional side of leadership. I did like this article and would recommend it to people moving into management and MBA-students. My main complaint is that the conclusion of this article is somewhat too simple. The article is written in simple English. Please note that this article runs on Acrobat eBook Reader software and is not a .pdf-file.