Down The Rabbit Hole Of Leadership

In the previous book in this series, Manfred Kets de Vries observed the experiences of leaders on a rollercoaster ride through their professional and personal lives. Now, he follows them down the rabbit hole into the unknown, where, like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, they find a dystopian Wonderland in which everyone seems to have gone mad and life functions according to its own crazy logic, throwing up all kinds of obstacles in the search for truth. Understanding what is happening around us has become more difficult than ever in the Age of Trump. Don’t imperatives like “build that wall” sound very much like “Off with his head”? Unfortunately, and unlike Alice, we are not going to wake up from a bad dream and discover that everything is “nothing but a pack of cards”. The first part of this book looks at the psychodynamics of leadership in both a business and a political context. The second focuses on the psychopathology of everyday life in organizations and the seemingly endless ways people can make a mess of things – including mega pay packages, acting out, digital addiction and other dysfunctional behaviour patterns. Each chapter ends with a brief anecdote to illustrate the dilemma it presents. In short, sharp nuggets, Kets de Vries helps make sense of how the madness of the present has affected leadership in organizations and the workplace.

"I don't have the experience or education - who am I to lead? What if I fail?" Sometimes being a leader can feel like you are falling down the rabbit hole. Leadership in Wonderland introduces wonder into the process of becoming a better, more confident manager, team captain, or influencer. Leadership in Wonderland, a combination book with workbook, takes you on a journey of self-discovery, through reading, thinking, and doing as you follow Alice's odyssey to reach her full potential. The book is written to give everyone an individual experience; there aren't any 'prescriptions' - no set lessons of what you are 'supposed to do.' Therefore, what you learn, and how you choose to apply it will be unique to you.In reading the book you will learn how to: * make better decisions by understanding and including different opinions, * be a better communicator, * develop trust, * face your own fears, * overcome the imposter syndrome, * develop allies, * consider differing motivations and personalities, * build a team, * find your voice.Inside the story, you will encounter the colorful world of Alice's company, Leaves-of-Wonderland, Purveyor of Fine Teas. Some of the characters you meet are from the classic tale including such favorites as Hatter, the President; Duchess, the Director of Quality Assurance; Caterpillar, a Management Consultant, and Cheshire Cat, the eyes and ears of the company. Other folk you'll find inside are new to Wonderland.Leadership in Wonderland draws on the authors' decades of hands-on experience cultivating and placing leaders. Rebecca's company, Pinnacle Management Group, coaches, trains, assesses and consults in the area of collaborative leadership and team engagement. Susan's company, Susan Goldberg Executive Search Consulting, assists leaders to develop and implement senior level recruiting and hiring strategies, including corresponding marketing, integration, and transition. She also coaches younger leaders on their individual people management situations. Their clients have included such notables as the U.S. Army, Cablevision, and HSBC along with smaller organizations and non-profits.

Global, multi-faceted, and applied: the most contemporary introduction to leadership, which considers individual, organizational, and societal perspectives.Providing a robust and engaging overview of the leadership field, Exploring Leadership is a highly practical and insightful guide that supports the personal and professional development of both aspiring and experienced leaders. Investigating the complex dynamics of power, identity and purpose in organizations and wider society, this essential resource critically examines significant global issues such as diversity and inclusion, the environmental crisis, and recent Covid-19pandemic to reveal the systemic nature of leadership in a complex and ever-changing world. Fascinating topics are brought to life through a variety of international examples and case studies, such as ancestral leadership in Maori communities; consideration of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as a transformational leader; and leadership paradoxes in the Singaporean Civil Service. Individual and group exercises will also stimulate you as an emerging leader, as you consider how you may apply the key theoretical concepts in your future careers. The following additional resources are also available to students: Visual matrix mapping the key theories and themes explored in the text. Skills development guidance. Links to further videos for each chapter (students). Template for reflective activities. Adopting lecturers will have access to the following teaching support resources: Tutorial suggestions for in-class activities PowerPoint presentations Links to further videos for each chapter (lecturers).Selling Points:- A range of original exercises, activities and resources (for both face-to-face and online courses), that support the development of practical skills as well a critical understanding of leadership.- Examples will be complemented by a range of mini case studies authored by invited contributors from around the world, in order to increase diversity and international relevance and appeal.- Exploration of a range of significant global issues, such as the environmental crisis, Covid-19, inequality and Brexit that extend beyond organisational boundaries to reveal the systemic nature of leadership in a complex and changing world and which will be explored from a variety of perspectives.- Illustrates the importance of critical reflection on the intersection of personal and professional identities, subsequently developing the capacity of readers to reframe their understanding of what it means to be an ethical, inclusive, and effective leader.New to this edition:- Now vastly enriched with a range of pedagogical features throughout, which develop a reader's capacity for critical thinking and reflection in relation to leadership theory and practice across a range of contexts.- Carefully-curated digital learning resources - including videos introductions to each chapter, multiple-choice questions, and a flashcard glossary - have been designed to further stimulate, assess and consolidate learning. - Available as an e-book with links to the bespoke digital resources, providing a more engaging and flexible learning experience. - Widely updated to reflect the very latest research and coverage of important topics such as diversity and inclusion; ethical leadership; leading movements of protests and rebellion; and leadership traits and competencies.Digital formats and resources:The second edition is available for students and institutions to purchase in a variety of formats, and is supported by online resources.The e-book gives students the flexibility to support their learning in ways that work best for them; resources include links to author videos which offer pithy introductions to each chapter, multiple-choice questions, a flashcard glossary and more.

