| Title | : | Scaling Leadership: Building Organizational Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter Most |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 |
| Publication | : | First published January 23, 2019 |
Transform Your Organization by Scaling Leadership
How do senior leaders, in their own words, describe the most effective leaders—the ones that get results, grow the business, enhance the culture and leave in their wake a trail of other really effective leaders? Conversely, how do senior leaders describe the kind of leader that undercuts the organization’s capacity and capability to create its future? This book, based on groundbreaking research, shows how senior leaders describe and develop leadership that works, that does not, that scales, and that limits scale.
Is your leadership built for scale as you advance in today’s volatile, uncertain, dynamic, and disruptive business environment? This context puts a premium on a very particular kind of leadership—High-Creative leadership capable of rapidly growing the organization while simultaneously transforming it into more agile, innovative, adaptive and engaging workplace. The research presented in this book suggests that senior leaders can describe the High-Creative leadership with surprising clarity. They also describe with equal precision the High-Reactive leadership that cancels itself out and seriously limits scale. Which type of leader are you?
You scale your leadership by increasing the multiple on your leadership in three ways. First, by developing the strengths that differentiate the most effective leaders from the strengths deployed by the most Reactive and ineffective leaders. And second, by increasing your leadership ratio—the ratio of most the effective strengths to the most damaging liabilities. Third, by developing High-Creative leaders all around you.
Scaling Leadership provides a proven framework for magnifying agile and scalable leadership in your organization. Scalable leadership drives forward-momentum by multiplying high-achieving leaders at scale so that growth, productivity and innovation increase exponentially. Creative leaders multiply their strengths beyond technical competence by leading in deep relationship, with radical humanity, passion and integrity.
Drawing upon decades of solid research and experience enhancing individual capability and collective leadership effectiveness with Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, the authors provide an innovative and efficient framework to help you:
Take stock of your own personal balance of leadership strengths and weaknesses Scale your leadership in deep relationship and high integrity Proliferate high-achievers throughout your organization’s leadership system Identify ineffective leadership and course-correct quickly Transform your organization by transforming leadershipScaling Leadership is an invaluable tool for executives, managers, and leaders in business, academia, nonprofit organizations, and more. This innovative resource provides effective techniques, real-world examples, and expert guidance for organizations seeking to improve performance, align and execute strategies, and transform their business with scalable leadership capability.
Scaling Leadership: Building Organizational Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter Most Reviews
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This is a hard book to review. I love and will use many of the concepts, but you have to slog through a ton of crap to get them. The first 2/3 of the book is used to take the reader through survey results that explain why their model of Reactive leaders and Creative leaders is valid. In an attempt to create clarity in a sea of different leadership models, Anderson wastes time trying to prove why his model is superior. I imagine most readers are like me and don't really care about the @%$ing survey - they're just looking for some valuable nuggets to improve leadership.
I'm glad to say that the last 1/3 of the book does deliver! Some takeaways:
- Anderson points out that in most circumstances most of us don't find it difficult to justify our beliefs. Leadership is transformative personally because we get pushed to our limits and fail, which forces us to question our underlying beliefs about yourself.
- In a similar vein to the concept of locus of control, Anderson talks about how we move from being socialized (simply the result of our environment) to self-authoring (choosing and improving ourselves every day).
- There are generally three focuses that leaders have: Heart, Mind and Will. When under a lot of pressure, we tend to double down on our strength so much that it becomes a weakness.
1: Heart-focused leaders become complying.
2: Mind-focused leaders become protective.
3: Will-focused leaders become controlling
- In order to create transformation in yourself as a leader, you need to create Generative Tension. You do that by articulating a from-to:
1: Define your vision - what you want your team or organization to achieve
2: The kind of leadership required to deliver that vision.
What that does is highlight to yourself where you need to grow and give you the initial momentum. -
Love the concept of generative tension
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Listened to audiobook as a first, fast reading. A lot of good insights, connects to a leadership mode assessment. I intend to go through again with more deliberative reflection.
