The economy uncertain education in decline cities under siege crime and poverty spiraling
upward international relations roiling: we look to leaders for solutions and when they don't
deliver we simply add their failure to our list of woes. In doing so we do them and ourselves
a grave disservice. We are indeed facing an unprecedented crisis of leadership Ronald Heifetz
avows but it stems as much from our demands and expectations as from any leader's inability to
meet them. His book gets at both of these problems offering a practical approach to leadership
for those who lead as well as those who look to them for answers. Fitting the theory and
practice of leadership to our extraordinary times the book promotes a new social contract a
revitalization of our civic life just when we most desperately need it. Drawing on a dozen
years of research among managers officers and politicians in the public realm and the private
sector among the nonprofits and in teaching Heifetz presents clear concrete prescriptions
for anyone who needs to take the lead in almost any situation under almost any organizational
conditions no matter who's in charge. His strategy of leadership applies not only to people at
the top but also to those who must lead without authority - activists as well as presidents
managers as well as workers on the frontline. Here are Lyndon Johnson Martin Luther King Jr.
and Mahatma Gandhi in triumph and in tragedy. Here too are military officers and soldiers
doctors and patients college students and local civic groups. Sketched with precision
touched by empathy and unfailingly interesting this cast of characters brings Heifetz's
theory to life demonstratingwhat a practitioner can do - or avoid doing - to assume leadership
in an age without easy answers.
