Leadership Beyond Reason: How Great Leaders Succeed by Harnessing the Power of Their Values, Feelings, and Intuition

by John Townsend and John Townsend

Book Overview

A human behavior expert reveals that what leaders know about themselves is more important than their leadership skills and job knowledge. Who we are on the inside can determine leadership success more... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0785228772
• ISBN13: 9780785228776
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson Publishers
• Length: 179 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A Valuable Book for Leaders

"Leadership Beyond Reason" is an excellent book on the inner life of leaders. It will help develop the self awareness that is essential to a leaders long term success. It covers topics such as intuition, emotion, values and relationships. It's a quick and easy read for time starved leaders. If a leader takes the time to read and consider how the content applies to his own life, it will be time very well spent. Ideally, leaders would read "Leadership Beyond Reason" with a group of other leaders and discuss it together. It could also be used for executive coaching or mentoring relationships.

Leadership

This book gives a refreshing, eye-opening view into the characteristics that define a leader. It is obvious that the author is not only well-educated and insightful, but that he has also taken great care in studying the mental, psychological, and emotional properties that are involved in exhibiting leadership qualities. He is able to convey a quite scientific analysis of the subject into plain English, such that even those with little or no scientific background can interpret his keen observations into the behaviors that define great leaders.

About More Than Leadership!

I was interested in this book, because several years ago I had read "Boundaries with Kids," by Dr. Townsend, and it was one of the best (and most useful) books I have read. I was hoping that this book would also provide the insight and practical suggestions that earlier book did--and it does! For example, he provides insight into why "When Your Values Aren't Lived Out, It Bothers You." He gives examples of how people have been able to identify their TRUE values, and then make the changes necessary to live according to those values. While I have little interest in being a "leader," I found the information in this book useful for "living."

Subjectivity Rules

Great leaders have a complex personal understanding of emotion in their lives, harness emotion and then spread it out among others. That's basically the center of this simple, gutsy, persuasive book. Townsend isn't simply making an inspirational speech here. He has studied the phenomena of human relationships in and among work and comes across as an expert The strongest chapter -- and if you are going to skim parts of the book, I found this the most valuable -- is the one on relationships. I think this is crucial, because we all have people with whom we naturally have connections, but how does one motivate those people who don't fall into this category?

Finally-A unique treatment of leadership

I am currently working on my Ph.d. in communication and leadership. In my studies I have poured over many texts on leadership. While most have good ideas, they have the same ideas packaged in different sound bites. Leadership Beyond Reason is different. It provides a completely unique treatment of leadership. It teaches one to identify and capture one's own experiences and insights which lie dormant in one's mind. The result is full bodied leadership, not the application of formulas and catch phrases. Get this book and Inside Peter Drucker's Brain and you can throw away the rest of your leadership library.