I’m sure not all aspects translate perfectly to every sector but general insights relate to human interactions in concert for organizational process working for desired outcomes. This involves personal awareness, humility to seek feedback, and courage to change.
I think “spirituality” in the book is more aligned with philosophy. Although I critique authors’ working assumptions about humans in some places, I don’t need to agree with all of their philosophy to glean from their observational insights. -
Fresh update of the author's original work Mastering Leadership
This book is certainly founded on their earlier work and tools outlined in "Mastering Leadership" and provides a fresh perspective on leadership today. Borrowing from their "reactive", "creative", and "integral" growth stages of leadership, Robert and Bill extend these models and highlight the common leadership theme that "leaders create leaders" in order to scale up a business. They also tie in the importance of servant leadership as an attribute of an "integral" leader.
They reference their own Leadership Circle Profile Self-Assessment tool (as shown in the attached figure). While interesting, this unabashed self-promotion of consulting tools could alienate readers. The authors also make reference to the VUCA business acronym, "Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity" introduced in 1985 by Warren Bennis and Nanus Burt in their book "Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge". VUCA was adopted for use as a tool by the US military and steadily gained traction in business leadership. While perhaps useful as a business tool, VUCA is a bit of a "crutch" as Harvard Business Review wrote in 2014 where leaders are likely to get more value from objective qualitative and quantitative measurements to affect and influence their strategy.
Each leader must make an introspective examination of their own strengths and weaknesses, focusing on the single most important change they can make to develop forward before they can focus on building their teams and leadership systems. In doing so, they form meaningful partnerships with their teams and make every effort to work transparently, learning openly from others. Feedback loops are a critical function of their formalized leadership systems and they work intentionally and with purpose.
Learning > Knowing
Empowering > Controlling
Despite the book's shortcomings, the content still holds significant value when used alongside other leadership resources.
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A sobering read on being the creative and scaling leadership that is much needed today's fast growing and massive scale economy.
As leaders to scale organizations, be productive, delivering result, having a vision are all table stakes. More are in demand with high priorities - creative leadership, deep relationship, radically human, systems awareness, purposeful achievement, generative tension. The goal is to develop the ability to thrive in environments of Stability, Certainty, Simplicity, and Clarity to the ones with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
A good read. Delightful and insightful.
Happy to have a free assessment at leadershipcircle.com -
It’s definitely not a “how to” book but one that makes the case continuous attention being needed to our own leadership capabilities and internal operating systems. It’s convicting - In that it challenges me to really consider what is getting in the way of my own ability to raise the ceiling on my own development and advancement. This will be re-read just like “Mastering Leadership” requires to be read and re-read.
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This is the best leadership book I have ever read. It is written with great humility, consciousness, and wisdom. I feel the leadership the author himself by reading the book. What an experience!
As the authors rightly pointed out: leadership is a spiritual journey. I definitely finished the book convicted on the development gaps that I have, and will revisit this again. -
...4 stars because I worked hard at understanding concepts written in BIG language. Communication is hard enough when engaging someone other than yourself. I prefer leadership books with not BIG words but language that is simple, non intimidating, putting everyone on same playing field. 4 stars just because the points were valid, reassuring, and it made me work at my vocabulary.
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This is one of the most comprehensive, coherent, research-based approaches to leadership I've encountered. Years of work and thought went into this. I'll be adopting this book to use in multiple environments and will now be following the work of these authors.
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I liked Mastering Leadership much better than Scaling Leadership. Did not find a lot of new ideas in Scaling Leadership.
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Great book!
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Highly recommend on leadership topic based on extensive and comprehensive research and real world examples. Thanks Milda for recommending.
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Started off strong, but lost me somewhere in the middle when it got a bit too data heavy. But, it was helpful to think about what types of leaderships skills I would need or should build (in myself and others) in order to take the organization I currently manage to the next level of impact.
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Love it just as much as Mastering Leadership. Couldn’t put my highlighter down!
