Book Review: Leadership on the Line

Leadership on the Line
Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading
By Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky

Leadership isn’t easy. The best leaders force their followers to face unpleasant realities and then figure out the solutions for themselves. That’s why leadership is so risky, argue Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky in this engaging tome.

The authors analyze the successes and failures of leaders ranging from Yitzhak Rabin to Bill Clinton, with stops along the way to examine the leadership styles of former Coca-Cola CEO M. Douglas Ivester and NBA coach Phil Jackson. At times, the authors’ rules of thumb seem too general. Yet, their real-world examples blend well with their leadership theory to present a useful guide.

“To lead is tolive dangerously because when leadership counts, when you lead people through difficult change, you challenge what people hold dear – their daily habits, tools, loyalties and ways of thinking – with nothing more to offer than perhaps a possibility.” Leading is an inherently risky pursuit. True leaders pose difficult questions and demand change of their followers, and change is never easy.

Change means abandoning established ways of acting and thinking. In the political realm, change can menace deeply held values and beliefs. Change means someone loses something. Therefore, even those whom a leader is counting on to enact change feel threatened by it. Those who have a stake in inertia or old patterns erect all kinds of roadblocks to thwart a change-minded leader and, as a result, many leaders fail to implement worthy ideas. A leader who is going to triumph must not only possess vision and courage, but must also know what obstacles will arise and how to surmount them.

The book's key points are these:

• The best leaders pose difficult questions and demand change of their followers. Change is never easy.
• It's an old saw that people resist change; in fact, they resist loss.
• Leaders need not only courage and vision, but also the knowledge of how others will resist them and the skill to overcome that resistance.
• Resistance to change can become marginalization, diversion, attack or seduction.
• Organizations may fight change in obvious ways, but more often resistance is subtle.
• Groups that oppose reform-minded leaders often try to overwhelm them with issues that aren't part of the leaders' agendas.
• Challenges take two forms: technical issues, which can be solved by changing processes, and adaptive issues, which can be resolved only by overhauling priorities.
• Leaders who lose touch with their constituents risk failure, no matter how sound their judgment is on other matters.
• Effective leaders value personal relationships above all else.
• Leaders know that sometimes it's best to force their followers to resolve conflicts.

Buy the book at Amazon.com.