Every day, millions of employees watch their leaders sabotage themselves. They watch, they learn, and then they do it, too. Next thing you know, everyone’s lost motivation, and nobody takes ownership. That’s how organizations fail. This book will help you break the vicious cycle of self-handicapping leadership in your organization, stop the excuses, and unleash all the performance your team is capable of delivering. Phil and Jordan reveal how and why people handicap themselves even when they know better. Next, they offer real solutions from their own pioneering research and consulting. You’ll find practical ways to strengthen accountability and self-awareness, recognize the “big picture,” improve decision-making, deepen trust and engagement, develop talent, escape micromanagement, and focus relentlessly on outcomes. Your colleagues can be far more effective, and so can you. In fact, it starts with you–right here, right now, with this book. Many leaders inadvertently create cultures of failure. They model and promote “selfhandicapping” actions, where people withdraw effort or create new problems, in order to maintain their own self-images of competence. Self-Handicapping Leadership shines the spotlight on this widespread and destructive phenomenon and presents real action plans for overcoming it.

Why do great companies and other organizations fail, sometimes abruptly? Why do admired leaders fall from their organizational pedestals? Why do young and promising managers derail? Why do organizations create and reinforce rules that manifestly damage both them and those that they employ, serve and sustain? Leadership is a much-discussed but ill-defined idea in business and management circles. Analysing and understanding the skills and behaviours exhibited in leadership practice reveal that leaders exhibit paradoxical activities that challenge our understanding of organizations. In this text, the authors identify leadership behaviours that compete towards business equilibrium: selfish versus selfless, distance versus proximity, consistency versus individuality, enforcing professional standards versus flexibility and control versus autonomy. These paradoxical dilemmas require a reflexive and analytical approach to a subject that is tricky to define. The book explores the paradoxes of power and leadership not as a panacea for solving organizational problems but as a lens through which leadership and power are seen as an exercise in dynamic balance. Read this book as an invitation to the paradoxes of power and leadership that frame organizational life today. Be prepared to find surprises – and some counterintuitive arguments. Providing a thought-provoking guide to the traits and skills that will help readers to understand and navigate paradoxical leadership behaviour, this reflexive book will be a useful reading for students and scholars of business, management and psychology globally.

The recent proliferation of populist movements worldwide — along with the often dangerous, demagogic leaders that accompany them — have prompted questions about the underlying conditions that give rise to such troubling developments. Leadership Unhinged: Essays on the Ugly, the Bad and the Weird examines what is going on at a deeper level, both collectively and individually, between leaders and followers. Employing theories derived from psychoanalytic psychology, developmental psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, these essays help to unravel and expose the pathological leader-follower dynamics that generate such movements. The book is infused with Kets de Vries’s now famous and inimitable style of analysis, which draws from myths, creates fairy tales, and uses irony and metaphor to bring his conclusions into greater relief and trigger new insights. As Kets de Vries explains, effective leaders have the capacity to bring people together and even make them better, stronger. Doing so suggests that those leaders are value driven, able to set a moral tone. Yet, when such a tone is absent or, at worst, twisted toward the destructive, leadership quickly becomes dangerous. History has shown the devastation left in the wake of unhinged leaders who have gone unchecked. To become fully conscious of the conditions that allow for the emergence of such leaders has become a moral requirement of our time. In ways both moving and entertaining, Kets de Vries’s new contribution puts us in a better position to fulfil that requirement.

Ethics for School Leaders: The Human Condition and Organizational Dynamics is about the complex role of formal and informal leaders in schools. It presents multiple perspectives to enhance comprehension of the organizational and psychological dynamics that come into play when school leaders—those with authority and those without authority—are faced with ethically challenging situations. In addition to a tour of leadership theories, organizational dynamics, psychological dynamics, and ethical perspectives, the case studies in this book weave together aspects of people’s emotional make-up, cognitive framework, and past experiences to illustrate how school leaders use reason and emotion to make complex connections between their inner lives and the demands of their profession. This book identifies specific examples of ways school leaders can enhance ethical practice at the organizational level as well as how to focus on the things they can do personally and interpersonally to improve their work as school leaders in order to make lives better for all of the people they serve. By integrating various approaches to the study of the leadership process, this book makes an important contribution to fields of leadership studies and professional ethics.