New Horizons for Learning: Transforming Education

Steve Boyd's Top Leadership Books

Heifetz, Ron and Marty Linsky. (2002) Leadership on the Line. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.

Two practitioner/theorists from Harvard's Kennedy School clarify the challenges (sometimes dangers) of leadership by distinguishing the "exercise of leadership" from uses and limits of authority (positional influence), adaptive challenges (requiring people to change values, attitudes and behaviors) from technical problems (solved by expert know how) and the requirements to "get on the balcony" to have personal and systems perspective.

McGregor Burnes, James. (1979) Leadership. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Pulitzer prize winning book by historian James MacGregor Burns is a systematic overview of leadership – from ideational to political. Burns is generally credited for first distinguish transformational from transactional leadership. His potent notion that transforming leadership has the capacity to articulate values and aspirations of people (making existing latent values more patent) and thus evoking their commitment to a good beyond themselves and the effort to affect significant change.

Fritz, Robert. (1999) The Path of Least Resistance. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Fritz is real pioneer in the ideas of creativity and how to create something entirely "new". Peter Senge has borrowed liberally from Fritz – especially his ideas around the dynamics of creative tension between 1) identifying/clarifying current reality and holding this up against a 2) vision of possibility or desired future. Remember: Albert Einstein didn't create the "break through" of a quantum universe by merely imagining one…he kept observing current reality and couldn't make it fit the current paradigm of a Newtonian universe.

Gardner, John W. (1983) Self Renewal: The Individual and The Innovative Society. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (1965-68), Founder of Common Cause and Independent Sector, Gardner has been one of America's preeminent public thinkers and leaders. His challenge to all citizens is most fundamental . . . " In the ever-renewing society what matters is a system or framework with which continuous innovation, renewal and rebirth can occur…Renewal in not just innovation and change. It is also the process of bringing the results of change into line with our purposes." Gardner's 1990 book, On Leadership, challenges the notion that leaders are born, not made.

Tichy, Noel and Eli B. Cohen. (2002) The Leadership Engine: How Winning Companies Build Leaders at Every Level. New York, NY: Harper.

University of Michigan Business School professor Tichy worked extensively with Jack Welch in developing leadership capacities across General Electric. Tichy's key notions-- that leadership must exist at all levels, that every manager, at all levels, must be accountable for developing and articulating a compelling "point of view"-- is at the heart of developing an aligned leadership culture from top to bottom.

About the author

Steve Boyd, Principal of MacDonald Boyd and Associates, consults to public, private and community-based organizations in areas of leadership development, capacity-building and change. He can be reached at steve.boyd@att.net

Steve Boyd
Partner, MacDonald Boyd and Associates
3507 46th Ave N.E.
Seattle, Washington 98105

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