University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
The Extraordinary Leader
Book

The Extraordinary Leader

Turning Good Managers Into Great Leaders

John H. Zenger and Joseph Folkman
McGraw-Hill, 2002
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

In this volume, two battle-scarred veterans of what might be called "The Leadership Wars" - that is, the exhaustive effort over several decades to define the elusive nature of leadership and how it can best be nurtured - present insights on leadership that are based on a series of formal surveys conducted with companies nationwide. They also present 16 core competencies that affect the perception of whether you are, or aren’t, a great leader. In many ways, they demystify leadership. Being a great leader, they tell us, isn’t a matter of genetics or tea leaves: by studying what it takes to be a great leader, you can become one yourself. getAbstract strongly recommends this book for followers who want to become leaders, and for leaders who would like to be a little less lonely at the top.

Summary

Why?

Why do you need another book on leadership, when so many have already been written? By one estimate, more than 10,000 formal papers have been presented on the subject. Warren Bennis has observed that the more that is written on leadership, the less it is understood.

However, new sophisticated use of survey methodology has revealed new answers and new information about leadership. Almost 1,000 employees of a high tech company took a survey on leadership. More than 1,600 assessments were distributed to mortgage bank employees who were asked to evaluate their managers. Other surveys included an insurance firm and a communications firm - the later involving a 360-degree survey of 612 managers. The results were surprising.

The Significance of Great Leaders

The first result: excellent leaders make a significant impact on an organization, in contrast to simply good leaders whose impact is far less. Other fields have long since discovered that the impact of a top performer is many multiples greater than that of average performers, this effect is true in management as well.

A synthesis of some 80 productivity studies shows that the topnotch person...

About the Authors

John H. Zenger is the vice chairman of a large performance skills improvement company, Provant, Inc. Considered an authoritative figures in the performance and leadership field, he has written or co-authored six books. Joseph Folkman, Ph.D., is the author of three books including Making Feedback Work. He is managing director of Novations Group, Inc., a Provant company.

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