The Techniques of Inner Leadership: Making Inner Leadership Work

By Gilbert W. Fairholm

Book Overview

Leadership is fundamentally different from management, but traditional leadership skills were based on an ill-fitting, management-oriented model. When leadership is recognized as a discrete professional specialty, new techniques and methods are needed to operationalize the new values-based theories. In addition to distinguishing leadership from management, this book distinguishes inner leadership, practiced by those in the middle ranks, from leadership as practiced by the CEO. Inner leadership is an applied complex of specialized knowledge, theory, skills, attitudes, and attributes used to make things happen in the lives and behavior of other community members.

The leader's goal is to cause followers to accept the leader's values--e.g., his or her standards of what are acceptable goals, behavior, and overall conduct--as their own. It is an intimate, personal, life-transforming task that resolves itself into a set of discrete techniques--sets of attitudes, actions, and intentions--that distinguish leaders from managers or other corporate workers. The special focus of the 21 leadership techniques presented here is on those unique methods of group interaction that characterize leadership activities in the middle of the corporation. These techniques represent a substantial body of inner leadership practice that differentiates leadership from all other group roles and functions.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0275980340
• ISBN13: 9780275980344
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.8"

Customer Reviews

LEADERSHIP DRIVING FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE ORGANIZATION.

STERN'S MANAGEMENT REVIEW FINDS this a book that places leadership in a new light. According to the author, inner leadership consists of leading from the middle of the organization, generating the vital energy that drives organizational dynamics, in contrast to top leadership. The book explores the characteristics of inner leadership, which relies on the relationship with followers and on inspiration, not motivation. Some key factors in the psycho-dynamics of inner leadership include: mutual interactive trust; internalized feelings of caring, respect, and enjoyment in working with others; willingness to serve the needs of followers; a quest for problem-finding in contrast to problem solving; and in general, a building of deep connections with others. These qualities stand in contrast to reliance on the formal power of authority-a hallmark of top leadership. The book goes into 21 techniques of inner leadership, devoting a chapter to each. This book is rich with insights and ideas. As consultants in organization and compensation (founding partners of Stern & Associates, as well as editors of Stern's Management Review Online), we find Fairholm's book raises some key questions: Do organizations recognize the role and value of the vital leadership in the middle? Do they know how to select and develop inner leaders? Can they measure their performance and motivate and reward them? Intentionally or not, book provides a framework for addressing these questions.Chapters end with discussion issues and questions, and developmental activities. Fairholm treats his subject matter with attention to details and nuances. 308 pp.