Transforming Leaders into Progress Makers: Leadership for the 21st Century

Citation

Clampitt, P.G. and DeKoch, R.J. (2012), "Transforming Leaders into Progress Makers: Leadership for the 21st Century", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 20 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2012.04420aaa.018

Transforming Leaders into Progress Makers: Leadership for the 21st Century

Article Type: Suggested reading From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 20, Issue 1

Phillip G. Clampitt and Robert J. DeKochSage2011ISBN: 9781412974691

After a hard-hitting foreword by Dr George Reed, in which the state of leadership scholarship and study is called to task, Transforming Leaders into Progress Makers: Leadership for the 21st Century provides a well considered treatment of leadership development in a dynamic world.

As citizens witness nation-changing events occurring across the globe, the natures of life and of work are on a collision course. Success is not measured during annual performance reviews, but by real-time responses to events that, while important, become history after a short time. Phillip Clampitt and Robert DeKoch provide a framework for developing effective leaders whose performance is measured by their respective progress and not by traditional metrics.

The authors provide an unusual approach to the discussion of leadership development. Although the goal of developing leaders is that of progress, the authors do not minimize this outcome by strictly operationalizing the term. In a no-nonsense manner, the authors explore the idea of progress, how to leverage leader skills to achieve progress, identifying and managing obstacles to progress, when to execute new organizational initiatives or simply repair what is broken, and describe how not all leaders are progress makers. This last point is reminiscent of the adage, “all managers are leaders, but not all leaders are managers”. Here, all progress makers are leaders, but the converse is not true.

The book comprises two sections – “Elements of progress making” and “Strategies for progress makers.” Each contains eight chapters. In the first section, the model is developed and explained. In the second, the authors elaborate on and describe how to enact the model. Overall, the authors’ treatment of the model and related topics is balanced and well illustrated by examples. The scope of these is useful to a various readers and not restricted to a single perspective (e.g. for-profit, military). Any leader in any organization facing any macro-environmental force can benefit.

The first six chapters describe the authors’ thinking behind the model and the story of its development. In chapter 7 there is an explanation of how the two types of progress makers achieve progress. Chapter 8 describes a handful of leaders who fit the definition of progress maker. Although Clampitt and DeKoch provide a balanced selection of exemplary leaders, chapter 8 should have been more focused on comparing and contrasting the dozens of leaders outlined throughout the book.

The second section contains eight chapters that more thoroughly explore how progress makers lead. A wide variety of topics relevant to leadership is reasonably well covered. The theme of decisiveness is perceptible throughout the book. Although decisiveness is not overtly investigated in the model, progress makers possess clear vision, recognize opportunities and execute decisions quickly.

Transforming Leaders provides complete references at the end of each chapter and a thorough table of contents and index. Locating topics in the book is simple given the effort that went into these features. Two appendices contain, first, a list of the leaders profiled in the book and their organizational affiliations, and second, an outline of the history of the research behind the model.

Reviewed by Larry W. Hughes, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.

A longer version of this review was originally published in Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 32 No. 4, 2011.