Leadership Paradoxes

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.

Become a next generation leader—rich in emotional and social intelligence and orchestrating outstanding collaborative results—by mastering these eight status quo-shattering paradoxes. The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership unpacks the fresh strategies and new mindset required today from a next generation leader. Author Dr. Tim Elmore helps leaders of all kinds navigate increasingly complex, rapidly changing environments, as well as manage teams who bring a range of new demands and expectations to the workplace that haven’t been seen even one generation prior. After working alongside John C. Maxwell for twenty years, Tim offers counter-intuitive paradoxes that, when practiced, enable today’s leader to differentiate themselves and better connect with their team and customers. The book furnishes ideas that equip leaders to inspire team members in a way a paycheck never could. Having trained hundreds of thousands of young professionals to develop into leaders—Dr. Elmore shares the secrets of next generation leaders who have practiced the unique paradoxes outlined in this book and inspired their team members in a way that a paycheck never could. In The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership, readers will: Learn how today’s team members require a combination of different qualities from their leaders than they did in even the recent past; Grasp the importance of eight key paradoxes that are critical for next generation leaders to put into practice right now; Be inspired by historic and modern-day leaders who lived the eight paradoxes; and Understand how they too can lead with the eight paradoxes, guiding them to emotional and social intelligence that resonates with their teams and leads to outstanding collaborative results.

Leadership Paradoxes was shortlisted for the 2017 Management Book of the Year, an industry book award organised by the Chartered Management Institute and the British Library. ******************************************** Leadership remains one of the most sought-after qualities in contemporary society, yet after centuries of research, education and debate it remains just as elusive as ever. Leadership Paradoxes: Rethinking Leadership for an Uncertain World argues that the key to understanding and enhancing leadership education, theory and practice lies in the recognition of its paradoxical tendencies. Drawing on the expertise of an international team of leadership scholars and practitioners, this book examines common leadership paradoxes and challenges faced by leaders — and shows how they can be reconceived as opportunities to be embraced, rather than problems to be solved. Readers will benefit from reflective questions at the end of each chapter, plus a companion website at www.leadershipparadoxes.com offering further material and a forum for discussion. Leadership Paradoxes will be valuable supplementary reading for students of leadership at advanced undergraduate, postgraduate, and post-experience level, as well as professionals seeking to improve their practice.

Managers today are faced with numerous complex challenges speckled with paradoxes. They must have a sharp economical focus while simultaneously engaging in creative and innovative thinking. They must support individuals as well as teams, think globally, and do business locally. This book views complexity as a fundamental element of leadership, rather than something that should simply be reduced and removed. It presents a leadership concept that includes both sides of the paradox. Managing Leadership Paradoxes uses case studies and practical exercises to show how managers can maintain decisiveness in the face of paradoxes, complexities, and contradictory demands. Lotte Lüscher draws on research gleaned from managers within the international corporation, Lego, to provide first-hand knowledge of how a large-scale organization meets and manages change paradoxes, rather than treating them as something that needs to be reduced and removed. It will assist managers and aspiring managers in expanding their understanding of leadership challenges beyond dilemmas, and equip them with the managerial skills to handle the most persistent and pervasive paradoxical challenges that arise as a result of organizational change. The book will be of interest to leaders and managers, as well as students of leadership, management and organizational studies.The intent is to provide the reader with a foundation for reflecting on his or her own leadership practice with special focus on organizational complexity, ambiguity, and paradoxes.

“Shows how humans have brought us to the brink and how humanity can find solutions. I urge people to read with humility and the daring to act.” —Harpal Singh, former Chair, Save the Children, India, and former Vice Chair, Save the Children International In conversations with people all over the world, from government officials and business leaders to taxi drivers and schoolteachers, Blair Sheppard, global leader for strategy and leadership at PwC, discovered they all had surprisingly similar concerns. In this prescient and pragmatic book, he and his team sum up these concerns in what they call the ADAPT framework: Asymmetry of wealth; Disruption wrought by the unexpected and often problematic consequences of technology; Age disparities--stresses caused by very young or very old populations in developed and emerging countries; Polarization as a symptom of the breakdown in global and national consensus; and loss of Trust in the institutions that underpin and stabilize society. These concerns are in turn precipitating four crises: a crisis of prosperity, a crisis of technology, a crisis of institutional legitimacy, and a crisis of leadership. Sheppard and his team analyze the complex roots of these crises--but they also offer solutions, albeit often seemingly counterintuitive ones. For example, in an era of globalization, we need to place a much greater emphasis on developing self-sustaining local economies. And as technology permeates our lives, we need computer scientists and engineers conversant with sociology and psychology and poets who can code. The authors argue persuasively that we have only a decade to make headway on these problems. But if we tackle them now, thoughtfully, imaginatively, creatively, and energetically, in ten years we could be looking at a dawn instead of darkness.

The need to ensure principle-driven, legally sound, and ethically acceptable behavior in the global context is not an easy task for leaders. They face the requirement of meeting the needs and expectations of a diverse set of stakeholders. They are increasingly called upon to protect, preserve, and restore the resources of the environment. They are expected to improve human well-being and social equity and recognize and effectively address economic and social issues concerning equality, social justice, and human rights protection. How should leaders in global organizations go about meeting the multiple demands of a complex global stakeholder environment? This book explores the dilemmas, paradoxes, and opportunities that leaders in global organizations of all types confront daily and addresses how managers can and should think about and approach these complex issues in responsible and productive ways. This book will be of interest to students and scholars across business, management and the social sciences more broadly.

Leadership Paradoxes was shortlisted for the 2017 Management Book of the Year, an industry book award organised by the Chartered Management Institute and the British Library. ******************************************** Leadership remains one of the most sought-after qualities in contemporary society, yet after centuries of research, education and debate it remains just as elusive as ever. Leadership Paradoxes: Rethinking Leadership for an Uncertain World argues that the key to understanding and enhancing leadership education, theory and practice lies in the recognition of its paradoxical tendencies. Drawing on the expertise of an international team of leadership scholars and practitioners, this book examines common leadership paradoxes and challenges faced by leaders — and shows how they can be reconceived as opportunities to be embraced, rather than problems to be solved. Readers will benefit from reflective questions at the end of each chapter, plus a companion website at www.leadershipparadoxes.com offering further material and a forum for discussion. Leadership Paradoxes will be valuable supplementary reading for students of leadership at advanced undergraduate, postgraduate, and post-experience level, as well as professionals seeking to improve their practice.

Some leaders fundamentally alter the status quo whilst others guide quietly. Most leadership books emphasise specific rules, but Tom Cronin and Michael Genovese see leadership as filled with paradox. Leadership Matters offers a different view of leadership - one that builds community and responds creatively to new situations. Cronin and Genovese argue that leadership is about more than just charisma and set leaders on to a different path - to unleash the power of paradox.