The Leadership Crash Course: How to Create Personal Leadership Value (second edition)

Citation

Bullock, J. (2007), "The Leadership Crash Course: How to Create Personal Leadership Value (second edition)", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 28 No. 3, pp. 289-291. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730710739693

The Leadership Crash Course is a valuable, hands‐on guide for leaders and high‐potential managers or employees on the self‐development fast track to success in the business world. Prime for today's busy executive, this book is an excellent source of information, guidance, and tools for assessing and developing leadership skills and abilities. Debunking the myth that leadership cannot be learned, Taffinder, a psychologist and award‐winning author, takes readers through a systematic evaluation of personal strengths and weaknesses along side real‐world stories of leadership success and failure to create context and demonstrate relevance. Fresh content, such as “leadership by e‐mail” and “unpredictability” bring the second edition up‐to‐date to help readers understand and embrace their ability to create leadership value. Designed for individuals at many levels within an organization, the aim of the book is “to encourage people to fix in their minds a simple, challenging leadership model and then take the personal risk of applying each of the five elements of leadership behavior in their everyday work.” These elements include setting the context to make what matters clear, making risks and taking risks, challenge and change, having deep conviction, and generating critical mass by making things happen at scale. More than a “how to” book, The Leadership Crash Course encourages readers to take action by engaging in honest self‐assessment and then experimenting with various activities, generating “motive power, the energy to awaken people to surprising opportunities and ambitions.”

The book is structured as a collection of seven short courses, beginning with leadership versus management, progressing through each of the five elements, and concluding with dominant leadership sub‐domains. Each course is complete with a key action list and objectives, discussion modules, self‐assessments, and stories demonstrating personal leadership value creation – or destruction, as the case may be. The latter reflects new insights incorporated into the second edition based on Taffinder's ongoing psychometric work examining dominant patterns of behavior and “behavioral components of leaders, including the blind spots and dangers associated with each.” Seven types of leaders are examined: the transformational leader; the enforcer; the deal‐maker; the administrator; the visionary; the serial entrepreneur; and the spin doctor. A fascinating aspect of The Leadership Crash Course is its ability to span the cultural divide through relevance across national cultures and the emphasis on how to exert greater impact as a leader. Written in an easy‐to‐understand, self‐paced manner, the book distills volumes of studies and years of research on leadership types and behavior into manageable modules written in laymen's terms. This pragmatic and practical approach will be appreciated by individuals whose interests range from a general exploration of leadership to the development of a detailed action plan to create lasting organizational value as a leader. The systematic and straight‐forward style will gain acceptance and applause from business readers seeking a methodology and process they can quickly put in place to begin to move them towards achievement of greater skills and competencies. The case studies and stories will provide a relational anchor by creating context and imbuing credibility. Although the book may also be of interest to scholars and management scientists, the absence of reference citations and bibliography may somewhat limit the utility of the book for research applications.

Although The Leadership Crash Course is a quick read, it is meant to be enacted over a period of time sufficient to permit candid examination of one's strengths and weaknesses and the development of a heightened awareness about how to go about creating personal leadership value. Each chapter, or course, as they are called in the book, will help promote greater awareness of personal potential while considering the achievements and shortcomings of great leaders, thus creating a continuum of value creation for contemplation when developing action items for one's personal leadership development plan. The concluding chapter on dominant leadership patterns and sub‐domains – such as uncertainty – will help readers better understand inherent opportunities for success and potential pitfalls leading to failure while increasing the likelihood they will recognize these in the context of their own leadership to allow them to optimize value creation and effectiveness. The Leadership Crash Course is highly recommended for anyone who wants to improve their leadership ability and potential regardless of current position or future ambitions; this book has valuable wisdom to impart for everyone seeking to influence others and make things happen by turning knowledge into action!