Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge by Warren Bennis

Leadership (management in another way) is found to be the most crucial topic of corporate America. Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus explain the four important keys to effective leadership. These four keys are attention through vision, meaning through communication, trust through positioning and the deployment of self. The leadership keys would explain how a manager (who do things right) is different from a leader (who do the right thing).

This management mantra is very much helpful for organizations (companies of all kind). Vague restructuring, absence of leadership and lack of trust and communication has made the workplaces and companies a living pandemonium. Managers with great management insight can only save these sinking business entities. Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge is a clever advice to both big and small managers alike. The authors Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus are Professors in Business Management.

The former has more than 40 years experience in management literature and the latter had first hand management experience in several companies. Warren Bennis has even served as advisor of U.S. Presidents. He had served as a university administrator and has advised several Fortune 500 companies. He had been the President of the University of Cincinnati for 7 years. Burt Nanus, on the other hand has worked as a Professor Emeritus of Management at the University of Southern California. The management ideas of these gurus have made Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge an excellent management text.

Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge is a book that would help managers cultivate excellent management skills that would also make their organization go up in the ladder. Chicago Tribune has commented about the book as a ‘one of the most important books of its type in a long time’. The book emphasizes that leadership (and management) skills are learnable and are not fully in-born. The book would be really boosting for managers though certain sections appear bit dry. The book is highly rewarding for management students also who is about to reach the chair of a manger.

The book is considered as one of the top 50 business books of all time by the Financial Times. The book says that the speed and pervasiveness of technological change would be the most disturbing factor of the leaders of this present age. Organizations need to be filled with expert workers who can handle jobs independently. The mangers therefore should be able to handle these complex situations with great managing skill. Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge explain those skills that would help a manager excel in an organization of any kind.

The book would equip managers with skills that would help them successfully handle the rapid technology updates. It also would educate the leaders how to mange the organizational and structural developments. Leaders can learn the basic management skills identified by the authors and apply them in their organizations. Authors have completely undermined the traditional myths about leadership, and have proved that management is a set of skills that can be learned, studied, and mastered by voluntary attempts.

They have also come up with certain key insights of leadership. For example ‘Leaders must display a passion to realize their vision’, ‘Leadership is about character’, ‘Leaders must be able to generate and sustain trust’ etc. Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge is thus a really treasure to any manager or future manager.

Works Cited

Warren G. Bennis and Burt Nanus, Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge, 1997.